Openfec MCP Server

@cyanheads/openfec-mcp-server Access FEC campaign finance data on candidates, money trails, and election filings via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP. 12 Tools • 5 FEC Resource Templates • 2 Prompts • 1 Skill

Public Hosted Server: https://openfec.caseyjhand.com/mcp

Overview

US federal campaign finance data from the FEC's OpenFEC API. Search candidates, committees, and filings, trace contributions (Schedule A), disbursements (Schedule B), and independent and coordinated party expenditures (Schedules E/F), and look up election races, legal documents, and filing deadlines.

Tools

Resources

The same data is reachable through openfec_search_candidates, openfec_search_committees, and openfec_lookup_elections for tool-only clients.

The openfec-guide skill covers campaign-finance investigations, historical committee attribution, and coverage checks. MCP clients can read it at skill://openfec-guide/SKILL.md.

Prompts

Capability reference

openfec_search_candidates tool

• query name search filtered by state, district, office, party, cycle, election_year, incumbent_challenge, candidate_status, and has_raised_funds, up to 100 per page; or a candidate_id lookup (H/S/P + eight letters or digits) returning one full record
• include_totals (default on for an ID lookup) adds per-cycle totals rows and caps a search page at 35 candidates when cycle or election_year scopes the totals, 5 when they span every cycle; candidates the totals fetch didn't reach are listed in missing_totals
• Typed errors: candidate_not_found, inputs_not_applicable_to_id_lookup

openfec_search_committees tool

• query name search filtered by candidate_id, state, party, committee_type, designation, cycle, and treasurer_name, up to 100 per page; or a committee_id lookup (C + eight digits)
• Typed errors: committee_not_found, inputs_not_applicable_to_id_lookup

openfec_get_committee_totals tool

• mode: "single" (default) takes a committee_id and returns one row per two-year cycle; mode: "by_entity_type" ranks every committee of one entity_type (presidential, pac, party, pac-party, house-senate, ie-only), filterable by state, type, designation, organization type, and receipts/disbursements bounds; up to 100 per page
• Rows carry receipts, disbursements, cash on hand, debts, and the itemized/unitemized split; the output mode says whether rows are cycles or committees
• Typed errors: committee_id_required_for_single_mode, entity_type_required_for_group_mode, committee_totals_not_found

openfec_search_contributions tool

• itemized (default) needs a committee_id and filters by contributor name, employer, occupation, city, state, ZIP, date and amount ranges, and is_individual, 30 rows per page; by_size / by_state take a committee_id or candidate_id, by_employer / by_occupation a committee_id
• The output mode becomes by_size_candidate or by_state_candidate when scoped by candidate, a different row shape; itemized responses carry next_cursor, count, and count_is_approximate
• Typed errors: itemized_requires_committee_id, aggregate_requires_committee_id

openfec_search_disbursements tool

• committee_id required in every mode: itemized (default; recipient name, state, city, and committee ID, description, purpose category, date and amount ranges, 30 rows per page), by_purpose, by_recipient, by_recipient_id
• Itemized responses carry next_cursor, count, and count_is_approximate; aggregate modes page by number

openfec_search_expenditures tool

• itemized (default) filters by committee, candidate, support_oppose, payee, targeted office/state/district, party, is_notice (24/48-hour notices), dates, and amounts; most_recent defaults to true; 60 rows per page when scoped by committee_id, 30 otherwise
• by_candidate totals need a candidate_id or a full race scope (candidate_office=P alone, S plus candidate_office_state, H plus state and candidate_office_district), or fail as by_candidate_requires_scope

openfec_search_coordinated_expenditures tool

• Scope by spending party committee_id, benefiting candidate_id, cycle, payee, dates, and amounts; unscoped queries span all years
• Page-based, 80 rows per page when scoped by committee_id and 25 otherwise; rows carry subordinate_committee_id, the committee the spending is attributed to

openfec_search_filings tool

• Filters: committee_id, candidate_id, filer_name, form_type (F3, F3P, F3X, F24, F1, F2, F5), report_type, report_year, cycle, is_amended, and receipt date range; 65 rows per page
• most_recent defaults to true, hiding superseded amendments; rows carry form and report type, financial totals, and pdf_url

openfec_lookup_elections tool

• office and an even cycle are required; Senate also needs state and House state plus district, unless a zip scopes a search
• mode: "search" (default) returns the race's candidates with totals and candidate_pcc_id / candidate_pcc_name, that cycle's principal campaign committee; mode: "summary" returns one aggregate race row
• Typed errors: cycle_must_be_even, missing_state_for_office, missing_district_for_house, summary_does_not_support_zip

openfec_search_legal tool

• type (advisory_opinions, murs, adrs, admin_fines, statutes), query, ao_number, case_number, respondent, citations, penalty bounds, or dates; at least one is required (missing_filter), and a date bound needs type plus a date_kind that type records
• Citations, penalty bounds, respondent, ao_number, and case_number each filter only some types; one sent with a type it doesn't filter fails as filter_not_valid_for_type, and with type omitted the search returns only the types they all apply to, with a total over those types. On MURs and ADRs a citation can't be combined with case_number, respondent, a penalty bound, or an open/close date bound, which upstream would ignore; the two citation fields together match either one
• Citations take the form upstream parses — 52 U.S.C. 30104 or 11 CFR 110.1 (USC, C.F.R., §, and suffixes like 30104(g) are fine); a bare 30106 or 110.1 fails as invalid_citation instead of silently returning unfiltered results. One citation per field: upstream applies only the first citation in a value, so 52 U.S.C. 30104, 52 U.S.C. 30118 fails the same way
• Offset paging via from_hit / hits_returned, up to 200 per type within a 10,000-result window
• Results are trimmed: documents becomes document_count and document_categories, dispositions becomes disposition_count and disposition_categories, highlights stop at 3 with their match markup removed and render one per line, and commission_votes shrink to a date and a 200-character action; openfec_get_legal_document returns the full record
• Each response stays under 100,000 bytes: whole results are admitted one type at a time until the next would not fit, and a page that held some back reports truncated, shown, and nextFromHit — the from_hit that continues each type, passed