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University of Wisconsin political science professor Ken Mayer created a website detailing campaign spending among state Senate and Assembly candidates. The site also includes information on how much public money is used in these campaigns.

“[The website is] an important new source of systematic data on public financing of state and local elections,” Thomas Mann, W. Averell Harriman Chair and senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said.

Though the information is available to the public, Mayer said it has taken him about a year to collect all the data.

“A lot of traveling was involved,” Mayer said, explaining he had to go to different districts in Wisconsin and the five other states’ records he makes available on the site.

Mayer worked with several graduate students to compile and organize the data. The site will most likely be used mostly for political-science research, but it is set up so the common taxpayer could benefit from it, he said.

“I think it’s presented in a way that anyone could understand it … there’s just a lot of numbers,” Mayer said. “We’re just trying to make this information available to anyone who is interested.”

UW political science professor Don Kettl feels the website is an “invaluable resource” for looking at important issues.

For example, Arizona, one of the states chronicled on the website, destroys its campaign-finance records after 10 years. But with Mayer’s “Campaign Finance Project” website, interested people can access this information.

One noticeable trend in campaign spending is that compared to two or three decades ago, campaign spending has increased greatly.

“The campaigns have become more expensive,” Mayer said, saying it was not unusual for past politicians to pay merely $10,000 in their efforts to get elected. “Thirty-five-thousand dollars was a lot of money to spend on a campaign back then.”

Now Mayer said it is common practice for a candidate to spend more than six figures on a campaign.

Although a district may only cover 70,000 or 80,000 people, more than $400,000 could be spent on any given campaign year in hotly contested elections. Some smaller or uncontested races continue to keep small budgets, he said.

Though some may frown on the increases in spending, Mayer disagreed that increased spending is a bad thing.

“Campaigns are expensive … [and] I think competitive elections are important,” Mayer said. “If you have competitive elections, other issues seem to take care of themselves.”

Mayer explained outside concerns, such as special-interest issues, seem to resolve themselves.

Mayer said he has been interested in cataloging campaign funding for a while, saying he wanted to investigate how much of taxpayers’ money politicians use.

“It’s interesting to see where their priorities are,” Mayer said.

A nonprofit grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation funded the project.