Incumbent Contributions to the Congressional Campaign Committees,1990-2000

Abstract

House incumbents now regularly transfer significant sums of campaign money from their reelection accounts to the party campaign committees. This article conducts the first comprehensive exploration of this activity. After briefly reviewing the federal regulations that govern member contributions to the campaign committees, I present data for the 1989-1990 through 1999-2000 election cycles that illustrate the steep rise in these contributions. I then test several hypotheses about members’ willingness to support their parties financially in light of the electoral conflict between incumbents and parties described by Jacobson (1985-1986). I find that a member’s leadership status in the House and ability to raise “surplus” campaign dollars are the two most consistent determinants of his or her financial support for the party campaign committees.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Babson, Jennifer , and Beth Donovan . 1994. “GOP Fundraiser Raises Sights and Tightens Belt.” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 2 April: 809-811.

Bibby, John F. 1999. “National-State Integration, Allied Groups, and Issue Activists.” In John C. Green and Daniel Shea , eds., The State of the Parties: The Changing Role of Contemporary Parties, 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M. 1996. “Dynamic Analysis of the Role of War Chests in Campaign Strategy.” American Journal of Political Science 40: 352-371.

Box-Steffensmeier, Janet , and Jay K. Dow . 1992. “Campaign Contributions in an Unregulated Setting: An Analysis of the 1984 and 1986 California Assembly Elections.” Western Political Quarterly 45: 609-628.

Breen, Richard . 1996. Regression Models: Censored, Sample Selected, or Truncated Data. Sage. University Paper Series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, 07-111. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Congressional Quarterly Special Report. 2001 (6 January): 14-20.

Cox, Gary C. and Mathew D. McCubbins . 1993. Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gimpel, James G. 1996. Legislating the Revolution: The Contract with America in Its First 100 Days. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Herrick, Rebekah and David L. Nixon . 1996. “Is There Life After Congress? Patterns and Determinants of Post-Congressional Careers.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 21: 489-499.

10.

Herrnson, Paul S. 1997. “Money and Motives: Spending in House Elections.” In Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer , eds., Congress Reconsidered, 6th ed. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.

11.

Herrnson, Paul S. 2000. Congressional Elections: Campaigning at Home and in Washington, 3rd ed. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.

12.

Hirschfield, Julie . 2000. “Power Plays and Term Limits.” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 11 November: 2656-2670.

13.

Jacobson, Gary C. 1985-1986. “Party Organization and Distribution of Campaign Resources: Republicans and Democrats in 1982.” Political Science Quarterly 100: 603-625.

14.

Kenworthy, Tim . 1991. “Collaring Colleagues for Cash.” Washington Post 14 May: A17-A17.

15.

Long, J. Scott . 1997. Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

16.

Malbin, Michael J. , and Anne H. Bedlington . 2002. “Members of Congress as Campaign Contributors, When Every Race Counts.” Paper presented at the American Political Science Association Meeting, August 29-September 1.

17.

Pershing, Ben . 2001. “Fifteen New Chairman Now Steer House Panels.” Roll Call, 15 January: B11-B13.

18.

Rohde, David W. 1991. Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

19.

Sinclair, Barbara . 1995. Legislators, Leaders, and Lawmaking: The U.S. House of Representatives in the Postreform Era. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

20.

Sigelman, Lee , and Langche Zeng . 1999. “Analyzing Censored and Sample-Selected Data with Tobit and Heckit Models.” Political Analysis 8: 167-182.

21.

Sorauf, Frank J. 1992. Inside Campaign Finance: Myths and Realities. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

22.

Wilcox, Clyde . 1989. “Share the Wealth: Contributions by Congressional Incumbents to the Campaigns of Other Candidates.” American Politics Quarterly 17: 386-408.