UC Davis

In the 2020 election, candidates for the US House raised more than 8.7 billion dollars, and about 80 percent of it originated from contributors living outside members' congressional districts. These numbers raise normative concerns about who receives representation: the donors members need to run their campaign, or the voters members need to win it. This dissertation examines this tension by analyzing the extent to which out-of-district contributions to US House members' campaigns distort representation between members and their constituents. In Chapter 1, I derive a novel theoretical framework—the competing principals theory, which generates predictions about how members of Congress will balance multiple principals with distinct interests seeking to influence high-stakes policy outcomes and receive representation. In Chapter 2, I develop a new set of procedures for estimating the general and primary electorate's ideology on the CFscore scale. This data represents the first time anyone has estimated the general and primary electorate's ideology on the CFscore scale during these periods. In the final chapter, I leverage redistricting as an identification strategy to examine members' proximity and responsiveness to their voters and donors. I find evidence suggesting that out-of-district contributions may undermine representation between members and their voting constituents and, instead, favor campaign contributors. Overall, my dissertation raises warnings about the influence of money in politics, particularly about contributions that originate outside members' congressional districts.