Campaign Contributions

Anthony Gierzynski is associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont.

This is an interdiscplinary study that rigorously examines the role of campaign contributions in the election of blacks and women to the U.S. House of Representatives during the 1980s. It is an interdisciplinary work that provides an historical overview of discrimination and campaign financing, a model of campaign contributions based on a rent-seeking paradigm from public choice, and statistical testing of this model. Other books have treated aspects of campaign financing and racial/sexual discrimination, but this work is unique in its combination of campaign financing with racial and sexual discrimination.

Recent scandals, including questionable fund-raising tactics by the current administration, have brought campaign finance reform into the forefront of the news and the public consciousness. Dollars and Votes goes beyond the partial, often misleading, news stories and official records to explain how our campaign system operates. The authors conducted thorough interviews with corporate "government relations" officials about what they do and why they do it. The results provide some of the most damning evidence imaginable.

What donors, especially business donors, expect for their money is "access" and access means a lot more than a chance to meet and talk. They count on secret behind-the-scenes deals, like a tax provision that applies only to a "corporation incorporated on June 13, 1917, which has its principal place of business in Bartlesville, Oklahoma". After a deal is worked out behind closed doors, one executive explains, "it doesn't much matter how people vote afterwards".

Ordinary contributions give access to Congress; megabuck "soft money" contributions ensure access to the President and top leaders. The striking truth revealed by these authors is that half the soft money comes from fewer than five hundred big donors, and that most contributions come, directly or indirectly, from business. Reform is possible, they argue, by turning away from the temptation of looking at specific scandals and developing a new system that removes the influence of big money campaign contributors.

Thomas R. Dye is president of the Lincoln Center for Public Service, a nonprofit educational organization based in Florida. He was formerly McKenzie Professor of Government at Florida State University.

Bill Clinton's 1993-94 health care reform initiative was one of the most active and sustained presidential campaigns ever undertaken in support of a single social issue, and certainly the boldest attempt to establish national health insurance in the United States. An analysis of the Clinton campaign, therefore, reveals much about the politics of divided government in the late 20th century, the apparent end of the New Deal-Great Society approach to governance and the enduring democratic coalition which supported it, and, of course, the high stakes politics of health care reform. This study attempts to advance our understanding of why national health insurance has proven to be such a potent idea while seemingly impossible to accomplish. The work focuses on the political factors which derailed the Clintons' health care reform initiative, providing a case study of a most significant modern-day political and policy battle.