Congressional Parties, Fundraising, and Committee Ambition

• Date: 01 June 2003
• Published date: 01 June 2003
• DOI: 10.1177/106591290305600204
• Subject Matter: Articles

On June 14, 2000, the Republican leadership of the

U.S. House of Representatives announced “Battle-

ground 2000,” a plan for incumbent members of

the Republican caucus to raise $16 million for the National

Republi can Congres sional Committee (NRC C) (Allen

2000). The leadership gave each member a “nonvoluntary”

yellow pledge card. The amount listed was determined by a

sliding scale based on the member’s position in the leader-

ship, committee, and seniority hierarchy. A United Way-

style contribution thermometer, delineating each member’s

individual contribution, was posted outside of the suites

from which members made fundraising calls. A special sev-

enteen-member whip organization monitored progress and

exerted peer pressure. Furthermore, Speaker Hastert explic-

itly told members that their contributions to the fundraising

drive would help to determine their committee assignments

and their rank within committees in the 107th Congress.

The techniques of congressional fundraising in the most

recent election cycle are more coercive iterations of trends

that started in the last few election cycles. The Democratic

Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) formally initi-

ated the practice of soliciting contributions from incum-

bents as “dues” during the 1991-92 election cycle, and the

Republicans followed in the 1993-94 cycle (Gimpel 1996;

Herrnson 2000; Sabato and Larson 2002: 87). Although a

member’s use of campaign contributions to colleagues to

advance within the House’s power structure is not unprece-

dented (see Baker 1989; Jackson 1988), incumbents’ con-

tributions from their own campaign accounts and/or leader-

ship PACs to the campaign treasuries of other candidates or

and to party committees have increased substantially over

the past decade (Herrnson 1997, 2000).

This article examines the extent to which funds donated

by the campaign committees of incumbent members of

Congress to other candidates and to party election commit-

tees affect committee transfers. In doing so, it evaluates the

extent to which congressional parties channel the ambition

of individual members by using such institutional resources

as seats on prestige committees to reward members who

assist the party in attaining its collective goals. This reward

helps to explain why members vote with the party and con-

tribute electoral funds to parties or colleagues when these

activities pose some risk to own reelection efforts.

The evidence presented here shows that contributions

affect transfers in the 102nd through 107th Congresses. The

evidence also indicates that contributions have a greater

influence on switches to prestige committees than to policy

or constituency committees. The results demonstrate the

importance of fundraising as an indicator of party loyalty in

the contemporary partisan, high-cost electoral environment.

CONDITIONAL PARTY GOVERNMENT AND

COLLECTIVE ACTION

The aim of party leaders in Congress is to accomplish

the collective goals of the party through the achievement of

majority party status (Jacobson 1985-86). With majority

status comes the ability to structure and control the legisla-

tive process (Cox and McCubbins 1993), and thus makes it

easier for members of the majority party to achieve their

policy goals and to deliver benefits to constituents.

Although individual members favor majority status,

they also have individual goals. These include reelection,

advancement to leadership positions or another office, and

good public policy (Fenno 1973). Congressional party lead-

ers face a free rider problem in mobilizing members to

achieve collective goals. Majority status is a collective good.

Its benefits are available to all members of the majority party

re g a rdless of any individual member’s contribution to

achieving it. Even if members are willing to contribute to

151

Congressional Parties, Fundraising,

and Committee Ambition

ERIC S. HEBERLIG, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHARLOTTE

Congressional party leaders are hypothesized to use desirable committee assignments as a selective incentive

to entice incumbent members of Congress to contribute the collective good of the party’s campaign efforts.

Financial contributions to the party are an effective measure of party loyalty, particularly in an era of high levels

of party loyalty on roll call votes. This article analyzes committee transfers in the U.S. Congress from the 102nd

through the 107th Congresses. The evidence shows that the greater the amount an incumbent contributes to

party committees or party candidates, the more likely he or she will transfer to prestige committees. It also

demonstrates that fundraising has become more closely related to prestige committee transfers when margins

of party control in the House became very close after the Republican takeover.

NOTE: An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2001 Annual

Meeting of the American Political Science Association. I thank Ben

Bishkin, Burdett Loomis, Peter Radcliffe, brownbag participants at

UNC Charlotte, and the editor and reviewers for their comments

and assistance. I especially thank Bruce Larson for sharing his data

on campaign contributions by members of Congress from 1990

through 1994.

Political Research Quarterly,Vol. 56, Number 2 (June 2003) pp. 151-161