All the President's Senators: Presidential Copartisans and the Allocation of Federal Grants

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12160
• Published date: 01 May 2017
• Author: Andrew Reeves,Dino P. Christenson,Douglas L. Kriner
• Date: 01 May 2017

DINO P. CHRISTENSON

DOUGLAS L. KRINER

Boston University

ANDREW REEVES

Washington University in St. Louis

All the President’s Senators:

Presidential Copartisans and the

Allocation of Federal Grants

Previous scholarship argues that House members’ partisan relationship to the

president is among the most important determinants of the share of federal dollars they

bring home to their constituents. Do presidential politics also shape distributive out-

comes in the Senate? Analyzing the allocation of more than $8.5 trillion of federal

grants across the states from 1984 to 2008, we show that presidential copartisan senators

are more successful than opposition party members in securing federal dollars for their

home states. Moreover, presidents appear to target grants ex post to states that ga in

presidential copartisans in recent elections.

In January of 1970, President Richard Nixon sent a memo to John

Ehrlichman, the president’s chief assistant for domestic affairs, that read:

“In your budget plans ... I want Missouri, New York, Indiana, Nevada,

Wisconsin, and Minnesota to get less than they have gotten in the past.”

Among those six states’ 12 senators, all but one was a Democrat. To

dispel any doubts about his intent, Nixon wrote that “the message can

get across that states with Republican senators are going to get a better

audience at the White House than those with Democratic senators who

are constantly chopping at us” (quoted in Reeves 2001).

1

In this article,

we argue that Nixon’s memo illustrates more than the mere intent of a

vindictive president from a bygone era in American politics; rather, it

ref‌lects a durable pattern in the allocation of federal dollars across the

country over the past quarter-century. In an analysis of each state’s share

of federal grant spending from 1984 to 2008, we f‌ind that senators from

the party of the president get more federal dollars for their states than do

senators from the opposition party. Presidents put their thumb on the

scale to reward their partisan allies and punish their partisan opponents.

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 42, 2, May 2017 269

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12160

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C2016 Washington University in St. Louis

A core argument of legislative scholarship is that members of Con-

gress pursue particularized benef‌its for their constituents in the hopes of

translating federal dollars for their districts into electoral currency (e.g.,

Fiorina 1989; Mayhew 1974). For decades, most scholarship on distribu-

tive politics assumed, explicitly or implicitly, that legislators dominated

this policy realm (e.g., Bickers and Stein 1996; Levitt and Snyder 1997;

Stein and Bickers 1994). However, recent research has shown that presi-

dents exert great inf‌luence over distributive outcomes (Berry, Burden,

and Howell 2010; Bertelli and Grose 2009; Hudak 2014; Kriner

and Reeves 2015a, 2015b, 2015c; Larcinese, Rizzo, and Testa 2006;

McCarty 2000) in part because voters hold presidents accountable for

the share of federal benef‌its they receive (Kriner and Reeves 2012).

Because both branches play key roles in distributive politics, we

argue that a legislator’s partisan relationship to the president inf‌luences

her capacity to secure federal dollars for her constituency. Presidents

critically inf‌luence the ability of US senators to engage in a core

re-election-oriented activity.

To test our argument, we examine the political determinants of

distributive politics in the Senate. We ask: Which senators secure dispro-

portionately large shares of federal dollars for their home state? We

analyze the allocation of more than $8.5 trillion of federal grants across

the states from 1984 to 2008. We f‌ind that presidents channel federal

dollars to states that elect their fellow partisans to the Senate. The num-

ber of presidential copartisan senators is one of the strongest predictors

of per capita grant spending that a state receives. Moreover, presidents

appear to target grants ex post to states that gain presidential copartisans

in recent elections. Taken together, our results provide further evidence

of an increasingly presidentialized system in which the White House

inf‌luences the distribution of federal resources to aid the re-election

prospects of their political allies in Congress.

Presidents, Senators, and Distributive Politics

For decades, distributive politics scholarship focused squarely on

Congress with an emphasis on which legislators are best positioned to

secure federal funds for their constituents. Recently, however, a spate of

analyses has offered an important corrective by demonstrating the impor-

tant role that presidents also play in shaping distributive outcomes

(Bertelli and Grose 2009; Hudak 2014; Kriner and Reeves 2015a, 2015b;

Larcinese, Rizzo, and Testa 2006; McCarty 2000). One f‌inding is that

presidents target federal dollars to districts represented by copartisan

members of the House (Berry, Burden, and Howell 2010; though see

270 Dino P. Christenson, Douglas L. Kriner, and Andrew Reeves