Say hello to Color of Money:

Today Public Campaign launched it's new interactive website. It allows users to conduct their own research on campaign money, race/ethnicity, and income in their own communities, looking up information about their state, city, and zip code, as well as viewing color maps of the 25 top contributing metropolitan areas nationwide.

Along with the website, a 34 page study was released that shows a dramatic disparity between America's diverse population and the small number of people who finance political campaigns: nine out of ten dollars contributed by individuals to federal campaigns and parties (of contributions more than $200) in the 2000 and 2002 elections come from majority non-Hispanic white zip codes, yet nearly one out of three Americans is a person of color. Eighty-five percent of the campaign contributions studied were "hard money" contributions, untouched by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision Wednesday to hold up the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act ban on "soft money" contributed to political parties. A PDF version of the study can be downloaded from here.