Variations in Industry PAC Adaptation to a Polarizing Congress

• In Event: Campaign Finance

Abstract

Countless studies have shown that U.S. House members’ ability to raise campaign dollars from access-oriented PACs is a function of variables such as occupying a party or committee leadership position, majority party membership, assignment on a power committee, seniority, legislative effectiveness, and ideology (Bonica 2013; Box-Steffensmeier and Grant 1999; Cox and Magar 1999; Esterling 2006; Grier and Munger 1993; Grimmer and Powell 2016; Romer and Snyder 1994; Rudolph 1999). Yet the effect of these factors on PAC contributions is often implicitly assumed to be constant across different industries, issue areas, and time—despite major changes in the partisan context over the last several decades. In this paper, we evaluate the extent to which PACs across a range of industries and issue areas have altered their contribution strategies over time in response to three significant changes in the political context in the U.S. House: increasing polarization, insecure majorities, and centralization of power in the party leadership. We are particularly interested in whether variables that predict House members’ PAC receipts are increasingly conditioned by partisanship, as polarization limits the help a given industry can expect to receive from one of the two parties and parties pressure industries to choose sides (Karol 2015; Gimpel et al 2014; Sinclair 2006; Wand 2009). To conduct the analysis, we draw on a unique data set of U.S. House incumbents in the 101st through 113th Congresses (1989-2014) that includes Volden and Wiseman’s (2014) Interest Legislative Effectiveness Scores (ILES), which measure House members’ legislative effectiveness across multiple issue areas, and contributions received by members from PACs across corresponding industries and sectors (as gathered and categorized by the Center for Responsive Politics).

Authors

• Bruce A. Larson, Gettysburg College

• Eric S. Heberlig, University of North Carolina, Charlotte