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theses

Well-positioned female candidates for state legislative office have been closing the gender fundraising gap since the 1990s. At both the congressional and state legislative level, numerous studies show that similarly-situated male and female candidates have equal campaign receipts. These studies are focused on the final outcome of candidate fundraising – total money received. A newer strain of research investigates the process of fundraising throughout the campaign. This more holistic approach considers the time that female candidates spend fundraising, the value of their campaign money, their interactions with different types of donors, and the gendered nature of donor networks. The observation that two people can reach the same place while walking very different paths, though pedestrian, is valuable here. Some female candidates report a fundraising challenge that quantitative, outcomes-focused studies do not observe. Beyond false perception of a gender-based fundraising challenge, female candidates may follow divergent and sometimes more difficult pathways than those of their male counterparts.
My dissertation project strives to shed light on the difference between the perception of some female candidates that fundraising is a gendered challenge and the literature’s focus on women’s fundraising success. It helps close a research gap by conducting a mixed method, 50-state investigation of female state legislative campaign fundraising with a focus on primary elections, race/ ethnic differences between female legislators, and state-based women’s donor groups. Each of these focal points are derived from burgeoning or understudied areas of research.
This project analyzes data from the 2002 Joint Project on Term Limits State Legislative Survey, the 2008 Center for American Women and Politics Recruitment study, the Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections, as well as 120 original interviews. While these multiple sources of data are not directly comparable, they contribute to our understanding of the context-dependent and puzzling nature of campaign fundraising. This work helps clarify where and under what conditions women might rightly observe gender bias with regard to fundraising.
With regard to Chapter Three, the first empirical chapter of this work, I find that female candidates may indeed face more fundraising difficulties than their male counterparts during primary elections because individual donors are critical to this phase of campaigns and male donors make fewer donations and give lower average amounts to female candidates. Individual donor networks are gendered, a fact which is quite visible during primary elections because institutional donors tend to stay out. Two key points summarize my investigation of gendered donor networks during primaries: 1) Republican, female primary candidates were over-reliant on donations from women. 2) Democratic, female primary candidates were over-reliant on donations from women as well - but so much due to female donor affinity but because men were less likely to donate to their campaigns. That Republican, female primary candidates were over-reliant on female donors is a critical take-away. Especially with regard to primary money, female donors to Democratic women have received the bulk of the literature’s consideration. The strong support of female Democrats for their fellow female Democrats is an oft-noted phenomenon in both congressional and state legislative campaign finance research. Yet, a specific look at primary elections suggest that female Republican donors are the more interesting story at the state legislative level. Similarly, the lack of support from Democratic male donors for Democratic women is notable. It was the Democratic Party’s donor network that was most gendered, which is counter-intuitive given the Democratic Party’s identity politics rhetoric and courting of female candidates.
With regard to Chapter Four, I find that average donation amounts are generally un-impacted by the candidate’s race/ ethnicity- at least among winning female candidates. However, more research is needed into the experience of black women in particular. Individual donors in the Democratic Party, the party label under which the vast majority of black women run, give lower average donations to these women. This was true even when district competition and other controls were considered.
With regard to Chapter Five, as in congressional campaigns, women’s donor groups can be financially important to the campaigns of Democratic women but miss significant opportunities to support women whose critical elections are the primary election – including many women of color. This phenomenon combined with the earlier finding that female donors are not particularly important to Democratic women during primaries likely contributes to the disappointment observed among many Democratic candidates. While the Democratic Party purports to support women and often uses identity politics to attract them, there is less gender-based support than many female candidates expected. Finally, party-affiliated women’s donor groups are noticeable within the networks of Republican female candidates and could be a valuable source of campaign contributions for Republican women in the future. This in conflict with the current state -level women’s group literature, which assumes that Republican groups are non-existent. Advocates for women’s increased representation might look toward Republican women’s donor groups as a possible resource for identifying and supporting more women.
My dissertation thus complicates the literature on the limitations of the conclusion that female candidates have solved the fundraising problem. It also identifies areas where practitioners invested in parity might find opportunities to further strengthen female candidates’ fundraising networks. This study contributes to advancing a deeper understanding of the state-legislative campaign fundraising process and illustrates the value of pairing large-N campaign finance studies with qualitative data from the field.

ETD_10269

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-5f1f-7n45

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.