CA Cal-Access Campaign Finance Scraper

Search California's official campaign-finance and lobbying disclosure system, Cal-Access, run by the Secretary of State. Search any filer by name across every registry, browse filers alphabetically (or ballot measures by election), or look up a filer's full registration and financial-activity summary by filer ID. Covers committees, political parties, major donors, slate mailers, candidates & elected officials, individual lobbyists, lobbying firms, lobbyist employers, propositions & ballot measures, and persons/entities spending $5,000+ to influence legislation. No login required.

What this actor does

• Three modes: search (by name, across all entity types), browse (by entity type + letter + election cycle), detail (by filer ID)
• Seven entity types: committees, candidates, individual lobbyists, lobbying firms, lobbyist employers, propositions & ballot measures, and $5,000+ payments-to-influence filers
• Committee sub-type filter — narrow committees to major donors, political parties, small contributor committees, or slate mailers
• Election cycle — browse or look up any two-year legislative session back to 1999–2000, for every entity type
• Financial-activity summaries — reporting period, contributions/expenditures for the period, cumulative totals, and ending cash for committees and candidates' linked committees
• Ballot-measure campaign tracking — every committee formed to support or oppose a proposition, with its SUPPORT/OPPOSE position, grouped by election date
• $5,000+ payments-to-influence activity — quarterly lobbying-payment totals, P.U.C. lobbying totals, and the specific bills/agencies lobbied for persons who spend $5,000+ without employing a lobbyist or firm
• Discipline-relevant status — current registration status (active / terminated / in suspense) for every filer
• Lobbyist relationships — each lobbyist's registered employer(s)/firm(s), with effective and termination dates
• Lobbyist headshot photos — rehosted to a permanent, publicly accessible URL (the source image sits behind the same bot-protection as the rest of the site, so raw upstream links aren't directly reachable)
• Empty fields are omitted

Output per filer record

• name — registered filer name (or ballot-measure title)
• filerId — Cal-Access filer ID
• entityType — committees / candidates / lobbyists / lobbyingFirms / lobbyistEmployers / measures / paymentsToInfluence
• status — current registration status, e.g. ACTIVE, TERMINATED 12/31/2025, IN SUSPENSE
• committeeType — raw committee sub-type as listed by the source (browse mode, committees only)
• electionCycle — two-year session the record reflects (browse/detail modes)
• electionDate — specific election the ballot measure appeared on, e.g. NOVEMBER 5, 2024, GENERAL (browse mode, measures only)
• filerContact — registered phone/address (committees & candidates, detail mode)
• lastReportDate, reportingPeriod, contributionsThisPeriod, totalContributions, expendituresThisPeriod, totalExpenditures, endingCash — financial summary (committees, detail mode)
• committees[] — linked campaign committees with their own financial summaries (candidates, detail mode); for ballot measures, the committees formed to support/oppose it, each with filerId, name, and position (SUPPORT/OPPOSE)
• address, mailingAddress, registrationDate, ethicsCourseCompletionDate, responsibleOfficer — lobbying-entity registration details (lobbyists/firms/employers/paymentsToInfluence, detail mode)
• relationships[] — registered employer/firm relationships with effective/termination dates (lobbyists, detail mode)
• paymentsByQuarter[] — quarterly session, quarter, totalPaymentsToInfluence, and pucLobbying totals (paymentsToInfluence, detail mode)
• billsAndAgenciesLobbied[] — session, quarter, and billOrAgency lobbied that quarter (paymentsToInfluence, detail mode)
• photoUrl — permanent, publicly reachable headshot photo URL (lobbyists, detail mode, when the filer has one on file); photoUrlOriginal — the source Cal-Access URL for traceability
• sourceUrl — link to the filer's page on cal-access.sos.ca.gov
• recordType: "filer", scrapedAt

Invalid input (malformed filer ID, no matching filer) produces a recordType: "error" record instead, with error, message, and input fields.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search (by name) / browse (by entity type + letter) / detail (by filer ID)
searchQuery	string	Newsom	Filer name or fragment (mode=search)
entityType	string	committees	Registry to browse/look up (mode=browse / mode=detail)
committeeType	string	all	Narrow committees to a sub-type (mode=browse, entityType=committees)
letter	string	A	Starting letter, or Numeric (mode=browse)
electionCycle	string	2025	Two-year session, e.g. 2025 = 2025 through 2026 (mode=browse / mode=detail)
filerId	string	–	Exact Cal-Access filer ID (mode=detail)
proxyConfiguration	object	off	Optional Apify proxy; not required for normal use
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap on emitted records (1–500)

Example: search for a filer by name across all registries

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "Newsom",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: browse major-donor committees starting with "B"

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "entityType": "committees",
  "committeeType": "majorDonors",
  "letter": "B",
  "electionCycle": "2025",
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: browse candidates & elected officials starting with "B"

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "entityType": "candidates",
  "letter": "B",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: look up one committee's financial summary

{
  "mode": "detail",
  "entityType": "committees",
  "filerId": "1475408",
  "electionCycle": "2025"
}

Example: look up a lobbyist's registration and employer relationships

{
  "mode": "detail",
  "entityType": "lobbyists",
  "filerId": "1359080"
}

Use cases

• Political journalism — track who's funding committees and ballot-measure campaigns
• Compliance & opposition research — verify a committee, candidate, or lobbyist's current registration status
• Government transparency tools — feed a searchable public-records dashboard
• Academic research — bulk-collect California lobbying-registry entities by sector
• Due diligence — confirm a lobbying firm or employer's standing before engagement
• Campaign finance tracking — pull a candidate's linked committees and their contribution/expenditure totals

FAQ

What is Cal-Access? The California Secretary of State's public disclosure system for campaign-finance and lobbying activity, covering candidates, committees, political parties, major donors, slate mailers, lobbyists, lobbying firms, and lobbyist employers.

Do I need a login? No — Cal-Access is fully public. The actor uses a stealth browser session (no user credentials) to reach the same pages any visitor can see at cal-access.sos.ca.gov.

Why does search return fewer fields than detail? The name-search listing only carries name, entity type, and status. The richer financial-activity and registration fields live on each filer's own detail page — use mode=detail with the filerId from a search/browse result to pull them.

Why is maxItems capped relatively low? Cal-Access is protected by a bot-management layer that only tolerates genuine in-app browser navigation (not raw HTTP requests), so each record involves a real page load. Keeping runs modest keeps them fast and reliable; raise maxItems if you need more and don't mind a longer run.

Can I browse a specific historical election cycle? Yes — electionCycle supports every two-year session back to 1999–2000 for both browse and detail modes.

What if a run returns fewer records than maxItems? Cal-Access occasionally rate-limits automated traffic; the actor retries with backoff automatically. If a section is temporarily unavailable it reports this via the run's status message rather than failing silently.

Why does a candidate's record have a committees[] list instead of flat financial fields? A candidate can have multiple campaign committees across election cycles (e.g. a committee for each office they've run for), so their financial activity is reported per-committee rather than as one number.