Who’s funding local elections this year? We took a deep dive so you don’t have to. 

Nearly $1.5 million in cash and in-kind donations poured into local political races this year for candidates in the upcoming general election for seats on the Reno City Council, Washoe Board of County Commissioners and Washoe County School District Board of Trustees. 

This Is Reno reviewed candidate filings from the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office from the start of 2024 through the Oct. 15 third quarter filing. We grouped donors into various categories to get a sense of which industries give the most and to whom. The charts below show which groups have donated the most money and to which candidates. 

The charts were generated based on the SOS data and the categories we developed, and they were generated using Flourish, an AI platform that generates graphics from data to present the data in an easier-to-visualize format. 

This Is Reno grouped donors based primarily on their occupation, if they could be determined by Secretary of State records and online searches. If not, donors were labeled as “individuals.”  Based on prior reporting, we found that, while individuals will give—and get—funding from local politicians, they often do so from a vantage point of, for example, being a member of a board or closely associated with a cause, business or organization. 

We erred as much as possible on the side of individuals being associated with an entity. While developer firms readily give money to local candidates, their individual agents also give money to politicians. Both are included in the developers category, rather than developer and an individual contributor. The categories are further explained below, followed by charts for individual candidates.

Category Definitions

Update: We’ve updated the data to remove in-kind donations as a category and divide those donations out among the other categories.

The Data 

The following charts look at individual candidates and how their contributions are divided amongst different donors. 

Spot an error? Is there other data you’d like to see? Drop us a line.