As eyes turn toward Massachusetts and the outcome of the Senate race today, here’s the text of an invitation to a fundraiser for would-be senator Martha Coakley at Sonoma restaurant last week hosted by the Democratic Massachusetts political firmament and a host of well connected lobbyists.

Congressional Quarterly reported on this fete here; the Washington Examiner noted that several of the lobbyists have health care connections here; and the Washington Post here.

• Danny Tarkanian, who hopes to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in November, is boasting of recent polling numbers in an invitation to a fundraising luncheon at La Loma on the 19th.  Tarkanian is part of a crowded field of Republicans challenging the Reid, who is widely seen as vulnerable thanks in large part to his championship of health care reform.
• Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who faces a primary challenge back home in Colorado from Andrew Romanoff (who was recently passed over as a possible candidate in the governor’s race) continues to show his D.C. fundraising power with a reception, featuring Education Secretary Arne Duncan, also on the 19th. Before being tapped for the Senate seat by now-retiring Governor Bill Ritter, Bennet served as Denver school superintendent. Bennet has raised 58 percent of his cash from out-of-state; after Denver, his top two contributing geographical areas are New York and Washington, D.C. The reception is at the home of Katherine and David Bradley; Bradley is publisher of The Atlantic Monthly Magazine, where Bennet’s brother, James, is editor-in-chief.

Hat tip to Sunlight’s Nisha Thompson, who alerted us to a couple of local blogs that have made good use of Party Time this week:

The Progressive Pulse reports here on how Reps. Patrick McHenry and Heath Shuler have been feted by lobbyist Tim Rupli.

Irregular Times does a nice round up of parties here.

When we come across examples like these, we’ll link to them here on the blog.

If you’ve come across any congressional fundraisers at this year’s Super Bowl, please send them our way. We’d love to put them in our database.  (You can send them using this upload feature or to nwatzman (at) sunlightfoundation.com.)

• The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) celebrates the new year with a “business council” kickoff breakfast featuring Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.),  Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Rep. Albio Sires (D-N.J.), Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.), Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), and Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). Of these, The Cook Report rates Braley, Klein, Cardoza, and Murphy as being in races that could turn competitive.
• Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-S.C.) will be hosting a fundraiser this weekend for his leadership PAC, the Republican Majority Fund, at The Breakers, a resort featuring golf, a spa, and of course, the beach, in Palm Beach, Florida. Chambliss was the focus earlier this year of an investigative report by Propublica, which showed how he has used the PAC to fund his golf habit. The PAC already spent $48,283 at The Breakers early last year on “golf/catering,” and “prizes,” according to expenditure reports filed with the U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC). Click here to see a list of the parties we have on file benefitting Chambliss and Republican Majority Fund.

As potential candidates line up in the wake of sudden retirement announcements by Senators Chris Dodd and Bryon Dorgan, one challenger already has ties to the D.C. fundraising establishment.

Former Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., has held at least five fundraisers in Washington since the beginning of 2009 in an effort to win the Senate seat held by Dodd, who lagged badly in the polls in part due to a number of serious ethics charges. The five-term Connecticut Democrat had been dogged by ethical problems, including a sweetheart mortgage he’d received from Countrywide Financial, improperly disclosing the value of a second home in Ireland, his wife’s presence on the boards of several health care companies while Dodd was deeply involved in the reform legislation through his perch on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and his penchant for raising money from financial firms and their lobbyists while crafting legislation of interest to them.

The move by Dodd gives Democrats a chance to pit a better-positioned candidate against Simmons, who has raised $1.7 million,should he reaches the general election. Richard Blumenthal, the state attorney general, has announced he’ll run for the seat.

Connecticut Republican Linda McMahon, the World Wrestling Entertainment heiress, is running a self-funded campaign for the seat. While that’s allowed her to bypass the grind of fundraising, it hasn’t kept her free from problems with the Federal Election Commission: McMahon was faulted by the FEC for failing to list the beneficiaries of some half a million dollars in in-kind contributions she says she made.

In North Dakota, Republican challenger Duane Sand has $420,000 in the bank–one-tenth that of the outgoing incumbent Dorgan. The Party Time database does not contain any invitations for him yet. Gov. John Hoeven, considered the more viable candidate, raised $2 million in 2007 and 2008 for the governor’s race, but his state-level donations may not be transferred to a potential Senate campaign committee.

Even if he is spending his state campaign funds while he tests the waters, he needs to retain records to report those donations once he declares candidacy, according to Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.

Before announcing their decision yesterday to retire from the Senate, both Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), were actively fundraising.

Dodd has about $2.4 million cash on hand in his campaign and leadership PAC accounts, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). Dorgan has $4 million.

What will they do with this cash? Federal law says they must either return contributions, pay down campaign expenses, give the money to charity, or transfer to other candidates. They can also hold on to campaign funds for future use. Our own Luke Rosiak reported in 2008 for CRP on how many retiring lawmakers appear to use much of their accumulated cash to pay for meals and other entertainment.

The senators may also use their clout to help raise cash for Senate Democrats. Dorgan recently was one of several senators to lend his name as a draw for a December 14 fundraiser for Lee Fisher, who is running for Ohio’s Senate open seat.

See Dodd’s fundraisers here.

See Dorgan’s fundraisers here.

The snow is flying out west, where several lawmakers plan this week to fundraise while skiing:

• Rep. Ed Whitfield, Republican of Kentucky, will be welcoming donors to Vail on January 7-8; cost is $2,500 per PAC.
• Also in Vail on January 8 will be Democrat Rep. Diana Degette, for her annual fundraising event there. (Here’s last year’s invite.) She’s asking $5,000 per PAC, $2,400 per individual donor.
• In Park City, Utah this weekend is Republican Sen. Bob Bennett, who also hosts an annual ski fundraising event. He wants $5,000 for a “PAC sponsor,” $3,000 for a PAC, and $2,000 for an individual.

As the year draws to a close, we want to give a shout out to some of the journalists, bloggers, and advocacy groups that have done their own analyses of Party Time data this year to produce ground-breaking stories:

• “Few members of Congress are disclosing that lobbyists are helping them raise campaign cash despite a new law that was supposed to shed light on the ties between lawmakers and the capital’s influence brokers,” reported an Associated Press investigation published in September using Party Time data. Read the story here.
• Propublica produced this investigation in September showing how Sen. Saxby Chambliss uses his leadership PAC to fund golf outings, using our data and featuring a Party Time “widget” displaying leadership PAC parties.
• In July, the Washington Post used Party Time data to demonstrate how Blue Dog Democrats were feted by health care lobbyists while they were working on the health care reform bill.
• Public Citizen produced a report in August that showed lobbyists for Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) recipients had hosted fundraisers for lawmakers.
• The folks at LobbyData.com created a Google map mashup showing locations of fundraisers based on Party Time data, and reportedly are at work on an iPhone application.
• Back in March, American News Project journalist Harry Hanbury took on the daunting task of attempting to go to every single congressional fundraiser listed in the Party Time database for a single day. Check out the video here.
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Over the course of 2009–the first full calendar year that the Party Time website has been in existence–we’ve collected and posted more than 3,660 invitations to congressional fundraisers and parties. That’s an average of 10 for every day of the year, 70 per week, and more than 300 per month.

We don’t know what portion this represents of all the parties that occur. We do know it’s not all of them. For example, we’ve been successful in collecting weekly lists of parties from three out of four of political party committees–the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). However, despite repeated attempts to secure the information, we’re missing the roster from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). (We’ll keep trying.)

Nevertheless, Party Time represents the most robust collection of these invitations that have ever been collected and made available to the public in a database. So, with a big caveat that these totals reflect what we have in our data, which are incomplete, here’s what we saw in 2009.

1. Top Congressional Partiers. The members of Congress who have the most parties listed in our database are: 1. Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), with 35; 2. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), 34; 3. Rep. John Sullivan (R-OK), 33; 4. Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), with 30; and 5.  Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT), 29.

2. Will party for others. The lawmakers who appear most often on other candidates’ invitations as a draw for donors looks like a who’s who of the Congressional leadership: 1. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), with 47; 2. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), with 35; 3. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), with 32 (Cornyn is chairman of the NRSC); 4. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC), with 30; and 5. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), with 29.

3. Most generous hosts. The lobbyists whose names appear most often on our invitations as hosts are: 1. Dan Gans, Polaris Government Relations, with 29; 2. Jocelyn Hong (Twenty-First Century Group), with 22;  3. Tim Rupli, (Timothy R. Rupli & Associates) with 19 (Also check out all the party’s at Rupli’s Capitol Hill townhouse.); 4. Tony Podesta (Podesta Group), with 14; and Louis Dupart (Normandy Group), with 14. Keep in mind that the names of hosts in our database are not yet standardized, and with that work done, other lobbyists might rise to the top.

4. The month most partied: June. We’ve got 608 invitations to congressional fundraisers in June, the most of any month. The next runner up is March, with 529, and then September, with 446. Fundraising tends to peak in these months because they mark the end of a quarter. Candidates  want to report big numbers to the U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC) to intimidate any potential challengers.

5. Most popular partying spots. 1. Capitol Hill Club, 439; 2. Johnny’s Half Shell, 229; 3. National Democratic Club Townhouse, 159; 4. Charlie Palmer Steak, 147; and 5. Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar, 125. This list looks very similar to last year’s, showing that congressional partiers are creatures of habit. (And convenience–these locations are a hop, skip, or a jump away from their offices on Capitol Hill.)