The Last Hurrah?: Soft Money and Issue Advocacy in the 2002 Congressional Elections - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0815754361 ISBN 13: 9780815754367

Verlag: Brookings Institution Press, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

<div><p>The 2002 midterm elections were noteworthy U.S. congressional campaigns for many reasons. They marked the last national contests before implementation of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) and thus were expected by many to be the "last hurrah" for soft money. These midterm campaigns provided a window on the activity of parties, interest groups, and political consultants on the eve of BCRA, as they prepared to enter a new era of American elections. The results of Campaign 2002 were remarkable. As the party in power, the Republicans defied history by gaining seats in both houses of Congress, giving them a majority in the Senate. To some degree this resulted from the GOP's new emphasis on "ground war" voter mobilization. Another key was the unusually aggressive support of the sitting president, who leveraged his popularity to advance his party's candidates for Congress. Th <i>e Last Hurrah? a</i>nalyzes the role of soft money and issue advocacy in the 2002 battle for Congress. Having been granted access to a number of campaign operations across a broad array of groups, David Magleby, Quin Monson, and their colleagues monitored and documented a number of competitive races, including the key South Dakota and Missouri Senate contests. Each case study breaks down the campaign communication in a particular race, including devices such as advertising, get-out-the-vote drives, "soft money" expenditures, and the increasingly influential role of the national parties on local races. They also discuss the overall trends of the midterm election of 2002, paying particular attention to the impact of President Bush and his political operation in candidate recruitment, fundraising, and campaign visits. Magleby and Monson consider an important question typically overlooked. How do voters caught in the middle of a hotly contested race deal with&#151;and react to&#151;a barrage of television and radio ads, direct mail, unsolicited phone calls, and other campaign communications? They conclude with a look to the future, using the trends in 2002 to understand just how candidates, political parties, and interest groups might respond to the new campaign environment of BCRA.</p></div>

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

<div><p><b>David B. Magleby </b> is dean of the School of Family, Home, and Social Sciences at Brigham Young University, where he is also a professor of political science. He is the editor of <i>Financing the 2000 Election</i> (Brookings 2002), and coauthor of <i>Government by the People</i>, which is now in its twenty-first edition. <b>J. Quin Monson </b> is assistant director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University. His work has appeared recently in <i>Political Research Quarterly</i> and <i>Political Analysis</i>.</p></div>

David B. Magleby is dean of the School of Family, Home, and Social Sciences at Brigham Young University, where he is also a professor of political science. He is the editor of Financing the 2000 Election (Brookings 2002), and coauthor of Government by the People, which is now in its twenty-first edition. J. Quin Monson is assistant director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University. His work has appeared recently in Political Research Quarterly and Political Analysis.

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The Last Hurrah?

Soft Money and Issue Advocacy in the 2002 Congressional Elections

Brookings Institution Press

Copyright © 2004Brookings Institution Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8157-5436-1

Chapter One

The Importance of Outside Money in the 2002 Congressional Elections

DAVID B. MAGLEBY

The relative role of candidates, parties, andinterest groups in competitive congressional elections has undergone adramatic transformation since 1996. Before 1996, and in noncompetitiveraces since, candidates were the primary loci of activity in raisingand spending campaign money. The vast majority of congressional contestsare not competitive, but those few competitive races have becomebattlegrounds for control of Congress. The close party balance at all levelsof government and in the electorate has also amplified the importanceof competitive elections.

We began monitoring competitive races in 1998, in response to thedramatic transformation of individual donors, political parties, andinterest groups that began in 1996. The first campaign finance watershedin 1996 was the use of party soft money for candidate promotionor attack. Democratic political consultant Dick Morris, with theapproval of party lawyers, developed a strategy that "by the end of therace ... had spent almost $35 million on issue-advocacy ads (in additionto the $50 million on conventional candidate-oriented media)."The Republicans followed suit, and the widespread use of soft money toattack and promote candidates was in full swing.

In our 1998 and 2000 studies we documented the surge in party softmoney for candidate-specific electioneering purposes. In both electioncycles, party campaign committees made the raising and spending ofsoft money a high priority. Unlike contributions and coordinated spending,soft money can be spent in unlimited amounts. In 2000 the partieswent a step further and made it easier for donors to contribute hard andsoft money simultaneously by establishing joint fund-raising committeeswith candidates (sometimes called victory committees). These devicesallow donors in a single check to designate contributions to candidates(hard dollars), party committees (hard dollars), and party soft-moneyaccounts. The growth of joint fund-raising committees for candidatesand party committees readily permits donors to signal their candidatepreferences. Some of the most important advantages of soft money arethat it can be raised and spent by the parties in unlimited amounts, andcorporations and unions can contribute treasury funds as soft money.

The second campaign finance watershed in 1996 was the use of issueadvocacy for specific candidate promotion or attack purposes. TheAmerican Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations(AFL-CIO) was the first group to mount a large-scale campaign effort,while avoiding disclosure and contribution limits. The Supreme Court inthe Buckley v. Valeo decision defined election-related communicationsas ads that use words like "vote for," "elect," "support," "cast your ballotfor," "Smith for Congress," "vote against," "defeat," and "reject."The AFL-CIO avoided these words but, as the National RepublicanCongressional Committee (NRCC) contended in a complaint with theFederal Election Commission, the ads advocated "the defeat of a clearlyidentified candidate in the 1996 congressional election." In 1996 theAFL-CIO spent $35 million, much of it on television, aimed at defeating105 members of Congress, including 32 heavily targeted Republicanfreshmen. Labor ran television ads in forty districts, distributed over11.5 million voter guides in twenty-four districts, and broadcast radioads in many others.

Following labor's lead, the business community mounted its ownunlimited and undisclosed campaign named The Coalition-AmericansWorking for Real Change. Groups involved in this campaign includedthe National Federation of Independent Business, the U.S. Chamber ofCommerce, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, theNational Restaurant Association, and the National Association of Manufacturers.The coalition was active in thirty-seven House races, spentan estimated $5 million on over 13 thousand television and radio ads,and mailed over 2 million letters. Another Republican-leaning groupusing this tactic in 1996 was Triad Management Services.

The absence of action by the Federal Election Commission to barissue-advocacy electioneering created the climate for expanded activityby these and other groups, which we have documented in past studies.

In competitive races since 1996, spending by noncandidate entities,or outside money, has grown to rival and sometimes exceed spending bycandidates. How that money is spent has also diversified to include agreater emphasis on nonbroadcast communications. We define outsidemoney to include party soft money, election issue advocacy, independentexpenditures, and internal communications.

This book documents all forms of campaign communications in competitivecongressional elections in 2002, including soft money and issueadvocacy. In addition we include observations made while monitoringspending in a set of noncompetitive control races to establish a baselineagainst which to compare campaign spending in more highly chargedenvironments.

Much of the research in this book is the result of systematic monitoringof campaigns by knowledgeable academics from within the states ordistricts in our sample. Our common objective was to better understandthe dynamics of campaigns and elections in highly contested environmentswith substantial campaigning not controlled by candidates. Eachacademic team created a reconnaissance network of individuals whocollected mail and logged phone calls and personal contacts about theelection. Data on political mail, phone calls, personal contacts, e-mail,and other contacts were systematically gathered. Local academics alsogathered ad-buy data from radio and television stations, including cablestations, in all of our sample and control races. As a supplement to ourad-buy data, we purchased the Campaign Media Analysis Group's(CMAG) data for television advertising in our sample and controlraces. In addition, the participating academics interviewed scores oflocal experts, campaign staff, party professionals, and interest-groupleaders in their states and districts. Likewise we conducted 134 interviewswith party officials, interest-group leaders, and other experts inWashington. As a rule, these interviews were "on the record" and arecited in this book. Our 2002 project also measured voters' reactions tohighly competitive campaign environments in comparison to a nationalbaseline survey. In a separate survey voters logged their political mailand campaign contacts and provided us with all their political mail.These surveys enabled us to validate the data collection of the reconnaissancenetworks and to accurately measure the volume of campaign communicationswith voters as well as to gauge their reactions to the delugeof mail, phone calls, and in-person contacts. Table 1-1 lists the congressionalcontests included in our 2002 study and notes the four racesin which we did polling on public perceptions of the campaign and thefour races in which we asked random samples of voters to record theircampaign contacts and forward to us their political mail. For a moredetailed description of our methodology for the 2002 studies, includingthe methodology for our public opinion surveys, see appendix A. For acomplete list of national-level elites interviewed for this study, seeappendix B.

This book builds upon similar collaborative research efforts in 1998and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Brookings Institution Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0815754361
• ISBN 13: 9780815754367
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Herausgeber: Magleby David B., Monson J. Quin
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar