And there you go. You start to understand how political influence works in California. We actually wrote a special report about it. Until next time...

So the CAA takes contributions from landlords, and then directs that money to local & state pols. It's a kind of shell game.

The pols, in other words, aren't really taking money from the CAA. They're taking money from all the landlords that first delivered cash to the CAA.

Then you'll see those contributions, such as $9,100 from a corporate landlord called Sequoia Equities.

You can also click on "Contributions Received," meaning contributions from landlords and other real estate entities to the CAA.

You can look for campaign contributions made, received, etc. Just click on the circle that comes before the item you want to search.

You can look for different years that campaign contributions were made, etc. Here's an example.

You'll then see this.

Third, type who you want to search. In this case, the California Apartment Association Political Action Committee, which is one of four PACs operated by the CAA.

You'll see these results.

Click on the bottom result.

Second, use the Cal-Access Search engine in the upper left-hand corner. (We're doing this on a laptop.)

First, go to Cal-Access at the CA Secretary of State website. cal-access.sos.ca.gov/default.aspx