Parties and Electoral Performance in the Market for Political Consultants

• Date: 01 August 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12083
• Published date: 01 August 2015
• Author: Gregory J. Martin,Zachary Peskowitz

GREGORY J. MARTIN

Emory University

ZACHARY PESKOWITZ

Ohio State University

Parties and Electoral

Performance in the Market

for Political Consultants

We investigate whether the hiring relationships of candidates and political con-

sulting firms better resembles the predictions of the “adversarial” or “allied” models of

consultant-party interaction. We find that the highest-quality consultants are not

allocated to the most competitive races, consultant-candidate relationships persist even

as candidates’ electoral prospects change, and firms who work for challengers face a

higher risk of market exit than firms working for incumbents. The market focuses

entirely on win-loss records and ignores the information on consultant performance

available in candidates’ vote shares. These findings depict a market driven by individual

candidate, rather than aggregate party, goals.

Political consultants are the architects of contemporary congres-

sional campaign strategy. Consultants help candidates develop advertise-

ments, shape campaign platforms, and allocate scarce resources across

different campaign activities (Medvic 2001; Sabato 1981; Shea 1996).

Consultants play an important role in disseminating knowledge about

effective campaign strategies (Nyhan and Montgomery 2015). As a

result, almost all competitive candidates hire at least one consulting f‌irm

to provide expert guidance. A major debate in the literature on political

consultants concerns the nature of the relationship between consulting

f‌irms and political parties. Some of the leading scholars in the f‌ield have

argued that consultants act as “surrogates” for parties (Kolodny and

Dulio 2003, 733). Other scholars contend that consultants and parties

have a more conf‌lictual relationship (Friedenberg 1997; Plasser 2001;

Sabato 1981; Shea 1996). The distinction between the two views is

clearly presented by Kolodny and Logan (1998), who distinguish

between “adversarial” and “allied” models of party-consultant relations.

The adversarial model stipulates that consultants offer competing serv-

ices to candidates and have supplanted party organizations in providing

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 40, 3, August 2015 441

DOI: 10.1111 /lsq.12083

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C2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa

campaign services to candidates. In contrast, the allied model stipulates

that political consultants internalize the objectives of their political party

and advance these goals in the electoral arena through their campaign

work.

We contribute to this literature through a series of analyses. Our

theoretical point of departure is the fundamental conf‌lict between the

goals of individual congressional candidates and the goals of their party

as a whole. We argue that these conf‌licts raise doubts about the strength

of the nexus between consultants and parties. If candidates are primarily

concerned with their own individual electoral prospects (Mayhew 1974)

as opposed to the electoral goals of their party, there is wide scope for

these disagreements. In an environment where effective consultants are

scarce, this observation immediately leads to a conf‌lict between the

objectives of candidates and those of the parties. Parties prefer to allocate

the most effective consultants to work in the races with highest ex ante

levels of competitiveness, where consultants’ potential marginal impact

is highest. If we think of high-quality consultants as a generic campaign

resource in a resource-allocation model like that of Snyder (1989), the

prediction that parties should target them to the most competitive races

emerges if parties attempt to maximize the expected number of legisla-

tive seats won or the probability of securing a majority. Individual candi-

dates, on the other hand, prefer to minimize the risk of losing their own

campaign by employing the highest-quality consultants available, regard-

less of their current electoral circumstances. In particular, risk-averse

incumbents in safe seats may still want to hire high-quality consultants

for their campaign even if their actual chance of losing reelection is

small. Consultants themselves may also choose to pursue individual

objectives—such as maximizing their f‌irm’s revenues or prof‌its—even

in cases where these objectives conf‌lict with those of their party.

We investigate whether the observed matches between individual

congressional candidates and consulting f‌irms better ref‌lect the predic-

tions of the allied or the adversarial models of party-consultant linkages.

Our analysis examines both sides of the consultant-candidate market-

place: the supply-side interests of consulting f‌irms and the demand-side

interests of congressional candidates and parties. Empirically, we show

that the conf‌lict between candidate and party goals manifests itself in the

allocation of consultants to candidates. First, we conf‌irm the results of

prior research that the majority of political consulting f‌irms work

exclusively for candidates from one major party. Second, using a variety

of methods and specif‌ications, we show that the highest-quality consul-

tants are in general not allocated to the most competitive campaigns,

where these consultants would have the highest marginal value to the

442 Gregory J. Martin and Zachary Peskowitz