How to read a company's political spending
Scan a bottle of dish soap in ChooseWell and the Political involvement card might say High: $10.5 million since 2024. That number is real, but it bundles four different kinds of money. Knowing which is which changes what it means.
PAC contributions
A corporate PAC is a fund of voluntary donations from a company's employees and shareholders. The company runs it and picks the recipients, but by law the money is not the company's own. PAC contributions go to candidates' committees, and the party of each recipient is on the public filing, so this is the part that produces the party split you see in the app.
Lobbying
Lobbying spend is the company's own money, paid to in-house or hired lobbyists to argue for or against specific bills and rules. It is usually the largest number by far. In the dish-soap example, about $9.9 million of the $10.5 million is lobbying. Lobbying has no party: a company lobbies whoever is in office.
Super PAC and 527 giving
Unlike candidate committees, Super PACs and 527 organizations can take money straight from a corporate treasury. That is why ChooseWell treats $1,000 to a Super PAC as a High indicator on its own: it is the company, not its employees, choosing a side.
State giving
Most states let companies give directly to state candidates and parties, and many ban it. ChooseWell pulls the records from 46 states and cities, so a company that never touches federal politics can still show state-level giving.
Reading the party split honestly
A PAC that gives 50/50 is usually giving to incumbents on the committees that oversee its industry, regardless of party. A lopsided split is more telling. Either way, the split covers PAC money only; lobbying has no side.
What the number cannot tell you
Trade-association dues and donations to groups that do not disclose their donors are invisible to every public source, including this one. A Low indicator means nothing was found in the records checked, not that nothing happened. Every figure in the app links to the filing it came from, so you can check the source yourself.