Money and rhetoric: Energy sector dynamics in U.S. Senate committee

Abstract

The sequencing of the relationship between campaign contributions and legislative rhetoric is categorized by competing theories as being driven by lags, leads, and contemporaneous effects. We study the committee level dynamics between energy sector donations and legislative rhetoric in the U.S. Senate. Conditioning on party and Senate class, we find evidence for complex interactions that are characterized by a combination of various temporal responses. Individual dynamics — electoral vulnerability, geographical differences and the state-specific importance of the sector — lead to stronger connections between campaign contributions and rhetoric.