Campaign Commonsreceipts, not conclusions

Funding chain · Pennsylvania · U.S. Senate · 2024

Where PROTECT LIBERTY PAC's money came from — and went

⚑ Chain dead-ends in undisclosed source
← Entity pageFEC committee record ↗Backward walk over 2024-cycle receipts, 1 hop deep. To the right: Schedule E payments to vendors, the ads it ran, and the candidate those dollars were aimed at.
Total receipts traced
$553K
$553,496
Spent on this race (Schedule E)
$109K
1 vendor · 0 ads · 1 candidate targeted
Visibility of traced dollars
individuals 14%organizations 18%inferable 0%not walked 0%dark 68%
Ends in 8 dark terminals, 4 business / union treasuries, 3 individual donors, 1 aggregated remainders.

Flow of money into the spender, and where it went

  • you are here — PROTECT LIBERTY PAC, the spender this page is about
  • disclosed (FEC): individual
  • disclosed (FEC): business or union treasury
  • inferable (990, lagged)
  • not walked (FEC committee, receipts outside this race's neighborhood)
  • dark wall (no disclosure)
  • other (aggregated)
  • vendor / ad (spending side)
  • placement: solid = filed or verified · dashed = inferred
  • targeting (for / against) — no money reaches the candidate
HOP 1SPENDERPAID VENDORSTARGETEDNATIONAL SHOOTING SPORTSFOUNDATION, INC.non-committee organizationDARK WALLAdvocacy nonprofit — funders not on file$230KBMADDOX ENTERPRISES LLCDBA SILENCER CENTRAL$50KLIPSEY'S$25KTAURUS HOLDINGS, INC$25KSILENCER SHOP$25KBERETTA U.S.A. CORPORATIONnon-committee organization$25KREESE, DENNIS$25KNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OFSPORTING GOODS WHOL…$25KBENELLI USA$25KTUCKER, BRYAN$25KOther contributors to PROTECTLIBERTY PAC (each <1%…$24KTOPCO AMERICA LLC$10KHERSHBERGER, MICHAEL$10KRANGE USA$10KGRASSO HOLDINGS INC$10KLUTH-AR LLC$10KPROTECT LIBERTY PACYOU ARE HERE · THE SPENDERSuper PAC$553KTHE HERALD GROUPvendor · tv$109Kcollapse downstream−Dave McCormick$109K
Drawn: the spender, its direct sources and every node carrying at least 2% of its receipts; to the right, what the spender paid for and whom it targeted. Hover for the basics; click any node for its details and evidence, any edge for its evidence and its row in the table below.

Ribbon width is proportional to dollars; color is how the money is disclosed. Read left to right: sources → intermediaries → spender → vendors paid → ads ⇢ candidate targeted. Zoom with the buttons above the map or Ctrl/⌘ + scroll, drag to pan; plain scrolling still scrolls the page. Hover a node or edge for the basics. Click a node for its details, the evidence behind each link, and the page or record behind it; click an edge for its evidence and its row in the table below; + / − expands or folds what hangs off it.

Assumptions on the spending side. Vendor dollars are Schedule E payments as filed. Ad dollars are the midpoint of the range Google reports, not a filed figure. A vendor → ad edge is drawn only when a person verified it from a source naming both (solid), or the vendor was the only digital vendor the spender paid in the week before and while the ad ran (dashed, inferred). FEC does not record which buy placed which ad, so an ad with no such link hangs off the spender alone; vendors merely paid in that window are named on the ad's page as a sentence, never drawn as an edge. Targeting edges never carry money to the candidate.

Every edge, with its record — receipts, then spending

Method. Backward walk over money edges only (Schedule A receipts from individuals and organizations, committee-to-committee transfers) into PROTECT LIBERTY PAC, 1 hop(s) deep; independent expenditures are targeting edges and never appear. The walk starts from $553,496 of itemized 2023–2024 receipts as loaded from FEC bulk data (unitemized receipts, loans and offsets are not edges), and every expanded committee conserves dollars: its inbound edges sum to its receipts. Inbound edges under 1% of a committee's receipts are rolled into one 'other contributors' node, which counts as disclosed except for the organization dollars inside it. Each dollar takes the visibility of where the walk stopped: named individuals (including earmarks through ActBlue/WinRed, attributed to the person) are disclosed to a person. Organizations that are not registered committees are classified from their name alone (no IRS lookup): a union or a business giving from its own treasury is disclosed to an organization — the named entity is the source, but its own funders are not walked; an LLC, trust, advocacy nonprofit (501(c)(4)-style names) or unclassifiable organization is dark, because whoever funds it is not on file with the FEC. The disclosed share is reported in total and split into the part that resolves to people and the part that stops at a named business or union. Visibility shares are preliminary; no 990 lookups were performed, so nothing is marked inferable. Spending side (right of the spender): Schedule E payments to vendors are money edges; vendor → ad and spender → ad edges are placement (no dollars) and carry the evidence basis they were drawn on; edges into a candidate are targeting (for/against) and never carry money to the candidate. Ad dollars are the midpoint of the Google-reported spend range.