CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION FINANCE

Congressional election finance



Chapter 1

Introductions

Purpose of the Study

The campaign finance function of political parties in the United States has been enhanced in recent years. Rather than hand fund-raising and spending over to interest groups and candidates, the two major parties have asserted themselves as major players in the campaign money game. Whether raising 'soft money', and finding ways to influence federal elections with it, or using constitutionally protected 'independent expenditures' to expressly advocate the election or defeat of federal candidates, the parties have found clever ways to make their marks. In the 1995-6 election cycle, the parties raised and spent money in record numbers. While the increase in overall dollar amounts reflects the parties' new-found activities, the traditional ways of helping candidates - direct contributions and coordinated expenditures - show no signs of dwindling.  Indeed, the growth in financial activity within the parties is a significant piece of evidence that they have reversed any decline in influence they may have been facing in decades past. 

Problem Statement

Little is known about the impact of party financial support of candidates. In part, that lack of knowledge is based on mere assumptions about the inability of party money to affect election outcomes, particularly in congressional races. Those assumptions are due for examination. This paper is a modest attempt to analyze one aspect of the enormously complex campaign finance system. In it, I hope to establish a baseline for making judgements about current party activity by examining the traditional forms of party support. The results should provide further insight into how campaign spending influences elections, at least in terms of the sources of that spending. 

Background of the Problem / Overview of the Study

In recent decades election campaigns in the United States have been more about who can raise the most campaign contributions rather than who was the most qualified for the government office. Campaign finance reform has been a continual debate in the country since 1970. There have been five attempts to regulate and enforce national campaign funding in the past forty years: the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1972, the creation of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) founded in 1975, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, and in early 2010 the Supreme Court decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. There have been several attempts to control both the amount and source of campaign contributions through campaign finance reform. The advocates, of this type of reform, site that campaign finance reform is needed to protect the voters from political corruption and special interest groups that influence the political agendas of the elected officials. Does the amount of funding that a congressional candidate receives for a campaign have an effect on the outcome of the election? For a democratic election all candidates should have fair and equal access to a Congressional seat regardless of the amount of funding that they receive. The amount of campaign funds the congressional seat winner raises during a campaign compared to that of the other candidates affects the outcome of the election.

Research Question

The study seeks to answer the following questions:

1) Does having more finances relate ...