Out‐of‐District Donors and Representation in the US House

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Brandice Canes‐Wrone,Kenneth M. Miller
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12336

361

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 47, 2, May 2022

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12336

BRANDICE CANES- WRONE

Princeton University

KENNETH M. MILLER

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Out- of- District Donors and

Representation in the US House

US House members have become increasingly reliant on out- of- district

individuals for fundraising. Yet we have little evidence on how such donations

might affect representatives’ policy decisions. Given the high partisanship known

to dominate House roll calls, do the preferences of individual donors influence

policymaking at all? And are members who rely on out- of- district contributions

more responsive to the preferences of the national donor base? This article ex-

amines these and related questions, producing three main findings. First, even

accounting for well- established partisanship in House voting, representatives

are responsive to the policy preferences of the national donor base. Second, this

donor responsiveness is positively associated with electoral safety, including when

redistricting exogenously induces the safety. Third, the higher a member’s reliance

on out- of- district donations, the greater is their responsiveness to the preferences

of the national donor base. Together, these findings suggest that current fundrais-

ing dynamics skew representation in significant ways.

Fundraising is a central part of US House members’ daily

routine. As former Representative David Jolly (R- FL13) describes,

upon joining the 113th Congress a party leader instructed him,

“your first responsibility is to hit $18,000 a day” (O’Donnell 2016).

Likewise, former Representative Tom Perriello (D- VA5) assesses

members spend at least half their time calling prospective donors

and attending fundraising events (Langhorne 2018). Notably, this

activity involves contributions to the party in addition to members’

own campaigns. As Perriello notes, “If you’re in a safe district,

you’re busy raising that money to give to the party” (Langhorne

2018).

In fact, the parties regularly distribute a “Members Dues

Report” that delineates each representative’s expected dues

and a fundraising target for the party campaign committee.

These amounts vary based on a representative’s internal status

© 2021 Washington University in St. Louis

362 Brandice Canes- Wrone and Kenneth M. Miller

including committee assignments and any chairmanship or lead-

ership position. For example, in the July 2020 Democratic report,

Representative James Clyburn (D- SC6), the Majority Whip, had

a fundraising target and dues totaling $3,800,000. By compari-

son, Representative Nydia Valázquez (D- NY7), Chair man of the

House Small Business Committee, owed $600,000 combined while

rank- and- file members owed $275,000.1. The reports, which are

distributed to all members, include details on the extent to which

each has met the assigned goals.

Individuals are a major source of funds, notwithstanding the

importance of political action committees (PACs) that represent

organized interests. For instance, Reynolds and Hall (2019) de-

termine that in 2016 the typical incumbent raised approximately

the same percentage from individuals (49%) and PACs (50%),

while general- election challengers raised more than three times

the amount from individuals than PACs. These figures represent

a shift from several decades ago; FEC data reveal that in 1990 the

median House incumbent raised 38% of their receipts from indi-

vidual donors. More generally, Barber and McCarty (2016, 58)

graph the fundraising portfolio of the average congressional can-

didate to demonstrate that the relative importance of individual

donors to PACs has grown steadily since 1980.2.

Moreover, for the typical House member, the majority of in-

dividual contributions are from outside the district (e.g., Gimpel,

Lee, and Pearson- Merkowitz 2008; Grenzke 1988). Indeed, the rise

of out- of- district donors is striking. As a percentage of individual

donations, the median House incumbent raised 42% from out-

of- district contributors in 1990, 64% in 2000, and 72% in 2010.3.

Contributing to this phenomenon, candidates swap contact infor-

mation on past contributors and rent access to their donor list to

candidates for other offices (Path 2019). Likewise, the party pro-

vides members lists of donors who have given to it and other can-

didates (O’Donnell 2016). Ultimately, neighborhoods that make

up less than 15% of the population account for the vast majority

of individual contributions (e.g., Bramlett, Gimpel, and Lee 2011).

Despite this increased importance of individual donors and

particularly out- of- district ones, little scholarly attention has been

given to analyzing the policy effects. A few existing studies use

one- dimensional ideology scores to examine how members’, do-

nors’, and voters’ ideology are associated (e.g., Bafumi and Herron

2010; Barber 2016b), but research suggests the scores measure

citizens’ consistency across issues rather than ideological distance

363Out- of- District Donors and Representation

(Broockman 2016). Moreover, these and other studies focus on a

member’s existing contributors, thereby creating inference issues

in disentangling responsiveness to donors from donors’ funding

of allies. There is some evidence on the Senate (Canes- Wrone and

Gibson 2019a, 2019b), but this work does not analyze out- of-

district contributors; furthermore, important chamber- level dif-

ferences suggest effects may be less likely in the House. While as

mentioned earlier, the average House incumbent receives roughly

equal funding from individual donors and PACs, the average

Senate incumbent receives over two- thirds (68%) from individual

donors (Reynolds and Hall 2019, 221). Parties also exercise signifi-

cantly more influence over legislative behavior in the House (e.g.,

Smith, Ostrander, and Pope 2013; Volden and Wiseman 2018).

In sum, we lack evidence on numerous questions regarding

the influence of individual donors on House members’ legislative

behavior. Are members responsive to the preferences of the na-

tional donor base? If so, does responsiveness vary according to a

member’s reliance on out- of- district contributions? And what is

the role of electoral safety in determining any such responsiveness?

This article conducts a series of tests to address these ques-

tions. With public opinion data over a set of roll calls from the

109th to 114th Congresses, we analyze whether members are re-

sponsive to the preferences of the national donor class, and if so,

how responsiveness depends on out- of- district donations and elec-

toral safety. The analysis leverages the change in district safety in-

duced by redistricting to obtain a causal estimate of how it affects

responsiveness to donor opinion. Additionally, we account for

the potential endogeneity of out- of- district donations in multiple

ways, including with two- stage least squares estimation.

Three main findings emerge. First, House members’ voting

is significantly associated with the preferences of their national

donor base, even after accounting for district opinion, the mem-

ber’s party, the primary electorate, and other factors. Second, re-

sponsiveness to national donor opinion is higher the safer is the

district, including when safety changes exogenously due to redis-

tricting. Third, the higher the proportion of out- of- district dona-

tions a member has received in recent years, the more responsive

they are to the preferences of the national donor class. Accordingly,

out- of- district contributions reduce geographic representation,

shifting members’ incentives away from the district towards the

national pool of donors. Because donors as a group are skewed

towards wealthy, older, male, and white individuals (e.g., Aldrich,