All Scandal Politics is Local

Abstract

To understand contemporary elections, scholars must come to grips with the effects of scandal. Susan Welch and John Hibbing have suggested that charges of corruption can be damaging to House incumbents and that the effects have remained constant over the last twenty years (1997). Yet a number of discrepancies remain. Why are roughly 75 percent of incumbents who are caught in a scandal returned to office—especially in today's political environment, in which we would expect voters to punish corrupt politicians? How do some weather the scandal storm while others with similar infractions are sent packing? Using the 1992 congressional check-kiting scandal as a case study, this research finds that much of the variance in the effects of charges of corruption can be explained by local media coverage. The local media's account of the incumbent's involvement in the affair appears to be a better predictor of election outcome than the number of stories written or the actual degree of infraction (the number of checks bounced). As such, I argue that local press coverage is an important element toward a better understanding of the potency of scandal and, indeed, the direction of American politics.