Redistributing Campaign Funds by U.S. House Members: The Spiraling Costs of the Permanent Campaign

• Published date: 01 November 2005
• Date: 01 November 2005
• Author: BRUCE A. LARSON,ERIC S. HEBERLIG
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3162/036298005X201699

597Redistributing Campaign Funds

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, XXX, 4, November 2005597

ERIC S. HEBERLIG

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

BRUCE A. LARSON

Gettysburg College

Redistributing Campaign Funds by

U.S. House Members: The Spiraling

Costs of the Permanent Campaign

In this article, we document and analyze the increase in the redistribution of

campaign funds by U.S. House members during the 1990 through 2000 election

cycles. By examining the contribution activity of members’ leadership PACs and

principal campaign committees, we show that House incumbents substantially

increased their contributions to other House candidates and to the congressional

campaign committees. The amount of money a member redistributes is a function of

that member’s institutional position: the greater the position’s level of responsibility

to the party caucus, the more campaign money the member redistributes, particularly

as competition for majority control increases. Also, a member’s capacity to raise

surplus campaign funds, his or her support for the party’s policy positions, and the

level of competition for partisan control of the institution all affect the amount the

member redistributes.

As Jacobson (1985–86) pointed out, the individual reelection

interests of House incumbents do not sit easily with the collective elec-

toral interests of the congressional parties. But while incumbents will

always give priority to their own reelections, there is clearly “a new

accommodation between incumbents’ individual and collective interests”

(Sorauf 1992, 118). This new accommodation is illustrated by the

increasing sums of campaign money provided by House incumbents to

their fellow party candidates and to the congressional campaign

committees (Bedlington and Malbin 2003; Herrnson 1997, 108–110;

Herrnson 2000, 97–100; Sabato and Larson 2002, 84–88).

This article offers an analysis of member-to-candidate and

member-to-party contribution activity in the U.S. House. Earlier research

by Wilcox (1989; 1990), Wilcox and Genest (1991), and Baker (1989)

considerably advanced our understanding of member contribution

activities, but these studies were conducted prior to the dramatic increase

598Eric S. Heberlig and Bruce A. Larson

in these activities that occurred during the 1990s. Moreover, this article

builds on the primarily descriptive accounts of member contribution

activities that have been offered by more-recent studies (Bedlington

and Malbin 2003; Herrnson 1997; Sabato and Larson 2002), providing

a theoretical basis for understanding this activity.

House Incumbents as Campaign Contributors

House members have several ways of contributing to other

candidates and to the party campaign committees. First, members can

make contributions through their principal campaign accounts, the

committees they use to raise and spend money for their own elections.

Second, members may contribute through “leadership” political action

committees, multicandidate committees sponsored by incumbents to

raise and spend money on political activities outside of their own

reelection campaigns. Contributions from both types of committees

are, in effect, redistributions of the campaign funds that incumbents

raise from individuals, political action committees (PACs), and political par-

ties. Hence, we refer to this behavior generally as “redistribution activity.”1

Different federal contribution limits govern donations from

members’ campaign committees and leadership PACs. For both types

of committees, moreover, the regulations governing contributions to

candidates differ from the regulations governing contributions to the

national parties. (See Table 1 for a summary of the regulations.)

Theory and Hypotheses

We begin with the assumption that members desire reelection but

also have goals of good public policy and power within the institution

(Fenno 1973). We also assume that all members would prefer to serve

in the majority party than in the minority party. Since it is the majority

party that structures and controls the legislative process in the House,

majority party members get policy outcomes closer to their ideal pref-

erences than do minority party members (Sinclair 2002; but see Krehbiel

1998). Membership in the majority party also gives incumbents signifi-

cant fund-raising advantages with corporate and trade PACs (Cox and

Magar 1999), thereby helping to advance members’ individual reelection

goals. Thus, we expect contribution patterns to be responsive to the

level of competition for majority control (see also Currinder 2003 and

Kolodny and Dwyre 1998). As we will detail later, this responsiveness to

competition will be especially important for members who have institu-

tional positions that are more valuable to members of the majority party.