Candidates and Campaigns: Costs of Campaigning, The
Campaigning is expensive, and the costs keep rising. Only people who have their own money or can put together an alliance of interests can finance a campaign. The constant need to raise campaign funds corrodes the process, says Tom Patterson. "You c...
Candidates and Campaigns: Paths to Political Office
There are two paths to public office, coming up through the party ranks or becoming an entrepreneur and raising campaign funds yourself. One of the most important assets in electoral politics is positive name recognition. This may come from a family...
Candidates and Campaigns: Effect of Contributions on a Politician's Vote, The
Serious academic studies of the effects of campaign contributions on an elected official's behavior in Congress find very little relationship. What contributions do buy is access to politicians, a valuable commodity considering how busy members of C...
Candidates and Campaigns: Mass-Marketing of Politics
In the past, party rallies and door-to-door canvassing could be handled by volunteers. Today's media-based campaigns need paid specialists, another reason today's campaigns are so expensive. Karen Paget talks about her work on the Dukakis campaign i...
Candidates and Campaigns: Slow Pace of Campaign Reform, The
The strategies that go into a successful campaign are well documented, but it is still hard for candidates to achieve the right combination and emerge the winner. Some change in the approach to political campaigns seems inevitable. The question is w...
Candidates and Campaigns: Contrast Between Early Congressmen and Today's Legislators
We need politicians; it is the way our democracy works. At the beginning of the republic people went to Congress with the idea of serving one term and then going home. This self-imposed term limit may seem admirable, but it did not allow people the ...
Candidates and Campaigns: Campaign Finance: Laws and Loopholes
The excessive amounts of money invested in political campaigns has resulted in demands for reform. Individual and party contributions to campaigns are limited by law. These hard money contributions can be spent any way the candidates choose. There i...
Candidates and Campaigns: Campaigns and the Media
In presidential campaigns, media consumes over half the dollars a presidential candidate spends. Increasingly, candidates for public office rely on television ads to get their message out. Some experts decry the fact that candidates can buy televisi...
Candidates and Campaigns: Campaign Finance: Call for Reform
Campaign finance reform is difficult to achieve because the people who must vote to change the system are its chief beneficiaries, the incumbent members of Congress. In addition the two political parties differ on what reform means. The Supreme Cour...