The Effect of Party Networks on Primary Elections October 2, 2020

The Effect of Party Networks on Primary Elections* Shawn Patterson, Jr.† October 2, 2020 Abstract Who controls nominations? Group-centered theories of parties predict that networked interests will compete in primaries to nominate candidates faithful to their agenda. Pre- vious attempts to test the electoral implications of this view have confronted the diffi- culties of observing group support directly. In this paper, I present a new measure – Existing Network Density – that detects group support indirectly through patterns in campaign contributions. Specifically, I measure the density of a candidate’s donor network in the previous election to infer which candidate’s have the support of durable, coordinated groups. I then estimate the influence of group support on a candidate’s likelihood of winning an open-seat House primary between 1982 and 2014. I find that candidates with group support perform substantially better after controlling for individual campaign resources. These findings suggest that while parties may not formally choose candidates, the coalition of interests comprising these parties can influence who wins the nomination. *I would like to thank Kathleen Bawn and John Zaller for advice and guidance throughout this project. I would also like to thank Jennifer Victor and Vanderbilt’s CSDI reading group for particularly helpful feedback on a previous draft. †Assistant Professor, Southern Oregon University. [email protected] 1 Introduction Pennsylvania Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz began laying the groundwork to challenge incumbent Re- publican Governor Tom Corbett soon after winning re-election in 2012. By mid-2013, the field of candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to her now-open 13th district had narrowed to four contenders: Valarie Arkoosh, a health care advocate and president of the progressive National Physicians Alliance; State Repre- sentative Brendan Boyle, the “union candidate” from the largely blue-collar area of Northeast Philadelphia; State Senator Daylin Leach, a “liberal lion” known for his “boisterous” advocacy of liberal social issues; and former Congresswoman Marjorie Margolies, whose campaign centered on her House tenure and relationship with the Clintons (see Cahn 2014). Given Margolies’ early polling and strong fundraising, she was considered the early favorite for the nomination. Despite her front-runner status and wide name recognition, Margolies was unable to carry that momen- tum over the finish line. Neither did Arkoosh nor Leach, the candidates with the greatest fundraising andPAC contributions, win the nomination. Behind in the polls, out-raised and out-spent by his opponents, Boyle won the Democratic primary with 41% of the vote to runner-up Margolies’ 27%. The heavy Democratic lean of the district would comfortably carry Boyle into Congress come November. What allowed Boyle to overcome Margolies’ numerous advantages to become the Democratic nominee? The overwhelming support of organized labor. This is not to suggest that the other candidates lacked group support. Arkoosh received endorsements from many medical organizations, including the American Med- ical Association, and received the majority of her campaign contributions from people working in medical fields. Leach was endorsed by many liberal leaning interest groups, such as the Progressive Change Cam- paign Committee. Groups like MoveOn.org also helped Leach raise tens of thousands of dollars from their network of activists. Margolies, while politically inactive in recent years, was an early success of EMILY’s List and maintained connections to its members and donors, not to mention her relationship with the Clintons. But none of Boyle’s competitors were able to match the scope and organization of labor’s support. Unions representing the electrical workers, carpenters, pipefitters, among others, issued endorsements, made do- nations, sent mailers, and directed independent expenditures in a coordinated attempt to secure Boyle the nomination. Behind the scenes these unions worked to discourage other Philadelphia-based candidates from running in the primary and used labor’s financial leverage over the local party to secure an endorsement from the chair of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, Congressman Bob Brady (see Gibson 2013). This gave Boyle 2 a geographic monopoly in Philadelphia, home to half of the districts registered Democrats. In the lead up to primary day, the unions also organized hundreds of volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls to mobilize Boyle’s supporters. While verifying these efforts in retrospect is difficult, on primary day exit poll surveyors reported seeing union members distributing campaign literature at all of the selected polling locations (DeMora et al. 2015). In another analysis, I find that these efforts increased turnout by approxi- mately 3% in Philadelphia.1 In sum, a network of Philadelphia trade unions marshaled a number of campaign resources and field management efforts to help nominate their preferred candidate. In this paper, I argue that group support is a crucial asset for candidates seeking their party’s nomination. Beyond the campaign resources these groups can provide, their efforts can shape the field of candidates in favor of their preferred candidate and signal credibility to primary voters. These benefits are often beyond the reach of “free agent” candidates who lack organized support. In this light, Boyle’s victory was not sim- ply a product of having more endorsements or a larger field operation, but the cumulative result of a more coordinated network of supporters leveraging all of their political influence on his behalf. Systematically observing the presence of group support, however, is challenging. Visible signals of group support, like endorsements, are difficult to observe after the primary, and the behind the scenes pressures that elites use to shape the field of candidates are often purposefully kept from the public eye. I propose a new measure – Existing Network Density (END) scores – to detect group support indirectly through patterns of coordination among campaign donors. Specifically, I use the density of a candidate’s donor network in the prior election cycle to determine which candidates have the support of durable, coordinated coalitions of supporters. I use this measure as a proxy for the quality, rather than quantity, of a candidate’s financial support and as a signal for which candidates will have access to the range of resources and field management efforts that come with organized group support. I find that candidates with greater END scores are more likely to win open-seat primaries to the House of Representatives between 1982 and 2014. Importantly, these effects are consistent over time and across party after controlling for traditional measures of candidate success, such as fundraising and prior elected experi- ence. While the observational nature of this data opens the analysis to endogeneity concerns – particularly that these networks are bandwagoning behind the eventual nominee, not causing their electoral success – I present qualitative and quantitative evidence from these contests suggesting that groups are indeed driv- ing the relationship. In sum, I argue that organized networks of support hold significant influence over the 1For the full analysis, see the Appendix on my website www.shawnpattersonjr.com/myresearch/. 3 selection of a party’s nominees for Congress. 2 Party Coalitions in the Extended Network As Schattschneider (1942) noted, “he who can make nominations is the owner of the party” – to under- stand the dynamics of nomination contests, we should look to the sources of influence within the political parties. Early studies of nominations focused on party organization’s formal ability to select the nominee (Key 1949; Merriam 1923). More recent work has expanded the concept of political parties to include the network of interest groups, activists, consultants, donors, and local party organizations informally associated with the national party organizations. In this view, the “extended party network” (Koger et al. 2010) recruits candidates, helps them win office, and works with them to enact their overlapping political agendas (Bawn et al. 2012). They achieve these ends by marshaling scarce campaign resources on behalf of their preferred candidate (Hassell 2018) and signaling to voters which candidates will be faithful agents for the party (Desmarais et al. 2015). Research on the extended party network (EPN) has made many contributions toward our understanding of the internal structure and composition of the major parties (see Koger et al. 2009; 2010; Skinner et al. 2012; Herrnson 2009). But given how central nominations play in the group-based theories of parties (see Bawn et al. 2012; McCarty and Schickler 2018), the ability of these intra-party coalitions to influence electoral outcomes has received comparatively little attention. The question has been largely addressed tangentially – addressing the ability of individual campaign resources to impact primary outcomes. Group support can provide candidates with campaign staff and advisers, canvassers and get-out-the-vote resources, independent expenditure campaigns, field-clearing efforts, fund-raising assistance, and numerous other benefits often beyond the reach of candidates without group support. In numerous studies, these resources have been found to individually aid candidates in their pursuit of nomination (see Cain 2013; Carnes 2018; Gerber and Green

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