Rep. Tony Cárdenas

Campaign finance

FEC data through Dec 31, 2024. Covering the 2024 two-year cycle only.

• FEC record H2CA28113 ↗ H · CA-28 Committees used: C00498873

Compare cycles

Each column is one cycle through its own coverage date. The active cycle is still accumulating activity; closed cycles are historical records. No percentage change is calculated between unequal reporting windows. Outside spending is separated from campaign activity because it was never received or controlled by the campaign.

The 2024 cycle at a glance

Where the money came from

These categories divide total receipts of $661,700 exactly once, so they add back up to the reported total.

Self-funding, loans, and cash

Reported factual values. They are not a judgement about how strong or healthy a campaign is.

Financial position

Cash, debt, refunds, loans, and transfers as reported through Dec 31, 2024 for the 2024 cycle. These are factual reported values, not a judgement about whether a campaign is healthy, viable, or strong. Independent expenditures are never added to or subtracted from any of them: that money was never the campaign's.

Calculated from the reported values

Each row below is arithmetic MyRepTracker performed on the values above. Where the FEC published the figure itself, the row says so and no calculation was made.

Change since the previous filing

Both columns come from committee C00498873, so the two periods are comparable. A change is the difference between what Q3 2024 reported and what YE 2024 reported, and the direction is stated in words rather than shown only as a sign. Q3 2024 reported through Sep 30, 2024 and YE 2024 through Dec 31, 2024.

Cash compared with one period's spending

Cash on hand of $45,909 set beside the $48,516 this campaign spent during YE 2024, through Dec 31, 2024, which is 0.9 times that period's spending. This is a ratio between two reported numbers over one named period. It is not a forecast of how long the money will last, and campaigns do not spend evenly across a cycle.

Outside spending

Independent expenditures are spending by other organizations that is not coordinated with the campaign. This money was never received or controlled by Tony Cárdenas. Supporting and opposing spending are kept apart rather than combined into one number, and neither is added to campaign receipts.

What the money was spent on

Political committees that contributed directly

Money received by the authorized campaign committee from PACs and other political committees. This is not outside spending.

This total will usually differ from the PAC figure in the summary above. The summary is what the campaign reported receiving in total; this ranking adds up the individual contributions that were itemized, which is a different record made at a different time. Neither is a correction of the other, and the gap is not an error in either one.

Who the committees behind this money were

Every committee here is placed by the registration it filed with the FEC for the 2024 cycle: its designation, its committee type, and the organizational form it reported. That is the FEC's own record and involves no judgement by MyRepTracker, so this covers every itemized dollar. A committee's registration can change between cycles, and each cycle is judged by its own.

What interests those committees advance

The FEC publishes no industry or interest field, so unlike the section above this one is a claim MyRepTracker makes. A committee is placed here only when there is a document behind the claim that a reader can open: its own statement of organization, its own published mission statement, or a named third party. Every assignment carries that document on the committee's own page. A committee's name is never evidence of anything.

Categorized is not the same as reviewed. Most of these sectors were assigned by machine from the committee's own filing rather than read by a person. Each committee's own page says which of the two its assignment is, and names the document behind it either way.

Coverage is partial on purpose, and the part that is not covered is shown at full size rather than left out. Leadership PACs, party committees, and other candidates' committees are excluded outright: their giving is an officeholder's or a party's decision, so no interest label describes it. Categories are taxonomy interest-1.7.

Filing periods · TONY CARDENAS FOR CONGRESS

Each row is one filing period as that committee reported it, not a running cycle total. Receipts, spending, and end-of-period cash are drawn on one shared scale, so no bar here uses a different axis from any other. Every row comes from the one filing in force for its period; the filing ledger below lists that filing and any earlier version it replaced.

Last-minute contributions reported before an election

In the days just before an election, a campaign must tell the FEC within 48 hours about any contribution or loan of $1,000 or more. These notices arrive faster than the regular reporting schedule, and the same money is reported again in the report covering those days. Nothing here is added to receipts: it is a preview of money the ordinary reports will carry, not money beside them.

Where the individual money was reported from

Contributions from individuals that the campaign itemized, grouped by the state each contributor gave as their address. Contributions of $200 or less in aggregate are not itemized and carry no address, so they are not here at all. These places account for $168,998 of the $170,679 this campaign reported from individuals and from transfers by its other authorized committees, across 148 itemized contributions.

Money from outside California is not money from outside the country, and neither figure is evidence that anything unlawful happened. People may contribute to campaigns in states they do not live in, and United States citizens living abroad may contribute at all.

What kind of place it came from

Places, largest first

Top 10 of 17 places shown as bars. Every place is in the table below.

• California this campaign's state $89,630
• District of Columbia $16,660
• New Jersey $15,400
• New York $10,475
• Texas $7,800
• Illinois $7,100
• Maryland $5,000
• Virginia $4,750
• Alabama $3,300
• Oklahoma $2,500

Contributions are transactions, not people: one contributor giving every month is counted once for each contribution. No contributor's name, address, employer, or occupation is stored or shown anywhere on this site.

How this compares

Compared with U.S. House campaigns in California, 2024 cycle: 139 campaigns with a complete Federal Election Commission record for the cycle, out of 140 on file. This is a position in that group, not a score, a grade, or a judgement about the campaign.

• 1 of the 140 campaigns on file for this cohort have no complete record for the cycle and are not counted in any figure here.

Every comparison is drawn from one two-year cycle and one office. Only campaigns whose FEC record for that cycle is complete are counted; the rest are reported beside the cohort and are never counted as zero. One authorized committee is counted once however many candidacies report it, so where a candidate's committees are all reported by another FEC record, that record supplies the figures for both. A campaign is never compared with another cycle, with a career total, or with a candidate for a different office.

The committees around this campaign

The Federal Election Commission links several kinds of committee to one candidate, and they are not interchangeable. An authorized campaign committee is the campaign. A joint fundraising committee raises money for several participants at once and passes each a share. A leadership PAC is controlled by the member and is not their campaign at all. Every row below is labelled with the designation the FEC itself filed, and none is inferred from a committee's name.

FEC candidate records

The FEC keys a candidate ID to one office, so a member who has run for more than one holds more than one ID. Each keeps its own committees and its own totals, and this product never merges them into a single record.

Committees the FEC links to those records

What the records show changing

Each row is something the FEC's own filings state, in the cycle they state it. The FEC's published files carry no registration or termination dates, so these are cycles rather than days, and every row links to the record it came from.

Transfers between committees

A transfer moves money that was already raised. When a joint fundraising committee sends a campaign its share, or a campaign shifts a balance between two of its own committees, the money was raised once and is being moved. It is never counted as money raised, here or in any total on this page.

Associated leadership PAC

Filings behind these figures

Every amount on this page was reported on a filing. These are those filings. 10 of 10 are in force for the 2024 cycle, and none has been replaced by a later version.

All 10 filings shown

Cycles 2022 through 2026

Every cycle stored for Tony Cárdenas is included, with no gaps between 2022 and 2026. This is not a lifetime total. Campaign finance here is keyed to the FEC records for the offices Tony Cárdenas has held, so money raised for an office they ran for and did not win is not part of it.

What these numbers mean

Receipts are not the same as contributions

Total receipts include everything the campaign took in, such as contributions, loans, and transfers. Contributions are only the money given by people and committees.

Direct contributions are not outside spending

A direct contribution is money received by the campaign's own authorized committee. An independent expenditure is money another organization spent on its own, without coordinating with the campaign. The Federal Election Commission treats these as different activities, and so does this page.

The organizations named here are political committees

Direct rankings count what one political committee gave to a campaign; outside-spending rankings count what a committee spent independently. A separate conduit section groups individual contributions only when the campaign's memo record supplies a registered conduit committee's FEC ID. It never attributes donors to employers or interest groups, and it never exposes contributor names. Sites using broader attribution rules may therefore report different organization totals.

A cycle may be only partly reported

Filings arrive throughout a two-year cycle. A current cycle shows only what has been filed and processed through the coverage date shown above, so it is not comparable with a finished cycle.

This view is cycle specific

It covers the 2024 two-year cycle only. Use the cycle links above to change it; the combined section further up covers several cycles at once.

Source: Federal Election Commission ↗. MyRepTracker ingests FEC records directly and does not add its own influence, risk, or corruption score.