Labor PAC Research Articles

Patterns of Campaign Finance in Pennsylvania's 1982 Legislative Election

This paper analyzes sources of contributions to virtually all candidates for Pennsylvania legislative office in 1982 who reported raising or spending more than $250 in any of six reporting periods. Contributions totaling nearly $7,750,000 were examined. Almost half came in amounts greater than $250. About 20% came from contributions of $50 or less from individuals: an equal proportion came from individuals giving between $50 and $250. Political Action Committee contributions received special scrutiny. About 27% of all money raised came from PACs, split evenly between Republicans and Democrats. But PAC money heavily favored incumbents by a three to one margin. In sharp contrast to political party contributions, PACs gave almost as much to candidates assured of victory or even unopposed as to those in close races. Labor PACs gave about as much as professional PACs, but were outspent two to one by business PACs. Overall, PACs accounted for nearly 37% of incumbents' receipts, suggesting their role is greater than in U.S. Congressional elections.

You catch more flies with honey: an analysis of PAC punishment and congressional vote switching

Previous research demonstrates that interest groups punish congressional allies by withholding campaign contributions. But, past studies did not indicate whether this punishment strategy is effective at getting members of Congress to change their voting behavior. The literature on vote switching in Congress ignores how legislators may respond to pressure, in the form of punishment, from allied interest groups. We propose competing hypotheses. Punishment could cause incumbents to switch their vote, but punishment may also be seen as an unwelcome tactic and met with resistance from incumbents. We also hypothesize that rewards will lead to more vote switching. We test this theory in the context of labor PAC punishment and reward of House Democrats who voted for free trade. We find that punishment backfires by making incumbents less likely to switch their vote on trade. We also find that rewards from labor PACs make it more likely that incumbent Democrats will switch their vote, while rewards from business PACs make it much less likely. We conclude with thoughts on the importance of understanding the effect of interest group tactics on vote switching in Congress and how labor’s strategic choices may affect its influence in American politics.

Do Unions Punish Democrats? Free-Trade Votes and Labor PAC Contributions, 1999–2012

This article examines whether labor unions punish incumbent Democrats who vote for free-trade bills in Congress. We theorize that punishment is a risky strategy for interest groups that prefer one party over the other. Therefore, interest groups must be substantially affected by decline in party support to punish. Consistent with our theory, we find important differences between public- and private-sector unions in their willingness to punish. Although public-sector unions articulate opposition to free trade, they do not follow through with either deterrence (withholding contributions to send a signal) or incapacitation (withholding contributions to replace the wayward candidate with a more supportive one). Private-sector unions, specifically unions that organize trade-vulnerable industrial workers, do attempt to punish Democrats via deterrence. The estimated deterrence effect is a 6 percent reduction in contributions. This study improves on previous studies by modeling punishment across several congressional sessions and multiple trade votes. The results reveal new insights into labor’s approach to declining protectionism among congressional Democrats.

Paying for Politics

Even in the wake of the most sweeping campaign finance reform law to be enacted in three decades, further significant reform is inevitable. Special interest money continues to flow through loopholes in the Act, and the Presidential Election Campaign Fund is near collapse. The next reform should encourage broader participation in the political process by individual citizens, both to dilute the power of special interests and to serve independent democratic values that recent Supreme Court jurisprudence has identified as vital to meaningful reform. We propose adopting a refundable tax credit of $100/taxpayer for political contributions to federal candidates and national parties; the credit would be targeted to lower- and middle-income Americans. A refundable tax credit is equivalent to giving each eligible citizen up to $100 annually to use for political contributions. We also present data about the relative importance of political contributions by special interests (corporate, labor and other PACs) and individuals that undermine many of the assumptions on which past reform has been based and that have not been discussed in the legal literature. The data clearly show that small contributions by individuals are the dominant source of money in campaigns, and that the influence of special interest money is subtle, appearing to purchase benefits like access, a place on the agenda, and minor policy details. Working from an accurate picture of who really pays for politics, and drawing from the experience at the federal and state levels with similar tax refund programs, we present the tax credit as a reform that is simple, easy to administer, and likely to improve political participation by average Americans. Thus, our proposal, unlike the complicated voucher plan with anonymity put forward by Ackerman and Ayres, is likely to be adopted by Congress; moreover, it will appeal to a bipartisan consensus because it mixes public funding with a decentralized allocation mechanism using a tax subsidy.

Four Simple Tests of Campaign Contributions and Trade Policy Preferences

This paper uses campaign contribution data to examine trade policy preferences among political action committees. With perfect factor mobility, as the Heckscher–Ohlin (HO) model assumes, interest group trade positions should depend on their factor of production but not on their industry. We show, consistent with the 2 × 2 HO model, that capital groups consistently back representatives supporting trade liberalization while labor groups favor protectionists. Unlike previous work, we also measure the variation in trade policy preferences within capital and labor groups. We find evidence that the industry net export position significantly affects labor unions' trade policy preferences. Industry characteristics have no impact on capital group lobbying. The former result suggests that empirical analyses of labor PAC contributions that exclude industry characteristics may be misspecified.

Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote for Free Trade: The Dynamics of the Labor PAC Punishment Strategy over PNTR

Studies of PAC contribution strategies tend to focus on the ways in which PACs seek to buy access to legislators or elect candidates friendly to their interests. What do PACs do when those to whom they have given large sums of money vote against their interest on a key piece of legislation? We examine whether labor PACs followed a strategy of punishment in order to send a message to Democrats who supported the passage of Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China (PNTR) in May 2000. We find that labor PACs punished pro-PNTR Democrats in a measured fashion indicating a deterrent form of punishment. A harsher form of punishment strategy was followed in an attempt to incapacitate those pro-PNTR candidates who were most electorally vulnerable. This behavior indicates that contributions are not just inducements to vote favorably or attempts to purchase access.

Friends Don't Let Friends Vote for Free Trade: The Dynamics of the Labor PAC Punishment Strategy over PNTR

Friends Don't Let Friends Vote for Free Trade: The Dynamics of the Labor PAC Punishment Strategy over PNTR

The Effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement on Corporate and Labor Pac Contributions

The Effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement on Corporate and Labor Pac Contributions

The Effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement on Corporate and Labor Pac Contributions

This study investigates the impact congressional roll call votes on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had on corporate and labor political action committee (PAC) contributions during the 1994 House elections. The results show that corporate PACs gave more money to incumbents who voted in favor of NAFTA and that labor PACs contributed less money to pro-NAFTA incumbents, including Democrats in competitive races. The findings mark a departure from the existing literature, which indicates that corporations and unions rarely place an emphasis on particular roll call votes when providing their campaign money to candidates.

Public policy: the case for lobbying in radiology.

HomeRadiologyVol. 214, No. 2 PreviousNext EditorialPublic Policy: The Case for Lobbying in RadiologyJeffrey J. Brown, Ronald G. EvensJeffrey J. Brown, Ronald G. EvensAuthor Affiliations1From the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, 510 S Kingshighway Blvd, St Louis, MO 63110 (J.J.B.); and the Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St Louis, Mo (R.G.E.). Received February 24, 1999; revision requested April 23; revision received June 16; accepted August 9. Address reprint requests to J.J.B. (e-mail: [email protected]).Jeffrey J. BrownRonald G. EvensPublished Online:Feb 1 2000https://doi.org/10.1148/radiology.214.2.r00fe29321MoreSectionsFull textPDF ToolsImage ViewerAdd to favoritesCiteTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked In References 1 Hrebenar RJ. Interest group politics in America 3rd ed. Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 1997. Google Scholar2 Almond G, Verba S. The civic culture Boston, Mass: Little, Brown, 1963; 246. Google Scholar3 Kollman K. Outside lobbying: public opinion and interest group strategies Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Google Scholar4 Milbrath L. Washington lobbyists Chicago, Ill: Rand McNally, 1963; 234. Google Scholar5 Solomon B. Measuring clout. Natl J (Wash), July 4, 1987; 27:1706-1711. Google Scholar6 Thomas CS, Hrebenar RJ. An overview trend in interest group activity in the States. Comparative State Politics Newsletter 1987; 6:2-6. Google Scholar7 Smith H. Problems of a problem solver. New York Times Magazine, January 8, 1978 ; 52-53. Google Scholar8 Grenzke J. PACs and the congressional supermarket: the currency is complex. Am J Polit Sci 1989; 33:1-24. Crossref, Google Scholar9 Saltzman GM. Congessional voting on labor issues: the role of PACs. Ind Labor Relat Rev 1987; 40:163-179. Crossref, Google Scholar10 Wilhite A, Theilmann J. Labor PAC contributions and labor legislation: a simultaneous logic approach. Public Choice 1987; 53:267-276. Crossref, Google Scholar11 Langbein LI. Money and access: some empirical evidence. J Politics 1986; 48:1052-1062. Crossref, Google Scholar12 Stuart PC. The new lobbyists: persuaders in the public interest. Christian Science Monitor 1975; Oct ; 10:16-17(cols 1–3). Google Scholar13 Evens RG. Memo to the membership: critical issues for 1997. ACR Bulletin (newsletter) Reston, Va: American College of Radiology, June, 1997; inside front cover. Google Scholar14 Linton OW. American College of Radiology: the first 75 years Reston, Va: American College of Radiology, 1997; 57-58. Google Scholar15 Rogers LF. Academy of Radiology Research. AJR Am J Roentgenol 1999; 172:583. Crossref, Medline, Google ScholarArticle HistoryPublished in print: Feb 2000 FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited ByJournal of the American College of Radiology, Vol. 15, No. 8American Journal of Roentgenology, Vol. 189, No. 4American Journal of Roentgenology, Vol. 177, No. 5Recommended Articles RSNA Education Exhibits RSNA Case Collection Vol. 214, No. 2 Metrics Altmetric Score PDF download

Corporate and Labor PAC Contributions in House Elections: Measuring the Effects of Majority Party Status

Among other factors, interest groups consider candidates' party label when deciding how to invest their contributions. For many decades, however, the Democratic Party and the majority party were synonymous in the U S. House, thereby prohibiting an empirical distinction between the two. Does majority party status have an effect independent of party on PAC contributions? Controlling for a number of factors, a measure of majority party status outperforms party as a predictor of corporate PAC contributions. All else being equal, candidates whose party is in the majority receive greater corporate contributions than candidates whose party is in the minority. In contrast, labor PACs do not appear to reward candidates for their majority party status.

Wielding the Stick Instead of the Carrot: Labor PAC Punishment of Pro-NAFTA Democrats

Political action committees normally use contributions as a reward or inducement for access or favorable roll-call votes. In extreme cases, how ever, PACs may reduce funding as part of a punishment strategy. The roll- call vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement in the House of Representatives provides an interesting test case for the strategy of pun ishment. Organized labor was clearly against NAFTA and threatened to reduce support to proponents of the agreement. If a punishment strategy is followed by interest groups, we would expect to find it in this case. Ordinary least squares regression is used to examine labor PAC contribu tion strategy. We find that labor followed a short-term punishment strat egy against Democratic supporters of NAFTA.

Wielding the Stick Instead of the Carrot: Labor PAC Punishment of Pro-NAFTA Democrats

Wielding the Stick Instead of the Carrot: Labor PAC Punishment of Pro-NAFTA Democrats

Strategic diversity in labor PAC contribution patterns

This article explores variations in labor PAC contribution patterns. The conclusions drawn are based on interviews with union political operatives, and on a principal component and cluster analysis of labor PAC expenditures in 1984 House elections. The principal component analysis confirms that unions typically pursue an electoral strategy. The analysis also reveals important ideological cross currents, including conflicting practices of support for conservatives versus support for ideological allies. The principal component analysis is extended with the aid of clustering techniques, which are used to lend precision to the diversity in labor PAC contribution patterns. Five clusters of unions are identified, each displaying a distinct allocation strategy.

Class struggle in campaign finance? Political action committee contributions in the 1984 elections

Pluralist and class-based theories offer alternative hypotheses about the political behavior of organized interests in the United States. Using network methods and data on political action committees' (PAC) contributions to congressional candidates in the 1984 elections, we identify interest groups with politically similar behavior in an attempt to assess these perspectives concerning elites in the United States. The analysis includes corporate, labor, membership association, and nonconnected PACs. Counter to pluralist expectations, we find just two large groups—one primarily business oriented and the other primarily labor/public-interest oriented. Our findings thus support a class-based interpretation of the nature of organized interests. These findings are framed in terms of the meaning of unity and fragmentation.

Labor PAC contributions and labor legislation: A simultaneous logit approach

Labor PACs are used to explore the potential congressional influence of campaign contributions from special interest groups. PACs of organized labor are particularly useful for two reasons. First, a set of labor issues are defined each year by the AFL-CIO and so ad-hoc decisions about pertinent legislation are not made by the researcher. Secondly, there are measurable traits of representatives and constitutents that may lead to a predisposition of labor support. By combining these two attributes, a model is developed to investigate the question of congressional influence.

The Determinants of Labor PAC Allocations to Legislators

Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and SocietyVolume 25, Issue 3 p. 328-338 The Determinants of Labor PAC Allocations to Legislators MARICK F. MASTERS, MARICK F. MASTERSSearch for more papers by this authorASGHAR ZARDKOOHI, ASGHAR ZARDKOOHI *The authors are, respectively, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, and Associate Professor, Department of Management, College of Business Administration, Texas A&M UniversitySearch for more papers by this author MARICK F. MASTERS, MARICK F. MASTERSSearch for more papers by this authorASGHAR ZARDKOOHI, ASGHAR ZARDKOOHI *The authors are, respectively, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, and Associate Professor, Department of Management, College of Business Administration, Texas A&M UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: September 1986 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-232X.1986.tb00689.xCitations: 8 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume25, Issue3September 1986Pages 328-338 RelatedInformation

Unions, corporations, and political campaign contributions: The 1982 house elections

Because legislation affects so many aspects of the labor market, unions have long considered the political arena to be a major battleground. This paper investigates fund raising, a primary ingredient of this political activity. Specifically, the pattern of campaign contributions from labor PACs (and corporate PACs) is explained as an interaction of supply and demand. The results suggest that the demand for funds depends on the tightness of the race, the tenure of the incumbent, and ideology. Contributors are more willing to support ideological allies, expected winners, and powerful candidates.

An organizational analysis of political action committees

As the number and putative importance of political action committees have grown, so too has scholarly attention to this new breed of political organization. Yet this attention has been uneven. Although much is now known about the aggregate spending patterns of PACs, much less is known about their internal lives. The present study attempts to open the PAC black box to empirical inquiry. Drawing on interviews with the managers of 70 Washington-based political action committees, we suggest how theoretical perspectives about formal voluntary associations may be usefully applied in explaining the behavior of PACs. After examining the relationships among several variables — organizational goals, constituency relations and decision making, strategy, and interorganizational relations — we show how these forces affect the behavior of corporate, trade/membership, labor, and nonconnected PACS.

Patterns of political action committee contributions to the 1980 campaigns for the United States House of Representatives

Our most robust findings can be summarized as follows: u The spatial location of candidates is important in determining the pattern of campaign contributions. Many PACs and all PAC types, except agricultural cooperatives, contribute in a manner highly consistent with a simple spatial model. There is little giving by an individual PAC to candidates at opposite ends of the dimension. There is no instance of a PAC contributing to incumbents located at each end of the dimension and only to challengers of incumbents in the middle (or vice versa). Contributions against incumbents (i.e., to challengers of incumbents) are often spatial mirror images of a PAC's giving in favor of incumbents, though this statement must be tempered by the fact that the large majority of PACs give relatively little money to challengers. Few PACs give money to both challenger and incumbent in the same race. Giving in open-seat races is, if anything, even more spatially consistent than in races where an incumbent is running. While many individual PACs exhibit patterns of contributions consistent with the "ideological" dimension, the data for 1980 suggest that there was no particular bias toward one end of the spectrum or the other. Taking all PACs together essentially eliminates the effect of the location variable in the regressions. Giving in races with an incumbent on the ballot was, overall, balanced across the dimension. There are, however, “ideological” distinctions even among groups as broadly defined as the FEC categories. For the Corporate, Labor, and Trade/Membership/Health groups, the incumbent's location on the “ideological” dimension is an important explanatory variable even when other factors specific to the incumbent are considered. (Of course, “ideology” matters to Nonconnected groups, too. They just tend to balance each other off in positive money, though not in negative.) On average, Corporate and Trade groups favor conservative incumbents and opponents of liberal incumbents. Labor PACs do the opposite. Except for Labor PACs, party is not an important variable in explaining positive contributions, once the incumbent's voting record is taken into account. For contributions to challengers, however, party is significant. Corporate, Nonconnected, and Trade PACs gave to opponents of Democrats. Labor PACs did the opposite. The expected closeness of the election is always an important variable. Both positive money and contributions to challengers increase as the probability of a strong challenge increases. This suggests that PACs are sensitive to the potential impact of contributions on electoral outcomes. Although committee assignments have some importance in explaining campaign contributions by PAC categories, their net effect is never strong, except in the case of Cooperatives. This is almost certainly because of the diversity of interests represented by PACs in every category except Coops, which are essentially one giant PAC of milk producers. We would surmise that competitive forces in the House result in most members having a portfolio of committee assignments that provides maximum advantage vis-a-vis each member's constituency. It would therefore be surprising if, overall, committee assignments by themselves pointed to significant differences in generating campaign resources. Being chairman or ranking minority member of a committee has no impact on campaign contributions, other things equal. Seniority, as measured by number of consecutive years in office, has a complicated role. For positive contributions, seniority has a nonmonotonic effect, with contributions being higher for the most junior and most senior members, ceteris paribus, than for incumbents with average seniority. Negative contributions, however, are not significantly related to seniority.