OpenFEC — Federal Election Commission Campaign Finance

The Federal Election Commission's openFEC API. All federal campaign finance data: candidates (presidential, congressional), committees (campaign, PAC, super PAC, party), individual contributions, expenditures, independent expenditures, debt. Free, requires a free API key.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1394+ live data sources.

Why this matters for AI agents

For political research, lobbying-spend analysis, or "where does this PAC's money go?" questions, OpenFEC is the canonical source. Government-mandated reporting; what's publicly disclosed flows here. Pair with the Lobbying Activity recipe for full political-footprint mapping.

Common flows:

• Candidate / committee lookup. "Find committees associated with a candidate" → search by name.

• Contribution patterns. "Who contributed to this PAC?" → committee contribution detail.

• Where the money went. "What did this committee spend on?" → committee disbursement detail.

• Independent expenditures. "Who's spending against this candidate?" → IE search.

Related MCP server: @cyanheads/openfec-mcp-server

Auth

Free key from https://api.open.fec.gov/developers/. Pass via _apiKey. Rate-limited; the key gives generous limits.

Committee types

For corporate / executive political activity, you typically care about the corporate PAC (regular) and any associated super PACs.

Reporting cycles

Federal campaign finance is reported by cycle: Jan 1 of year T to Dec 31 of T+1 for two-year cycles (House: every 2yr, Senate: every 6yr). Filings are quarterly during election years, semi-annually in off-years.

Common pitfalls

• Itemization thresholds. Individual contributions <$200 don't have to be itemized — only the aggregate appears. So "who contributed to X?" misses small donors.

• Bundling. A single donor can contribute to many committees, often via "bundlers." OpenFEC has individual contributions; bundling relationships are inferred, not reported.

• Soft money / 527s / dark money. OpenFEC doesn't have 501(c)(4) social welfare orgs that engage in political activity. For those, IRS Form 990 (separate pack: propublica-nonprofit) is the closest analog.

• Super PAC coordination is restricted, not eliminated. Super PACs report all activity but can't legally coordinate with candidates. In practice, "single-candidate super PAC" is a common pattern that's technically arms-length.

• Candidate vs. committee. A candidate has a candidate ID (Cxxxxxxxx); their authorized committee has a separate committee ID. Same-name searches need disambiguation.

• Cycle alignment for lookups. Searching for activity in 2023 alone misses things — most reports cover the full 2023-2024 cycle. Filter by cycle, not by year.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "open-fec": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/open-fec/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway for access to all 1394+ data sources:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Open Fec data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides

• pipeworx.io

License

MIT