Independent Spending in State Elections, 2006–2010: Vertically Networked Political Parties Were the Real Story, Not Business

Hamm, Keith E.; Malbin, Michael J.; Kettler, Jaclyn J.; Glavin, Brendan

doi:10.1515/for-2014-5003

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Clearly, spenders' decisions about when to spend and when not to spend depend not just on the level of electoral competition, but also on the spenders' funding sources and their ultimate goals in the electoral process. These findings support the results in previous research (e.g., Hamm et al 2014), and indicate that groups are strategic in their IEs based on levels of partisan competition. They rationally increase their spending on IEs when the money may affect the outcome, whether in an individual race or in the battle for majority control.…”

Section: Analysis and Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

Assessing Group Incentives, Independent Spending, and Campaign Finance Law by Comparing the States

Hunt

Kettler

Malbin

et al. 2020

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

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Independent expenditures (IEs) in U.S. elections have increased substantially at nearly all levels of government over the past decade, but judicial decisions are only a partial explanation for this growth. Using a descriptive difference-indifferences approach, we show that the growth has been uneven across types of elections and spenders under different legal regimes. This finding highlights the importance of disaggregating spenders, elections, and laws in order to explain IEs more fully. This article analyzes IEs in state gubernatorial and legislative elections from 2006 through 2018 across states with differing campaign finance laws and political contexts. It uses an original and detailed classification of spenders, along with data on IEs from the National Institute on Money in Politics, the Campaign Finance Institute's historical database of state campaign finance laws, and other sources. The legal variations on which the article focuses are the various states' laws limiting contributions to candidates and political parties. It concentrates on these because of an oft-stated expectation that removing contribution limits will sharply reduce the level of IEs. In addition to contribution limits, we also assess partisan competition as a primary explanation for the level of IEs in various states, and across the sectors of spenders. We find, using multi-variate analysis, that increased partisan competition (at both the candidate level and chamber level) is in most cases a significant driver of IEs. In contrast, the associations between IEs and contribution limits are inconsistent and generally not significant. Importantly for ongoing policy debates, ideological and issue-driven spending appears to have weak association (or none) with contribution limits. Therefore, if the recent increase in IEs is in fact a normative problem, the solution may be more elusive than once thought.

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Section: Analysis and Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

Assessing Group Incentives, Independent Spending, and Campaign Finance Law by Comparing the States

Hunt

Kettler

Malbin

et al. 2020

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A related problem is that the state party organization loses power to national issue groups that have the wherewithal to raise money from national constituencies. Recent research shows that partisan groups organized at the national level are using IEs to influence the outcome of state-level races (Hamm et al 2014). These groups do not necessarily work with local parties and groups the way state parties do.…”

Section: National Groups Displace the Role Of State Partiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Campaign Finance and Political Polarization

Raja¹,

Schaffner²

2015

153

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Efforts to reform the U.S. campaign finance system typically focus on the corrupting influence of large contributions. Yet, as Raymond J. La Raja and Brian F. Schaffner argue, reforms aimed at cutting the flow of money into politics have unintentionally favored candidates with extreme ideological agendas and, consequently, fostered political polarization. Drawing on data from 50 states and the U.S. Congress over 20 years, La Raja and Schaffner reveal that current rules allow wealthy ideological groups and donors to dominate the financing of political campaigns. In order to attract funding, candidates take uncompromising positions on key issues and, if elected, take their partisan views into the legislature. As a remedy, the authors propose that additional campaign money be channeled through party organizations—rather than directly to candidates—because these organizations tend to be less ideological than the activists who now provide the lion’s share of money to political candidates. Shifting campaign finance to parties would ease polarization by reducing the influence of “purist” donors with their rigid policy stances. La Raja and Schaffner conclude the book with policy recommendations for campaign finance in the United States. They are among the few non-libertarians who argue that less regulation, particularly for political parties, may in fact improve the democratic process.

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“…Or does the additional campaign spending come from elsewhere, crowding out groups that used to hire former legislators? There is some evidence that the latter was true in the case of Citizens United (Hansen et al, 2015), but the lack of transparency for independent campaign expenditures (Hamm et al, 2014) means a systematic study is difficult. Future research could instead analyze the effect of state-level changes that regulate direct , and therefore disclosed, campaign contributions on the revolving door.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the federal level, it grew by almost 600 percent from 2008 to 2012 (Hansen et al, 2015). At the state level, independent spending increased to a greater degree in states that were affected by the ruling than in states that were not, indicating that the old limits were binding (Spencer and Wood, 2014;Hamm et al, 2014;Abdul-Razzak et al, 2018). 4 A second finding is that this injection of money affected election outcomes.…”

Section: Effects Of Citizens United On Campaign Spending and Electionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Campaign finance legislation and the supply-side of the revolving door

Weschle

2019

PSRM

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Existing research on the revolving door examines why employers hire former politicians. I complement this demand-side approach by demonstrating the importance of the supply-side. In particular, I argue that one important institutional factor that shapes politicians' willingness to leave office for a private sector job is campaign finance legislation. Less restrictive rules increase campaign spending for incumbents, which makes revolving door employment less attractive. Empirically, I use novel data from the US states and a difference-in-differences design to show that the exogenous removal of campaign finance legislation through Citizens United reduced the probability that incumbents left office to work as lobbyists. The supply-side approach provides insights into comparative differences in the prevalence of the revolving door.

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Independent Spending in State Elections, 2006–2010: Vertically Networked Political Parties Were the Real Story, Not Business

Cited by 7 publications

References 4 publications

Assessing Group Incentives, Independent Spending, and Campaign Finance Law by Comparing the States

Assessing Group Incentives, Independent Spending, and Campaign Finance Law by Comparing the States

Campaign Finance and Political Polarization

Campaign finance legislation and the supply-side of the revolving door

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