Political Party Adaptation in US Congressional Campaigns Why Political Parties Use Coordinated Expenditures to Hire Political Consultants

• Published in: Party politics Vol. 9; no. 6; pp. 729 - 746
• Main Authors: Kolodny, Robin, Dulio, David A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London,Thousand Oaks,New Delhi SAGE Publications 01.11.2003
• Subjects: Candidates; Consultants; Elections; Electoral campaigning; Employment; Expenditure; Expenditures; Legislative Bodies; Lower chamber; Organization; Political Campaigns; Political consultants; Political Parties; Political science; Political scientists; U.S.A; United States of America; coordinated expenditures; party organization; congressional elections; political consultant (marketer)
• ISSN: 1354-0688; 1460-3683
• DOI: 10.1177/13540688030096004

We argue that political parties in the US have consciously opted to employ political consultants for their candidates’ needs in order to help cultivate competitive national elections. Thus, consultant use by political parties does not signal party decline, but party adaptation. Further, the use of political consultants by the political parties is so complete that consultants can be considered employees of the political parties; not in the traditional sense of individuals on the payroll, but in the modern corporate sense of independent contractors who are hired to complete a defined project. We investigate how national political party committees spend the money they have allocated for individual candidates in congressional races using data from the 1998 and 2000 election cycles. We examine Federal Election Commission (FEC) records of payments political parties make via coordinated expenditures.