Campaign Finance
by Kyle Hudson
You hear it all the time, “elections cost money”, well that money has to come from somewhere. Campaign finance laws require campaigns and Political Action Committees or PACs, to file regularly thought the campaign cycle to report exactly who is giving them money. There are no limits to how much an individual can contribute, however contributions cannot directly come from corporations.
Most candidates that intend to raise money form a PAC, usually it is called Friends of (the Candidate), but it isn’t always. We set out to answer the following questions: What PAC raised and spent the most money? What PAC has the most money? And finally, who gave the most money to local elections? Here is what we found.
County wide, the Chester County Democratic Committee raised $301,575.34, compared to the $2,192.74 that were raised by the Chester County Republican Committee. The largest contributor to the Chester County Democratic Committee was $25,000 from Chrissy Houlahan for Congress and on the other side, the top donation to the Republican Committee of CHester County was $500 by Chesco Deserves Better, a PAC that supported the Republican County Row candidates in the 2025 election cycle.
As far as which PAC has the most going into 2026, it is clearly the Chester County Democratic Committee, with $87,466.16 in the bank, the PAC belonging to our local West Chester 3rd Ward Councilman, Friends of Brian McGinnis is going into 2026 with $39,850.20 after raising over $2,500 this year, despite not running having any opponent, almost exclusively from two trade union PACS, including $1,000 from Iron Workers Local #401 and $2,500 from Local 19 Sheet Metal Workers Union League for Political Education (they also made a $1,000 contribution to the West Chester Democratic Committee).
The biggest spenders in West Chester elections this year were the $2,500 given to the West Chester Democratic Committee by the Steamfitters Local 420, the $2,000 given by the Local 19 Sheet Metal Workers Union to the West Chester Democratic Committee and Friends of Brian McGinnis, $1,500 the Plumbers Union Local 690 Election Political Action Fund gave to Friends of Lisa Bryan-Conforti (D). The International Union of Operating Engineers, Roofers Local 30, Sean Kilkenny the Sheriff of Montgomery County and the Remmington and Vernick PAC all gave the West Chester Democrats $1,000 each.
This is just a brief overview of the spending in the 2025 election. We intend to dig deeper and look into how money moves around our election system and who is contributing. Next year we will have an in depth look into several local PACs, where their money comes from and where it goes, to give more transparency into our local elections.