Sarah was highly efficient.
She quickly assembled a small team of four volunteers.
They were all students from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, majoring in sociology, political science, or computer science.
Like Sarah, they believed in Leo's ideals and were disillusioned with the current political landscape in the United States.
This small "opposition research" group set up their temporary war room in an unused storage room at the community center.
They started with the money.
They downloaded all of Alex Cortes's public campaign finance records.
Then, they traced the source of every single donation.
But the results were disappointing.
Cortes's campaign funding sources were, just as he advertised, exceptionally clean.
He hadn't accepted any donations from corporate political action committees.
All his funds came from small individual donations.
