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

Abstract

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.