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

Abstract

This article examines independent spending in state elections before and after the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC. We find that the decision did not have much of a direct effect on business spending, despite public expectations. Increases were higher in the aggregate in states that prohibited corporate spending before the decision. However, the major growth was not in the business or labor sectors, but in the network organiza- tions of political parties - and most particularly the national organizations of state elected and party officials. Contrary to some contemporary views, these developments cannot be understood as a displacement of within-state money from parties to interest groups. Instead, national party organizations were oper- ating across state lines, deciding whether to contribute to formal party com- mittees or their party allies as local circumstances might dictate. This complex movement of money belies any theorizing that would treat a decline in the pro- portional role of formal party spending as equivalent to a zero-sum increase in the non-party power of interest groups. Rather, we see the pattern of independ- ent spending as part of a larger story of change in American political parties. These changes now include vertically networked parties operating across levels of jurisdiction, alongside the horizontal networks receiving attention in recent scholarship.