Gubernatorial Candidates Research Articles

Assessing the Impact of Campaign Spending in Governors' Races

In this article, I explore the influence of candidate expenditures on gubernatorial election outcomes (a heretofore largely ignored topic). I find that spending by gubernatorial contestants dramatically influences the outcomes of these races, matching or even out-performing previously studied predictors of gubernatorial election outcomes. I then deal with two issues. First, I explore possible explanations of candidate expenditures in these contests and find that, among other things, out-party candidates are especially sensitive to spending limits, raising the normative concern that these limits insulate in-party candidates from competition. Second, I explore the possible endogeneity of candidate spending using a two-stage least squares, instrumental variables model. I find that once we account for this endogeneity, the relatively vulnerable position of out-\party candidates becomes more acute. These findings expand our understanding of governors' races to include spending effects and emphasize the importance of aggregate-level factors in these contests. According to Jesse Unruh, money is the mother's of politics. Nowhere is this statement more true than in the electoral process. Money has the potential to dramatically condition the flow of information in campaigns, and clearly has the potential to influence election outcomes. Not surprisingly, then, students of electoral behavior have focused on the impact of spending in a variety of electoral contexts, particularly congressional elections (Glantz, Abramowitz, and Burkhart 1976; Jacobson 1976, 1978, 1980, 1987, 1990; Copeland and Patterson 1978; Silberman 1978; Abramowitz and Segal 1986; Abramowitz 1988; Green and Krasno 1988; Thomas 1989; Green and Krasno 1990; Abramowitz 1991; Kenny and McBurnett 1992; Kenny and McBurnett 1994; Krasno, Green, and Cowden 1994; Epstein and Zemsky 1995; Box-Steffensmeier 1996; Gerber 1998), but also state legislative contests (Breaux and Gierzynski 1991; Gierzynski and Breaux 1991; Hogan 1997; Thompson and Moncrief 1998; Hogan 1999), and statewide initiatives and referenda (Owens and Wade 1986; Hadwiger 1992; Bowler and Donovan 1998). Virtually overlooked in these studies of money in various electoral arenas are elections for state governor.1 This oversight is unfortunate for a variety of reasons. To begin, given the importance attributed to campaign resources by politicians, pundits, as well as political scientists, one would hope that our scholarly assessment of this mother's milk comes from as broad an understanding of American elections as possible.2 For those scholars interested more specifically in gubernatorial elections, past inattention to campaign expenditures may amount to a serious mis-specification of previous models of election outcomes in these races. Elections for public office are, as pointed out by Key (1966), interactions between the public and potential elected officials. Nevertheless, for the most part, studies of gubernatorial elections have focused primarily on the behavior of voters in these races, to the exclusion of candidate actions and behavior (Turett 1971; Piereson 1975; Bibby 1983; Cohen 1983; Eismeier 1983; Kenney 1983; Kenney and Rice 1984; Peltzman 1987; Chubb 1988; Tompkins 1988; Simon 1989; Stein 1990; Simon, Ostrom, and Marra 1991; Kone and Winters 1993; Atkeson and Partin 1995; Leyden and Borrelli 1995; Partin 1995; Svoboda 1995; Atkeson and Partin 1998; Carsey and Wright 1998; Lowry, Alt, and Ferree 1998).3 While much work certainly remains to be done in understanding individual-level voting behavior in gubernatorial races, a largely unfilled field of inquiry deals with the actions and activity of candidates in these contests. In comparison with the congressional elections literature, for example, we have little understanding of strategic considerations by gubernatorial candidates (Jacobson and Kernell 1981; Bianco 1984; Born 1986; Wilcox 1987; Krasno and Green 1988; Fowler and McClure 1989; Jacobson 1989; Squire 1991; Kazee 1994; Krasno 1994; Lublin 1994; Epstein and Zemsky 1995; McCurley and Mondak 1995; Box-Steffensmeier 1996; Adams and Squire 1997). …

Introduction: Elections and Education-A Question of Influence

IN RECENT YEARS, the public school has been the backdrop of choice for elections. We have seen presidential candidates perched on small plastic chairs reading to kindergartners, gubernatorial candidates presiding over town hall meetings in high school gymnasiums, and mayoral or school board candidates holding court over pizza in the middle-school cafeteria. It is hard to recall a time in recent history when there were more “education” candidates or when education issues played a more central role in our electoral processes. During the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, now-president George W. Bush visited more than 100 schools from Newark, New Jersey, to Mission Viejo, California. And although former vice president Al Gore made fewer such visits, he spent a substantial portion of time teaching civics lessons, eating in cafeterias, and sleeping at teachers’ houses. Each of these visits provided the candidates the opportunity to highlight their proposed education policies and claim themselves the next “education president.” As commentator Peter Schrag has stated, “You are not a serious candidate these days without an education policy” (Teacher, November/December 2000, p. 21). In addition to the proliferation of the education candidate, we have seen a record number of school-related citizen initiatives on electoral ballots. Twenty-four states have the citizen initiative, with Arizona, California, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington using it fairly extensively. At least 20 of the more than 70 citizen initiatives on state ballots in the past year targeted educational change. In Oregon, for example, 18 citizen initiatives appeared on the November 2000 ballot. Three initiatives promised to cut taxes and cap spend-

A New Message: Compassionate Conservatism, African Americans, and the Republican Party

In 1997 and 1998, several Republican gubernatorial candidates in the South put forth a new message of “compassionate conservatism” on the campaign trail. This paper examines two of those campaigns in great detail by using interviews with political actors and analysis, content analysis of the states newspapers, and exit poll data. I show how two Republicans have attempted to win Black support: by building a relationship of trust in the Black community, stressing their religious background, and proposing a few programs that would provide African Americans some economic support. While the majority of African Americans are likely to continue voting for Democrats, Republicans do have the potential to significantly alter Democratic coalitions. I conclude that Republican appeals to Black voters will force Democrats to pay greater attention to African Americans which, in turn, will make the parties more responsive to Blacks.

Competing Interest Groups and Union Members' Voting

Objective. This study is designed to assess the impact of support for union and social interest groups on labor union members' voting. Methods. Descriptive and logit analyses of members' support for senatorial and gubernatorial candidates in the 1994 Pennsylvania elections examine the relationship between support for the union and support for the Christian Coalition and National Rifle Association. Results. The results indicate that union members who are more supportive of labor's political goals are more likely to support union‐endorsed candidates. But union members differ considerably in their support for union political goals vis‐a‐vis the Christian Coalition and National Rifle Association. Conclusions. Unions were a potentially pivotal force in the 1994 Pennsylvania elections. If they had been better able to educate their members about the importance of voting their economic self‐interest, then the election outcomes might have been reversed.

The Working Families Party Strategy in New York State

In November 1998, the Working Families Party, organized with significant support from a number of unions, gained ballot access as an independent party in New York State by polling over 50,000 votes for its gubernatorial candidate. The party, formed to challenge the Democratic Party's unresponsiveness to working people, seeks to organize members and voters on a grass-roots basis. The goal is to shift the political debate to address economically populist issues too often neglected by the Democratic Party, including raising the minimum wage, passing living-wage ordinances, and improving workers' compensation.

Fiscal Policy Outcomes and Electoral Accountability in American States

Clear fiscal policy effects appear in American state gubernatorial and legislative elections between 1968 and 1992, independent of the effects of incumbency, coattails, term limits, and macroeconomic conditions. The results show that accountability is generally stronger following a period of unified party control than under divided government. Voter reactions to taxes and spending relative to the state economy are conditional on expectations, which differ for each party. Net of these expectations, Republican gubernatorial candidates lose votes if their party is responsible for unanticipated increases in the size of the state budget; Democrats do not and, indeed, may be rewarded for small increases. Independent of this, the incumbent governor's party is punished in legislative elections for failing to maintain fiscal balance. Taken together, these results show how electoral accountability for fiscal policy outcomes is strong but highly contingent on a complex configuration of party labels, partisan control, expectations, and institutions.

Economic and Referendum Voting and the Problem of Data Choice: A Reply

Previously (Atkeson and Partin 1995), we proposed and found evidence that federalism permeates vote choice in subpresidential elections, making gubernatorial candidates subject to state-level forces and making senatorial candidates subject to national-level forces. Carsey and Wright, in replicating and cross-validating our earlier analyses, raise some valid concerns.' While we remain confident in our original argument and conclusions, we join with Carsey and Wright in concluding that choice and quality of data are far more critical problems than many of us recognize.

On the Coattails of a Contract: RNC Activities and Republican Gains in the 1994 State Legislative Elections

In 1994, the Republican party initiated an unprecedented effort by a modem American political party to coordinate issues in subnational cam paigns. They made a concerted effort to persuade state Republican party leaders to adopt electoral contracts similar to the "Republican Contract with America," reflecting basic Republican values, but tailored to the par ticular needs of each state. About half of the states holding elections in 1994 responded by developing such documents. The purpose of this study is to determine if these contracts had coattails in the midterm state legis lative elections similar to those generally provided by popular presiden tial or gubernatorial candidates during their elections. The results indicate that many Republican state legislative candidates may indeed have rid den their electoral contracts to historic seat gains, even controlling for such traditional predictors as presidential popularity, economic evalua tion, variations in voter turnout and partisan financial support. These results suggest that politicians might reconsider how they have tradition ally conducted legislative campaigns and to scholars that they reevaluate how they study them.

Black Politics and Black Political Behavior: A Linkage Analysis

Illustrations Foreword: The African-American Church and Political Behavior by Roosevelt Green, Jr. Preface Prologue: Michael Dooley by Frank D. Williams Introduction: Black Politics During the Era of Presidents Reagan and Bush by Kenneth A. Jordan and Modibo M. Kadalie The Theoretical Linkages The Nature of Black Politics and Black Political Behavior by Hanes Walton, Jr. The Study of Black Politics: Notes on Rethinking the Paradigm by Rickey Hill Black Southern Politics: The Influences of Bunche, Martin, and Key by Hanes Walton, Jr. The National Linkages Black Political Parties and Congress: The Role of the Congressional Record by Hanes Walton, Jr. The Jesse Jackson Campaign and the Institutionalization of Grass-Roots Politics: A Comparative Perspective by Leslie B. McLemore and Mary D. Coleman Black Rural Medicine: Dr. Elijah Washington and a Black Health Policy by Hanes Walton, Jr. The State-Contextual Linkages The Black Elected Elites in Mississippi: The Post-Civil Rights Apportionment Era by Mary D. Coleman Black Politics in Tidewater, Virginia by Elsie M. Barnes and Ronald E. Proctor Symbolic Politics: Mel King--The Mayoral Candidate in Boston by Toni-Michelle C. Travis Black Voting Behavior in the Segregation Era: 1944-1964 by Hanes Walton, Jr. The Procedural Linkages The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus and the Office of the Governor: 1975-1985 by Robert A. Holmes State Legislative Black Caucus Influence on Legislative Policy Agendas: Continuities and Variations in North Carolina by Cheryl M. Miller The Political Use of Absentee Ballots in a Rural Black-Belt County: Dr. Merolyn Stewart-Gaulden's Election Campaign for Taliaferro County School Superintendent Position by Hanes Walton, Jr. Black Political Recall and Black Politics: A Case Study by Marion Orr The Gender Linkages Black Women in Politics: A Research Note by Shiela F. Harmon-Martin The Political Behavior of Black Women: Contextual, Structural, and Psychological Factors by Saundra C. Ardrey The First Black Female Gubernatorial Candidate in Georgia: State Representative Mildred Glover by Hanes Walton, Jr. and Johnny Campbell, Jr. Black Female Presidential Candidates: Bass, Mitchell, Chisholm, Wright, Reid, Davis, and Fulani by Hanes Walton, Jr. An Enduring Linkage Black Southern Politics: A Look at the Tradition and the Future by Hanes Walton, Jr. and Daniel Brantley Endnotes Bibliography Index

Tough daisies: Kansas humor from "The Lane County Bachelor" to Bob Dole

By reputation, Kansas isn't the funniest place on earth. But it has its share of humor. It can boast of politicians who taunted puritan farmers with raise less corn and more hell, a gubernatorial candidate whose claim to fame was perfecting and marketing a goat-gland transplant for men desperate to restore their sexual vigor, and a legendary attorney general who covertly flew the friendly skies of Kansas in hot pursuit of illegal liquor consumption on passenger planes. In Tough Daisies, Robert Haywood reveals the lighter side of a state that's too often pegged a collection of sober-minded moralists struggling to find Utopia among the stars. He explores what has passed for humor in good times and bad and divulges what makes Kansans laugh. Both the subject of laughter (the inspiration) and the humorist (the inspired) are featured in this serious study (most of the time) of a funny subject. An annotated sampler of jokes, stories, cartoons, and poems, this book illustrates what Kansans have chuckled and chortled at from settlement days to the present. Especially rich veins of humor are found in the frontier experience, the Great Depression, Populism, and politics. Investigating an array of rib-tickling facets of Kansas life, Haywood also illuminates the wit, sarcasm, and satire generated by grasshoppers, flat land, farmers and their daughters, war, bootleggers, school teachers, preachers, droughts, tornadoes and Toto too.

Effects of Gender Schematic Processing on the Reception of Political Commercials for Men and Women Candidates

The article tests hypotheses from gender schema theory (Bem, 1981) in the context of political television commercials for men and women gubernatorial candidates. Subjects viewed authentic commercials for three pairs of candidates, each pair comprising a man and a woman candidate competing for office. The experimental design varied the tone of the commercials (positive, negative, neutral) in addition to candidate gender. Findings included enhanced recall of ad information from content domains of family and appearance in the case of women as opposed to men candidates, and enhanced recall from the domain of campaign activities in the case of men as opposed to women candidates. Men's attack ads on women elicited greater emotional reaction than women's attacks on men.

The Role of Party in Nominating Gubernatorial Candidates

There are seven states in which preprimary endorsements are provided by law, mostly ones that have used them for twenty years or more. and five other states where the rules of one or both parties provide for endorsements. States with legal endorsements continue to have relatively few contested primaries. But there has been a substantial decline, from over three-fourths to less than half, in the proportion of gubernatorial endorsees who win contested primaries (in states with either legal or informal endorsements). Endorsements are less successful if the convention represents too narrow a political or ideological base and the primary winner can appeal to a broader constituency.

Does Gender Make a Difference? An Experimental Examination of Sex Stereotypes and Press Patterns in Statewide Campaigns

Do gender differences in news coverage and the candidates' sex influence people's perceptions of gubernatorial and senatorial candidates? To investigate this question, I conducted a series of experiments in which I manipulated both the type of coverage a candidate received and the candidate's sex. The results of these experiments suggest that people's perceptions of male and female candidates are influenced by patterns of news coverage and by people's sex stereotypes. Yet the impact of these two factors is different for incumbents and challengers and for gubernatorial and senatorial candidates. I find, for example, that gender differences in press coverage are more dramatic in Senate races and especially for Senate incumbents. These differences in coverage patterns lead to important disadvantages for female senatorial candidates. Sex stereotypes, on the other hand, always produce more positive evaluations of women candidates. These sex stereotypes are most prevalent for governors and lead to promising advantages in people's perceptions of female gubernatorial candidates.

How They Killed Upton Sinclair

On August 28, 1934, Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle and forty-six other books, won the Democratic primary for governor of California, defeating the favored gubernatorial candidate of the party regulars, George Creel, by 150,000 votes and accumulating a larger vote total than his eight competitors combined. He had campaigned on a program to End Poverty in California-dubbed EPIC-at the core of which was the premise that the great number of California farms and factories that lay idle in the Depression had failed because they were devoted to for profit. Sinclair proposed to integrate the farms and factories into a system of colonies committed to what he called production for use; the unemployed would consume what they produced, and any surplus in one colony would be exchanged for surplus goods from others. The rest of the EPIC program comprised a medley of redistributive measures, including a progressive income tax, steeper inheritance taxes, property tax exemptions for owner-occupied homes and farms valued at less than three thousand dollars, and a pension of fifty dollars a month for, among others, all needy people over sixty who had resided in the state at least three years. With some half a million Californians unemployed, the EPIC idea had spread like fire in the chaparral, and nearly fifty EPIC-backed candidates had won Democratic party nomination for seats in the state senate and assembly. Sinclair's primary victory stunned much of the state's political establishment and sent a shiver through its body politic. Although Republicans had won every governor's race in California since 1899, the number of registered Democrats there had been rapidly overtaking the number of registered Republicans and, not least because of EPIC enthusiasts, the Democratic party rolls had swelled by 350,000 in the first six months of 1934 alone. Some 25,000 more votes had been cast in the Democratic primary than in the Republican one. Moreover, Republican votes were expected to go in the general election

Under Grand Haven's White Sheets

When the Ku Klux Klan began recruiting in Grand Haven in the fall of 1923, the editor of the Tribune observed that the klansmen's identities were matter of deep mystery.1 The Klan was so successful in maintaining secrecy about its membership that, up until now, scholars have been uncertain as to who donned the white sheets in Grand Haven and other Michigan towns. The Ku Klux Klan has appeared throughout the United States in several incarnations, the first a post-Civil War movement to control freed slaves; the second an anti-Catholic, anti-Black, anti-Semitic movement prominent after World War I; and a contemporary movement that has returned to its prominent anti-Black, anti-liberal origins. Although Michigan avoided most of the early activity, by the 1920s the Klan clearly had found fertile soil in the state. Historical studies of the KKK have pinpointed several areas as focal points of Klan activity. Norman F. Weaver's doctoral dissertation on the KKK in the Midwest examined the Republican primary election of Septem ber 1924 to identify the greatest concentration of Klan strength in Michigan. He concluded that the vote for two Invisible Empire gubernatorial candidates established a substantial Klan membership in Detroit, in central Michigan, in parts of the Thumb, and in a few counties along the west coast of Michigan from Muskegon north. In the western counties, Weaver singled out the Holland Dutch, who took to the Klan and joined in large numbers.2 David M. Chalmers, in a subsequent study, propounded a similar view: the Klan had spread throughout the small towns and industrial cities of Michigan and up the shores of Lake Michigan where the

Delegate interactions at the 1984 national party conventions: The Tennessee delegations

This study compares the activities of the Democratic and Republican delegations from Tennessee to the 1984 national nominating conventions. Although the two delegations were quite similar in personal attributes, their activities varied contextually with the different circumstances surrounding the two conventions. While the Democratic convention was a genuinely decision-making assembly making for wide dispersion of delegation members' activities, the Republican convention turned the delegates into recipients of party appeals for unified support of the presidential as well as congressional and gubernatorial candidates. The decision of the Republicans to conduct their 1988 convention under the same rules as in 1984, in contrast to the Democrats' decision to have a commission create new rules for 1988, was inevitable given the different contexts of the two conventions.

Reorganization and the Bottom Line

Many candidates for the presidency, including Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan, have promised to reduce the cost and improve the performance of government. At the state level, gubernatorial candidates often make similar promises. Once elected, some of these new chief executives actually do attempt to follow through on their promises. They generally appoint a study commission to analyze the organization and administration of the executive branch, and these commissions usually find that the government is badly organized, poorly managed, and suffering from outdated administrative practices and procedures. ' Reorganization is the remedy often prescribed for the ills identified; the anticipated results are big savings (economy) and improved service delivery (effectiveness). In sharp contrast to this optimistic political rhetoric, reorganization for economy and efficiency has been largely discredited in the contemporary academic literature. Indeed, modern political scientists tend to think of reorganization as a political rather than an administrative tool. Some scholars, like March and Olson, emphasize its potency as a symbolic tool that chief executives can use to manipulate public opinion.2 Others, like Seidman, stress its value as a tactical vehicle for limiting or enhancing individual and group access to the decision-making process.3 Yet, despite the popularity of this political model of reorganization, the fact remains that most of the existing work on reorganization is either conceptual or anecdotal. Empirically based studies of the bottom line results of reorganization are almost nonexistent, and thus our knowledge of the consequences of reorganization remains limited.4 The purpose of this paper is to take a careful look at some of the old but important questions about reorganization and the bottom line. Specifically, three questions are investigated: (1) Can reorganization be an effective tool for reducing the cost of government? (2) Can it be used successfully to reduce budget deficits or to balance budgets? (3) Can it be an effective tool for improving governmental performance? The data for this analysis are drawn from a statewide reorganization that took place in New Jersey during 1982 and 1983. Data sources include state budget documents, official state publications, press reports, and the published and unpublished material from the reorganization itself. In addition, 135 interviews were conducted with public sector managers and private sec* Chief executives at both the national and state levels regularly promise to reduce the cost and improve the performance of government by overhauling the bureaucracy. Modern political scientists, however, tend to dismiss these claims as empty rhetoric. Indeed, reorganization for economy and efficiency (the traditional model) has been largely discredited in the contemporary academic literature, and it has been replaced by a new (political) model. Yet, the fact remains that we know very little about the bottom line results of reorganization because empirical analysis is almost nonexistent. In this paper, the bottom line results of a 1982 statewide reorganization in New Jersey are systematically analyzed. Based on the findings of this analysis, the author concludes that the pendulum has swung too far in one direction with the current and nearly exclusive emphasis on the political dimensions of reorganization.

Mailing In the Vote: Correlates and Consequences of Absentee Voting

American state legislatures have enacted absentee registration, absentee voting, and mail voting legislation in recent years as part ofwider efforts to stimulate greater electoral participation. California's absentee voter law, greatly liberalized in 1978, permitted the large absentee vote in the 1982 gubernatorial contest which turned out to be decisive. This analysis probes absentee voting in recent California elections, and compares the California analysis with parallel research in Iowa. The investigation concerns the correlates of the rate of absentee voting across counties, and the consequences of absentee voting systems for the electoral fate of gubernatorial candidates. Most strikingly, the research displays important changes in the determinants of absentee voting across three elections in California, distinctive patterns for Iowa, and strong evidence that partisan candidates are likely to harvest absentee votes in the very localities where their party is otherwise strong.

The Effect of Primary Divisiveness in Gubernatorial and Senatorial Elections

This study examines the relationship between primary divisiveness and general election results in gubernatorial and senatorial elections. Previous work in this area has been unable to substantiate this relationship. However, these inconclusive results may be due in part to conceptual and methodological shortcomings. We attempt to avoid such pitfalls in an effort to test the divisive primary hypothesis more effectively. Our study, which analyzes separately gubernatorial and senatorial elections, reveals that a divisive primary adversely affects a party's chance for general election victory. Curiously, the analysis also demonstrates that divisive primaries disadvantage senatorial candidates more than gubernatorial candidates, and Democratics more than Republicans.

Votes & Taxes: The Political Economy of the American Governorship

Conventional wisdom told us that state governors and political parties that advocated increases would risk unpopularity and electoral defeat. But researchers asserted that this was not necessarily the case. Examining data for the period from 1950 to 1980 and employing a different measure of tax activity, Professor Eismeier finds that for governors, gubernatorial candidates, and state parties that urge higher taxes the risks of defeat are indeed greater. But, while greater, the risks are not overwhelming in all cases. There is more to electoral success than one's position on taxes.