The archive's 1,000 most-mentioned names in FEC records: 266 confident donor matches, leaning Democratic 158 to 79

Method. Each of the 1,000 names was searched in the FEC’s itemized contribution records (Schedule A); for every attributable name the history was pulled (state-filtered, restricted to one dominant city/state identity). The 25 people who also appear on the archive’s FEC page on the PPP cast are matched by one identity rule on both pages: a record counts only when the name matches, the record’s city and state is a place where at least one record under the name reports an employer or occupation that the archive’s profiles and source documents give for that person, and the record itself names that employer or occupation or none (blank, retired or self-employed); records at other addresses do not count. Each match was confirmed by hand against the archive’s profiles. Both pages print the same gifts and totals for the 11 of them with records under this rule; the other 14 show no record on either page. Where the archive names one of these people two or three ways (Bernie and Bernardo Navarro; Robert and Rob Frohwein; Isabella Guzman, Isabella Casillas Guzman and Casillas Guzman), the total appears once, on the row that uses the PPP-cast page’s name. September 2026 check: the June pull stopped at 100 records for some names and missed spelling variants for others. Every attributable history was checked again against FEC records (gifts dated through May 31, 2026). 116 were rebuilt from records retrieved through the OpenFEC API, among them Elon Musk, Theodore J. Boutrous and William P. Barr, and 92 from the FEC’s bulk contribution files together with the API records on hand, where those files hold every gift the June pull counted. The histories of the 11 people with records who also appear on the PPP-cast page were rebuilt from both pages’ records under the identity rule above. Jovita Carranza’s records in these files end on February 5, 2026; the June 2026 pull had listed gifts through March 30, 2026, so later gifts may be missing. The other 86 keep their June 2026 values, and 15 low-confidence rows whose records ran past 100 are left blank. Confidence: HIGH = distinctive name (200 or fewer same-name donors nationally); MED = <600 with a corroborating employer; LOW = common name whose dominant identity may be a namesake (held separate). A person who also appears on the PPP-cast page is HIGH when records meet the identity rule and otherwise shows no record. Party from recipient-committee party (WinRed→R, ActBlue→D, corporate/trade PACs separate); race from committee type. Double-counting: each gift is counted once for the 219 attributable donors whose histories were rebuilt in September 2026. The FEC data lists some of their gifts two or three times; 3,547 of their 13,402 records, $3,082,223.65, are removed. Joint fundraising: the joint committee reports the donor’s check as its receipt, and each campaign or party committee that shares the money reports its slice as a memo entry (usually FEC transaction type 15J). These 1,445 slices, $2,312,139.72, are removed; the joint committee’s receipt stays and takes the party of the committees that shared it. Conduits: ActBlue or WinRed and the campaign it forwards to can both list one gift. These 1,912 conduit copies, $760,183.93, are removed where the campaign’s record of the same gift and amount is among the donor’s records, on the same date or, in the bulk files, up to seven days later. Memo corrections: 190 memo-coded redesignations and reattributions that cancel each other or repeat a receipt already counted are removed ($9,900 net). Elon Musk’s total falls from $342,518,661.67 to $342,201,261.67 and Toby Scammell’s from $1,639,973.45 to $1,355,138.10. A slice stays when the joint committee’s receipt is not among the donor’s records (147 slices, $34,610.09). A memo stays when it is the only record of a gift. A conduit record from the bulk files stays when no campaign record matches it (213 gifts, $71,897). The bulk files give amounts in whole dollars, so 2,820 kept amounts omit their cents. Transaction types and memo codes come from the OpenFEC API and, where they hold the record, the FEC’s bulk files as of September 28, 2026. The other 101 attributable rows, 15 of them blank, keep their June values; their totals are as pulled and can still count a joint-fundraising gift twice. Record counts: the Gifts column is the number of contribution records attributed to that individual after namesake-cleaning. The initial FEC name screen returns a larger count for 224 of the 305 attributable names that show a gift count, because it counts every donor nationally sharing the name; that screening count sets confidence and is not displayed. Validation: for Toby Scammell, the method returns the same 69 FEC records as the archive’s separate FEC analysis of about 100 pandemic-relief figures, removes the same 32 duplicate records and reaches the same total, $1,355,138.10.