Re-election Bid Research Articles

Lincoln's Rail-Splitter: Governor Richard J. Oglesby

Writing a biography of an individual who lived in a time dominated by a greater personality presents a difficult task for historians. The temptation is strong to use the more famous personality as a reference point for evaluating the significance of the lesser-known individual. Succumbing to the temptation, however, often restricts the historical insights that could otherwise have been gained. Mark A. Plummer's biography of Richard J. Oglesby, an Illinois politician whose career spanned the nineteenth century, is a case in point. The historical colossus of Abraham Lincoln casts such a giant shadow in Illinois that the temptation to judge Oglesby's significance by the degree of his interactions with Lincoln is difficult to resist. Plummer struggles valiantly to avoid this temptation. Unfortunately, he is not always successful, which detracts from this otherwise solid biography. Plummer is best when describing Oglesby's fascinating career, a career that reflected many of the currents of nineteenth-century America. Born in Kentucky, Oglesby migrated to Illinois in 1836. Casting about for employment before eventually settling upon law, Oglesby quickly joined the army at the outbreak of the Mexican War. In 1849, he joined the trek to the California goldfields, earning, losing, and earning again a small fortune. He returned to Illinois and speculated in land purchases. By the early 1850s, Oglesby was a successful lawyer, merchant, and speculator. A minor Whig politician, Oglesby made an easy transition into the Republican party, running for Congress in 1858 and for the Illinois senate in 1860. He was sent as a delegate to the Virginia Peace Convention in 1861 before accepting command of a regiment of Illinois volunteers. Oglesby led troops at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Corinth, where he was seriously wounded. Additionally, he helped rally the Union war effort in Illinois, recruited African American troops, and presided over courtmartial trials. Elected governor of Illinois in 1864, Oglesby supported the Radical Republicans and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Leaving office after one term, Oglesby decided to run again for governor in 1872 against the Liberal Republicans. Elected, he resigned to accept a seat in the U.S. Senate, where he waved the “bloody shirt,” supported President Ulysses S. Grant, and voted for inflated currency. Defeated in his Senate reelection bid in 1879, Oglesby left politics until he was elected governor for a third term in 1884, a time marked by widespread labor strikes and the Haymarket riot of 1886. He unsuccessfully attempted another run for the U.S. Senate in 1890 and ended his political career campaigning for William McKinley in 1896.

“Black Hawk” Down: Cynthia McKinney, America's War on Terror, and the Rise of Bushism

disturbing realities for black politics. First of all, McKinney's bid for re-election to a sixth term was largely trumped by the infusion of large amounts of money into Majette's campaign by Jewish Americans and other Israeli supporters from outside of her district many outside of Georgia altogether who saw her as unfriendly to Israel.1 This was clearly the result of McKinney's criticism of former New York Mayor Rudolph Guliani's refusal to accept money from an Arab dignitary following the September 11th Attacks and her subsequent vocal support of Palestinian independence and freedom from Israeli aggression. The shoring up of Majette's political war-chest by pro-Israeli individuals and interest groups motivated by a single, external issue not directly related to the problems and concerns in the candidates district has raised the ire of some black

Goin Is Members’ Choice To Be Next President-Elect

Goin Is Members’ Choice To Be Next President-Elect

Fear, Security and the Politics of Representing Asylum Seekers

Fear, Security and the Politics of Representing Asylum Seekers

Student Unionism and Sustaining Student Power

country’s most powerful political forces over the last seventy years. Although now forgotten by most historians, the first mass student strikes for free speech were launched in the 1930s. New Left activists revived the free speech movement in the early 1960s. By the end of that decade, students had helped advance desegregation, forced LBJ out of a reelection bid, and regained the power to shut down America’s universities with sit-ins and strikes. Today, American students are beginning to wield their power again, shutting down the 1999 WTO meeting, forcing private prison companies off campus, winning campus living wage policies, and making their schools “sweat-free.” However, as in the sixties, the student movement is having to rebuild itself from scratch. Each time the movement realizes its power, it fails to sustain it. Consequently, corporate America and other outside forces have diluted curriculum, pushed tuition hikes, and kept American higher education largely inaccessible to poor people and people of color. In recent years, we have even seen conservatives begin to roll back what token affirmative action programs exist in higher education. These problems have advanced in large part because students and faculty have been disempowered in university decision making. The student movement need not continue this way. The American student movement can sustain itself this time around with a new brand of student unionism that borrows the best aspects of the labor movement, past American student movements, and foreign student movements. Such unionism could open U.S. universities to the disenfranchised and make student power and campus democracy realities.

Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory

Lincoln has long dominated the pantheon of American presidents. From his lavish memorial in Washington and immortalization on Mount Rushmore, one might assume he was a national hero rather than a controversial president who came close to losing his 1864 bid for reelection. Drawing on a wide array of materials - painting and sculpture, popular magazines and school textbooks, newspaper accounts and oratory - Barry Schwartz aims at this sort of contradiction in his study of the role Lincoln's reputation and memory has played in American life. Schwartz explains, for example, how dramatic funeral rites elevated Lincoln's reputation even while funeral eulogists questioned his presidential actions and how his reputation, over the next four decades, diminished and grew. Schwartz links the vagaries of Lincoln's image to broad transformations of the nation, arguing that Lincoln's life symbolized America's development from a rural republic to an industrial democracy and articulated the roles of economic and political reform, military power and nationalism in the country's self-conception. Lincoln's memory assumed a double aspect of mirror and lamp, acting as a reflection of the nation's concerns and an illumination of its ideals, and Schwartz offers a fascinating view of these two functions as they were realized in the commemorative symbols of an ever-widening circle of ethnic, religious, political and regional communities. The first part of the study that will continue through the present, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory is the story of how America has shaped its past selectivey and imaginatively, but around a real person whose character and achievements symbolized his country's ideals.

The Presidency of George Bush

How could a president have won a war and lost an electon? For George Bush, being Commander in Chief during Desert Storm was not enough. Domestic issues, personality factors and the vagaries of the 1992 campaign confined his presidency to a single term. John Robert Greene helps us understand why. This history of George Bush's administration paints a portrait of a "positive moderate" whose acomplishments are often underrated. The book makes use of a range of literature on the forty-first president - including the Bush Papers at the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University - and draws on key interviews with members of his administration, and with George Bush himself. Greene sets Bush's presidency in the context of the Reagan years and reviews not only his foreign policy successes, notably the war with Iraq and an improved relationship with Russia, but also key domestic issues such as the economic recession, the much maligned "Read My Lips" tax hike, Clarence Thomas's controversial Supreme Court appointment, and the enactment of bills that protected the environment and improved the lives of disabled Americans. The author offers an analysis of Bush's bid for re-election, describing a campaign that saw conservatives abandoning Bush in droves while early signs of an economic upturn did little to defuse the Democrats' advantage. The book depicts the president as a man of patience and prudence, who placed great value on loyalty, and was better at managing crises than he was the day-to-day demands of the presidency. It portrays the sense of humour and love of the outdoors in a man often branded an elitist or a wimp, who was never able to ultimately manipulate his public image to his advantage. "The Presidency of George Bush" takes into account the many facets of the Bush administration, from the spirited optimism of a thousand points of light to the unsettling vagueness of "the vision thing", and shows us a man whose careful stewardship set the tone for post-Cold War foreign policy. As Greene notes, while Bush had his critics, it was on his watch that the Cold War ended and America re-asserted its military might.

The Electoral Effects of Incumbent Wealth

The absence of limits on own‐source campaign contributions is widely thought to give wealthy candidates an advantage in congressional elections. We employ a unique data set on the wealth of House incumbents running for reelection in 1992. We find that wealthy incumbents do not raise or spend more campaign funds and do not win greater vote shares in their reelection bids. Further, incumbent wealth does not deter high‐quality challengers.

The Making of the Ex‐Presidents, 1797–1993: Six Recurrent Models

Historians have long indulged in the exercise of categorizing U.S. presidents into groupings such as great, average, and failures. Given the expanded profiles now enjoyed by retired chief executives, it is perhaps time to subject ex-presidents to similar scrutiny and classification. To date, there have been forty-two presidents, counting the ever-pesky Grover Cleveland twice. Excluding the incumbents, the eight presidents who died in office, and James Polk and Chester Arthur (who lived too brief time after leaving office to considered here), thirty-one presidents remain for our study. Each can appropriately placed into one of the following six categories: Still Ambitious, Exhausted Volcanoes, Political Dabblers, First Citizens, Embracers of Cause, and Seekers of Vindication. This article first describes these categories and the ex-presidents included within them. It then concludes with some summary observations and assessments about the ex-presidency. Still Ambitious The Still Ambitious ex-presidents are those whose appetites for power remained unsated even after serving in the nation's highest political office. Surely, William Herndon's famous description of his law partner's ambition as a little engine that knew no rest(1) applies at least as much to the five ex-presidents in this group as it did to Abraham Lincoln. Few men have left the presidency with as much unfulfilled ambition as did Martin Van Buren. After suffering defeat in his 1840 reelection bid against William Henry Harrison, Van Buren retired to New York. He longed for comeback. As the 1844 Democratic Convention approached, Van Buren seemed the near certain nominee. Then, he and his Whig rival Henry Clay issued simultaneous letters opposing the immediate annexation of slaveholding Texas, ploy to keep this issue out of the upcoming campaign. The maneuver enraged southern Democrats and expansionists, and Van Buren lost the nomination to dark horse candidate Polk. Although Van Buren now claimed he was sincerely and heartily desirous to wear the honors and enjoyments of private life uninterruptedly to the end,(2) his ambition resurfaced in 1848, just as the slavery issue was intensifying sectionalist tensions. That year, his opposition to slavery and support of the Wilmot Proviso secured him the presidential nomination of the Free Soil party. Defeated yet again, Van Buren retired for good. He died in July 1862. After two scandal-ridden terms, Ulysses Grant should have retired from politics in 1877. But he missed the glory and acclaim of the presidency, and in 1880 he allowed his name to go before the Republican Convention. He led on the first thirty-five tallies but ultimately lost the nomination to James Garfield. More misfortune plagued Grant's final years. Bankrupt and diagnosed with terminal throat cancer, he hurriedly completed his memoirs to earn money for his wife. He died in July 1885. want you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, for I want to find everything just as it is now when we come back again. So instructed Frances Cleveland to White House servant as the First Lady and her husband, Grover, left to attend the inauguration of Benjamin Harrison, who had defeated Cleveland in 1888. We are coming back just four years from today,(3) Mrs. Cleveland promised. Her husband had won more popular votes than Harrison (but lost in the electoral college), he had been the only Democrat since the Civil War to win the presidency, and no one else of stature was available. Thus, Cleveland's renomination in 1892 was ensured, and this time he won, attaining an unprecedented second, nonconsecutive term. After winning the presidential election of 1904, Theodore Roosevelt pledged never to be candidate for or accept another nomination.(4) Later, he admitted that he would have willingly cut off his right hand not to have uttered that promise. …

Political Consultancy Overseas: The Internationalization of Campaign Consultancy

The work of campaign consultants in elections outside of their countries of origin is a relatively recent phenomenon. Joe Napolitan is credited as becoming the first international consultant in modern times when, in 1969, he worked on the successful reelection bid of Ferdinand Marcos. As recently as 1972, Napolitan wrote of a certain reticence in some countries toward using non-native campaign consultants A decade later, Larry Sabato (1981) saw evidence that use of non-native consultants was becoming a more accepted practice in campaigns worldwide. By the end of the 1990s, according to David Swanson and Paolo Mancini (1996), consultants from the U.S., Germany, France, and Britain were becoming increasingly active in elections outside their own countries. Since the use of non-native campaign consultants is likely to increase into the forseeable future, I would like to use this article to set forth the beginnings of a research agenda, to present an outline of a project worth pursuing, for determining how and why foreign consultants are being, can be, or should be used. The article has three parts. First, I present an overview, based on available evidence, of the nature of overseas work by campaign consultants. Second, I explore some possible explanations for the rise of this phenomenon. Third, I assess the main institutional factors affecting the internationalization of consultancy.

Feminism and Cultural Politics: Television Audiences and Hillary Rodham Clinton

Selling a first lady is like selling any product: You have to target your audience, narrowcast-and solidify that base market. -Pesman, "Getting Real: Hillary Clinton Is a Product With an Image Problem, So How Do You 'Sell' First Lady in the '96 Re-Election Bid?"

This Is Not a Matter of Gender Discrimination

In the multicandidate elections (cha'e xuanju) for the change-of-term election in a certain xiang (township) party committee, a woman party committee member in the original ranks lost in her bid for reelection mainly because of her lazy and unimpressive work. However, once the results of the election were publicized, it was as if a bomb had been detonated among the women comrades. Some blamed the superiors for not taking women seriously enough or for not having done work properly before the election; others blamed the xiang party congress for having failed to stipulate a ratio for the structure of the candidate slate as it gave direction and guidance to the election. As for the question of whether this particular comrade was able to meet the requirements and live up to the task of being a member of the party committee, few, if any, gave it much discussion.

Time series evidence on shirking in the U.S. House of Representatives

This paper presents time series evidence on the voting behavior of members of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1990. The empirical results indicate that voting behavior of individual congressmen is remarkably stable over time. We find no evidence of economically significant last term effects on voting behavior, nor are there important effects of legislative tenure on voting patterns. The most significant deviations in voting behavior occur for congressmen who failed to win their reelection bid, suggesting that sizable deviations from previous policy positions may result in swift retribution by constituents in the district.

Senate Incumbent Visibility over the Election Cycle

Candidate visibility has become a key variable in the study of congressional elections. There is ample evidence that visibility is a substantial advantage, one which almost always favors incumbents. In this paper I trace the visibility of members of the U.S. Senate between their bids for reelection and over their political careers. I find that there is a moderate drop off of visibility near the midpoint of a Senate term, and a fairly sizable rise in prominence in the two years leading up to a reelection bid. Yet, even in the middle of the term, incumbent senators remain quite salient in the minds of the public. Over an entire career, visibility cumulates for some perceptions and does not cumulate much for others. This differential accretion of visibility may have important consequences. Finally, I argue for the need to study perceptions of incumbents outside of the election period. The time of governing is at the center of a republican society, yet we have few studies of how governing is linked to public perceptions of incumbents.

Few surprises in Congressional elections

The surprising thing about last Tuesday's elections is that there were so few surprises. The anti-incumbent fever that was supposedly sweeping the country primarily affected the current occupant of the White House. Only three sitting Senators and about 15 Representatives lost their reelection bids. One of those was Congress' only Ph.D. scientist—Rep. Don Ritter (R.-Pa.). All committee chairmen were reelected, including Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D.-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space & Technology. That means the committee's yearlong reassessment of the federal research system (C&EN, Sept. 21, page 4) will go forward as planned. And Rep. John D. Dingell (D.-Mich.) of Energy & Commerce will still keep a watchful eye on the mores and morals of scientific research. The election also means that powerful committee chairmen and other Democratic Congressional leaders long used to setting their own agendas will have to relearn cooperation with the occupant of the White House. And ...

Formal versus Informal Incentive Structures and Legislator Behavior: Evidence from Costa Rica

This study investigates why legislators perform constituency service in a political system where such behavior would not be predicted because of a formal electoral structure that prohibits its reelection and chooses legislators through proportional representation. Research about constituency service in the U.S. Congress has found that it is the formal structure of the U.S. electoral system that induces this behavior. Members of Congress can be reelected and they perceive their own actions, not those of their party, as the primary determinant of whether they will win their reelection bid. In Costa Rica, however, parties have been able to capitalize on the limitations placed on legislator reelection and use it to their advantage for inducing representatives to engage in constituency service, a behavior desired by the parties. Because legislators cannot be reelected, if they want to pursue a further career in politics they must curry the favor of their party, which can help them get coveted appointive positions in the executive branch. Part of earning party favor is delivering constituency service and pork to their constituents.

The Electoral Consequences of Perquisite Use: The Casework Case

The belief is widespread that incumbents have enhanced their bid for reelection by using the perquisites of office skillfully. The evidence supporting this belief is mixed, however. This study begins by examining how a particular perquisite, casework, affects incumbent saliency and reputation among constituents. Within an appropriate research design, the study finds that an incumbent's ombudsman service creates a more positive evaluation of the incumbent and increases the incumbent's saliency among constituents. These results are incorporated into a model used to predict the electoral consequences of perquisite use. The model suggests that perquisites have most impact in constituencies in which a relatively small proportion of voters identify with incumbent's party.

Conduct and Belief: Public Employees' First Amendment Rights to Free Expression and Political Affiliation

Two lines of Supreme Court decisions define the extent to which the Constitution protects public employees' from dismissal for the exercise of their First Amendment rights.2 The first set of cases governs the employees' right to speak on matters of public concern; the second governs their right to political affiliation. However, the Court has not explained the relationship between these two approaches. a result, lower courts have had difficulty determining which line of precedent applies to a case in which both overt expression and political affiliation might have influenced an employee's firing. Consider, for example, the following hypothetical. Paula Partisan worked as a mid-level employee in the office of a city mayor. Last November, she supported her boss, Ida Incumbent, in Ida's re-election bid. During the campaign, a local newspaper accurately quoted Paula as saying: As a member of the Platypus Party of America, I support Ida Incumbent over Carl Despite Paula's opposition, Carl won in a landslide, and fired Paula in his very first official act as mayor. Believing that her First Amendment rights have been violated, Paula sues. How should the court approach her case? Either or both of the two lines of cases noted above might govern Partisan v Contender. The first line, beginning with Pickering v Board of Education,3 measures the extent of an employee's right

Presidents held hostage: The rhetoric of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan

Abstract Hostage crises have had negative effects on the last two presidents, crippling reelection bids and executive effectiveness. The public never forgave Jimmy Carter, but allowed Ronald Reagan to leave office the most popular president since Franklin Roosevelt. This analysis argues that presidential rhetoric is a key variable which explains the public's discrepant response. Recognizing the constraining effect of presidential rhetoric on future words and actions, this study posits that Carter's early rhetorical choices placed him in an untenable posture with the public, while Reagan's early choices allowed him sufficient flexibility to retain a successful image. The study concludes that Carter's rhetoric heightened the sense of crisis, associated him with repeated failures, intimated that he had no other solutions, and precluded traditional arguments for allaying public concern. Reagan's rhetoric discouraged public scrutiny, preserved argumentative options for diffusing public frustration, and maintai...

The Federalist Party and the Convention of 1800

In January 1801, after his unsuccessful bid for reelection, President John Adams reacted philosophically to the political fortunes of the Federalist party.1 He concluded that it “was composed of the most heterogeneous ingredients that were ever put together. Their object was different—their means different, their principles different.”2 Undoubtedly, Adams's assessment was based on his own experience. During his presidency he frequently did not receive support for his handling of Franco-American relations from other members of his party. Most Federalists also disapproved of the culmination of that policy—the Convention of 1800 (the Treaty of Mortefontaine), which ended the Quasi War with France. Historians have explored most aspects of Franco-American relations during the Adams administration, yet scant attention has been given to consideration of the Convention of 1800 by the Federalist-controlled Senate. Many surveys of the period and biographies of leading Federalists never mention the treaty's reception in the United States.3 Other authors discuss it only briefly. Usually, one of two alternative interpretations is advanced—Federalists in the Senate were united in opposition to the treaty or were divided between the High Federalists and more moderate members of the party.4