One of the most important things I have learned while researching Culver City politics is that a surprising amount of campaign-finance information is available to the public.

The problem is that most voters probably have no idea where to find it or how to use it.

I didn't.

So rather than tell you whom to support, this episode is a practical guide to something much more useful:

How can you investigate campaign money yourself?

Who donated to a City Council candidate?

How much did they contribute?

Are the same people contributing to several candidates?

Are unions, businesses or political action committees contributing?

Who is making large last-minute contributions?

You can investigate these questions yourself using Culver City's public campaign-finance system.

And you don't need to be an accountant or political insider.

Step 1: Find Culver City's campaign-finance records

Culver City provides public access to campaign filings through its NetFile Public Portal.

Once inside, look for:

Filings & Research

You'll find several useful options, including:

Search Transactions

Search FPPC 497 Contributions by Date

Search Independent Expenditures by Date

Search All Entities

Candidates/Officeholders

Committees

Search By Committee ID

Those aren't just administrative records.

They allow ordinary residents to investigate the money moving through local politics.

Step 2: Start with “Search Transactions”

For a voter who simply wants to see the money, I think this is one of the easiest places to begin.

Select:

Filings & Research → Search Transactions

You'll arrive at a page called:

Campaign Transactions

The page provides a search box allowing you to search by things such as:

Filer

Payee

Employer

You can also simply look through the transactions being reported.

The results display useful information including:

Date

Filer Name

Amount

Transaction Type

Entity/Payee

Address

Employer/Occupation

That last category can be particularly interesting.

California campaign-finance reports frequently require information about the occupation and employer of individual contributors. That provides voters with more context than merely seeing someone's name.

Step 3: Use the Filter button

On the Campaign Transactions page, click:

Filter

A menu appears allowing you to select:

Transaction Type

Amount Range

Date Range

Suppose you want to investigate the current 2026 election.

Enter:

Beginning date: 01/01/2026

Ending date: today's date

If you're trying to understand the complete picture rather than one particular type of transaction, leave:

Transaction Type → All Types

and leave the minimum and maximum amount blank.

Then click:

Apply

Now you're looking at transactions for the period you're investigating.

Step 4: Look at who received the money

The Filer Name column tells you which campaign or political committee reported the transaction.

For example, while doing this research I could see transactions associated with 2026 Culver City Council candidate committees.

The Entity/Payee column then identifies the person or organization on the other side of the reported transaction.

The Amount tells you how much money was involved.

But pay attention to Type.

Not every transaction displayed in the database necessarily means, “This person donated this amount to this candidate.”

Different FPPC schedules report different kinds of transactions.

Read what the transaction actually represents before drawing a conclusion.

Step 5: Download the data

This is where the system becomes particularly useful.

At the top of the Campaign Transactions page is a:

Download

button.

That allows voters to take the results they have found and analyze them outside the website.

For example, you could download the transactions into a spreadsheet.

Then you could organize the information by:

Candidate

Contributor

Contribution amount

Date

Employer

Occupation

PAC or organization

And now you can start asking much more interesting questions.

Who is giving to more than one candidate?

This is one of the questions that started my investigation.

Imagine five candidates running for City Council.

Instead of examining each campaign separately, put the contributors next to one another:

Suddenly you can see relationships that aren't obvious when you look at individual campaign reports.

A donor supporting several candidates isn't necessarily doing anything wrong or unusual.

In fact, there can be many perfectly ordinary reasons for doing so.

The point is transparency.

The records allow voters to see the relationships and decide for themselves whether they consider them meaningful.

Step 6: Learn what a Form 460 is

If you start digging deeper, you'll repeatedly encounter something called:

FPPC Form 460

This is an important campaign statement filed by recipient committees.

Among other things, it can report contributions received and expenditures made during a reporting period.

When looking at a candidate's list of filings, pay particular attention to the “Covers Period” column.

For example, a filing might say:

1/1/2026 to 6/30/2026

That tells you the reporting period.

This matters because campaign-finance information doesn't all arrive at the same time.

Step 7: Don't ignore Form 497

During my research, I encountered another form repeatedly:

FPPC Form 497

These reports can become particularly useful during an election because they report certain contributions on an accelerated basis when statutory thresholds and reporting periods apply.

That is why you may see numerous Form 497 filings appearing between the regular Form 460 reports.

In the records I examined, some 2026 candidate committees had numerous Form 497 filings appearing during August and September.

So if you only look at an earlier Form 460, you could miss more recent activity.

Step 8: Search independent expenditures too

This is extremely important.

Giving money directly to a candidate isn't the only way money can influence an election.

An outside political committee might independently spend money supporting or opposing a candidate.

That could involve political communications such as advertising or mailers.

Culver City's portal therefore provides another search:

Search Independent Expenditures by Date

Voters should check this too.

The distinction matters because an independent expenditure is different from simply writing a check directly to a candidate's campaign.

If you're trying to understand election spending, investigate both.

Step 9: Search PACs and political committees

You can also select:

Committees

under the Entities section.

This lets you investigate organizations rather than candidates.

That's how my recent investigation into CulverPAC — the Culver City Chamber of Commerce's political action committee — developed.

The 2018 political flyer I recently received specifically accused the Chamber and “CulverPAC” of exercising excessive influence through campaign money.

Whether you agree with that accusation is a separate question.

The interesting thing for voters is that you can actually research political committees yourself.

If you know a committee's identification number, NetFile even provides:

Search By Committee ID

That helps distinguish similarly named organizations.

Step 10: Understand one important limitation

NetFile itself gives voters an important warning on the Campaign Transactions page:

“Results are from electronic filings only. Transactions from paper filings are not included.”

Don't overlook that sentence.

It means an unsuccessful NetFile search doesn't automatically establish that no relevant filing or transaction exists.

If something important seems to be missing, the next step may be checking with the Culver City City Clerk for filings in the City's possession that aren't appearing in the electronic transaction search.

That distinction is important whenever we're trying to draw conclusions from public databases.

Don't just look at how much money a candidate raised

This is where campaign-finance research becomes much more informative.

Instead of asking only:

“How much money did Candidate X raise?”

Try asking:

Who provided it?

Then:

Who else did those contributors support?

Then:

Are organizations contributing directly or making independent expenditures?

Then:

What happened immediately before the election?

Then:

Are the same political organizations appearing election after election?

Those questions begin to reveal the structure of local political fundraising.

You don't need to take anybody's word for it

This may be my favorite part of this project.

You don't have to believe a candidate.

You don't have to believe a political club.

You don't have to believe a PAC.

You don't have to believe a newspaper.

And you don't have to believe this blog.

Look at the filings yourself.

That is what public disclosure is for.

Campaign-finance reports aren't merely paperwork candidates and committees have to submit.

They are records created for the public.

Use them.

Why I'm writing about this

My Strange World of Politics series has increasingly become an effort to explain the machinery of local politics that ordinary voters rarely see.

Candidate statements.

Nomination signatures.

Political clubs.

PACs.

Endorsements.

Form 700 disclosures.

Form 460 campaign reports.

Form 497 reports.

Independent expenditures.

None of these things is particularly mysterious once somebody explains where to look.

But if nobody explains them, local politics can appear to be something conducted by a small group of insiders who already understand the system.

It doesn't have to be that way.

The information belongs to the public.

So follow the money yourself.

Go into Culver City's public campaign-finance records.

Set the date range.

Look at the transactions.

Look at the candidates.

Look at the committees.

Look at the PACs.

Look at independent expenditures.

Download the information.

Compare it.

And then make up your own mind about what it means.

That may be one of the most useful things an informed voter can do in the strange world of local politics.