The CFI Small Donor Project - Campaign Finance Institute · 2019. 1. 29. · The CFI Small Donor...

The CFI Small Donor Project:

An Overview of the Project and a Preliminary Report on State Legislative Candidates' Perspectives on Donors and Volunteers

by

Michael J. Malbin, Campaign Finance Institute and

University at Albany, SUNY

Peter W. Brusoe, American University

Wesley Y. Joe, Campaign Finance Institute

Jamie P. Pimlott, Niagara University

Clyde Wilcox, Georgetown University

ABSTRACT: This is the first paper from a multi-year, multi-state Campaign Finance Insitute (CFI) research effort known as "The CFI Small Donor Project". The full project involves surveys of candidates in six states, survey of donors and non-donors in seven states and one city, and data analysis of individual contribution records from these jurisdictions and others. The paper outlines the full project and reports preliminary results from the candidate surveys. The candidates' responses are generally consistent with a theory that would see some small donor contributions as being social activities and that also would see contributions for a nontrivial number of small donors as being a gateway form of activity that potentially would increase both financial and nonfinancial participation by less affluent and middle income citizens. Confirmation and further analysis must await the results from our larger surveys of donors and nondonors.

The Campaign Finance Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit institute, affiliated with The George Washington University, which conducts objective research and education, empanels task forces and makes recommendations for policy change in the field of campaign finance. Our thanks are extended to The Carnegie Corporation, JEHT Foundation, Joyce Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Smith Richardson Foundation and The Stuart Family Foundation, which have helped support the institute’s work. Thanks also to Brendan Hennessy and Alex Madrak, who helped code responses from the survey of candidates. The authors’ statements, as with any statements from the Campaign Finance Institute or its Task Forces, do not necessarily reflect the views of CFI’s Trustees or financial supporters.

Paper prepared for delivery at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 29-September 2, Chicago, IL

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The CFI Small Donor Project Page 1 ©2007 The Campaign Finance Institute

The CFI Small Donor Project:

An Overview of the Project and a Preliminary Report on State Legislative

Candidates' Perspectives on Donors and Volunteers

Michael J. Malbin, Peter W. Brusoe, Wesley Y. Joe, Jamie P. Pimlott and Clyde Wilcox

his paper presents preliminary results from the first segment of a multi-year, multi-state Campaign Finance Insitute (CFI) research effort known as "The CFI Small Donor Project". The full project will involve surveys of candidates in six states, donors and

non-donors in seven states and New York City, and data analysis of individual contribution records from these states and others for 1999-2006. The paper outlines the rationale and methods for the full project, and then reports on the candidate surveys we conducted in six states in 2006.

I. Introduction

We begin with the policy issues that prompt our interest in small donors, followed by the theoretical questions about participation that drive the research. Since 1974, the focus of federal campaign finance debate has been about restrictions on funding. With the significant exceptions of disclosure and public funding for presidential candidates, the bulk of federal legislative, regulatory and judicial activity in one way or another has been about the existence, definition and scope of contribution limits. This focus continued with the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.1

The Supreme Court since 1976 has treated contribution limits as indirect restraints on free speech – less problematic than mandatory spending limits, but nevertheless permissible only if narrowly drawn and serving a sufficiently compelling public interest. To date, the Court has accepted only one rationale as being sufficiently compelling: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption (Persily and Lammie 2004)2. While the corruption rationale has 1 BCRA's ban on "soft money" limited all contributions to federal political parties and to state party money spent for "federal election activities". Title II of the law, on "electioneering," extended the existing bans on corporate and labor union funding of federal election campaign activity to include a prohibition of such funding for any broadcast advertising that names a federal candidate within sixty days of a general election or thirty days of a primary. 2 Election law professor Richard L. Hasen has argued that the Court was toying with a broader rationale when it upheld BCRA in McConnell v. FEC (2003) – one he saw moving toward Justice Breyer's willingness to accept limits that promote "a kind of political equality" (Hasen, 2004:31). This rationale is unlikely to be pursued by a majority of the current Court, with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito having replaced Chief Justice Rehnquist

T


therefore been central to the constitutional law of campaign finance, its importance to the legal debate has had the unfortunate side effect of dampening policy discussions that could and should rest on broader concerns.

Among scholars, campaign finance policy traditionally has been discussed in the name of at least five different types of objectives: (1) restraining corruption or the appearance of corruption, (2) fostering electoral competition, (3) promoting greater equality among, and greater participation by, citizens in the political process, (4) altering either the process or the end products of policy making, and (5) strengthening the actual or perceived relationship between citizens and their government. The last two of these goals are generally presented as growing out of one or more of the first three. The Court, as noted, has recognized only the first as a justification for limits. But the Court has never questioned a legislature's ability to pursue competition or civic equality through methods that do not limit speech (or through ones that involve limits accepted voluntarily in return for a benefit). The key policy questions are: can these goals in fact be enhanced through campaign finance policy intervention, with what consequences, and how do the various proposed methods compare? The Campaign Finance Institute's project concentrates on the goal of participation by small donors for both scholarly and practical reasons. There has been virtually no scholarship about the interaction between campaign finance policy and the broader arenas of political and civic participation, in part because good information has been lacking. There is a great deal of received wisdom about how policy recommendations might make such a connection. Our instincts suggest (and advocates have argued) that some mechanisms – such as matching funds, tax credits or other forms of public funding – could well encourage more small donors to participate. But we know much less than we should about why small donors give, the similarities and differences between small and large donors, or how giving relates to other forms of their political and civic engagement. As a result, we do not really know the best way to connect policies to the desired end. A. Background It is well known that only a small fraction of the population contributes to political candidates and that these donors disproportionately are wealthy.3 Contribution limits can restrain the amount that any one donor gives, but candidates continue to raise the bulk of their money from major donors, even under a system with limits (Malbin and Cain, 2007). Some have argued that this means contribution limits should be even lower. There are two problems with this. First, the Supreme Court in Randall v. Sorrell (2006) overturned Vermont's contribution limits on First

and Justice O'Connor, the latter of whom was part of the five member majority on the McConnell court's most closely divided issues. 3 For example, more than half of all presidential campaign contributions in 2000 came from donors who gave $1000 or more. Fully 95 percent of those donors had incomes of $100,000 or more, compared with 5 percent of all households. See Wilcox, et al, 2003; APSA Task Force 2004, p.7, citing CFI 2003, p.107.


Amendment grounds for being too low.4 While we do not know how low will be too low for a future Court, the constitutional bottom is still likely to be well above what most people can afford. Second, and more fundamentally, when we move away from corruption-related issues to pursue equality and civic participation, we have to ask whether limits are the best (or only) way to move toward those goals. Contribution limits are structured most clearly to affect the directness of a relationship between candidates, office holders or party officials and donors. But there are so many constitutionally protected ways for wealthy people to influence elections without giving directly -- even before the Supreme Court's June 2007 decision in Wisconsin Right to Life Committee v. FEC -- that there is only so much one can hope to accomplish in the name of equality through limits. Perhaps a more interesting approach would be to develop policies that would increase political speech and participation, rather than devoting one's full energy to squeezing the top. Of course, everything we know about mobilization and participation tells us that only a small fraction of the people are ever likely to contribute to politics, even under the most optimistic of scenarios (Verba, Schlozman and Brady, 1995). But it would only require a small fraction to make a big difference. One example based on past CFI research illustrates this point. CFI conducted a controlled experiment in 2002 in the state of Ohio, the results of which were published in journal article co-authored by Robert Boatright, Donald Green and Michael Malbin (2006). Ohio has a little-used 100% tax credit for small donors – one that is available, unfortunately, only to taxpayers who fill out the state's long income tax return form. In the experiment the co-authors mailed non-partisan literature to inform voters of the tax credit in a sample set of geographical areas (specifically, 800 nine-digit zip codes). The purpose was to see whether informing people of the credit would increase small contributions and use of the credit. The experiment showed a statistically significant increase in the treatment zip codes. This came on the heels of an earlier published Ohio study by Boatright and Malbin (2005, based on 2002 statewide surveys of donors and non-donors) that suggested the potential for even stronger effects, particularly among low-income and younger non-donors (who disproportionately use the short tax form). While we cannot predict from these studies how many Ohio users would use the tax credit if it were designed and publicized properly, our findings are not inconsistent with looking on a three percent use as a reasonable interim goal. That would be roughly six times the current statewide rate, but well within the rates for Minnesota's system and for the erstwhile federal 50 percent political tax credit on the books from 1972 though 1986. While three percent may seem insignificant, if three percent of Ohio's voting age citizens had contributed only the $50 reimbursed by the tax credit, that alone would have equaled all of the contributions that election year to both of the state's major party candidates for governor from all sources combined. So the potential policy payoffs for concentrating on this subject could be substantial. But it would be premature to go beyond the word "potential" at this stage. The purpose of the larger CFI project is to begin testing this proposition more fully.

4 Vermont permitted individuals to contribute a maximum of $400 to a candidate for governor, $300 for state senator and $200 for state representative.


II. The Rationale for an Interest in “Small Donor Democracy”

Beyond the issue of reducing candidate dependence on large contributions, we want to know whether bringing more small donors into the campaign finance system can help to slow or even reverse the broader decline of political participation, including participation in modes that renew stocks of social capital. A community’s stock of social capital is replenished or strengthened by directly collaborative activity among its members. One question we intend to ask in the larger project, therefore, is whether contributing money can either help stimulate or at least be an integral part of such participation. If contributing to a campaign is linked to other, associational forms of participation, enlarging the pool of donors could yield social capital gains. As noted earlier, there is a dearth of research about the relationship between contributing money and other forms of political participation, but four possibilities immediately suggest themselves.

In one scenario, new donors essentially would be those who are already politically active. Bringing these people into the donor pool may produce, at best, marginal increases in overall levels of participation, without net gains in social capital. Francia et al.’s (2003) study of individual donors to Congressional campaigns found that many are involved in a variety of organizations. Numerous studies of charitable and other nonprofit organizations have found that large proportions of donors also volunteer. Putnam (2000) cites some of these studies and notes that many fundraisers tap members of an existing social network to raise money. In such cases, the act of contributing does not necessarily promote social capital formation, although contributing may constitute a small part of a series of ongoing, reciprocally beneficial social interactions that at least sustain social capital.

Two other scenarios involve new donors who become donor specialists – that is, citizens

who limit their participation to contributing money. In one scenario, previously inactive citizens become consistent donors who specialize in giving. In another, citizens who participate, perhaps marginally, in nonfinancial modes substitute contributing money for their nonfinancial participation and then remain donor specialists. This third scenario is potentially the worst case because if asocial contributing replaces collaborative participation, an important source of social capital would atrophy.

Some studies of political participation suggest that enlarging the number of individual

donors could produce a large number of donor specialists. Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995) found that citizen participants in election campaigns are more than twice as likely to give money only as they are either to give time only or to give both time and money. Reviewing a larger longitudinal series of detailed survey evidence, Putnam (2000) concluded that, since the 1970s, Americans are more likely to engage in solitary, personally “expressive” modes of political participation, such as contacting an official about an issue, than in modes that require direct social interaction, such as working for a political party. Although Putnam’s analysis of the survey data did not examine contributing per se, many regard “checkbook participation” as an asocial form of political or civic involvement.5

5 Putnam himself offers varying perspectives on giving money and may allow that contributing can be part of an activity that renews social ties. Sometimes he depicts contributing as a solitary activity that contributes little if anything to social capital formation (e.g., 2000, p. 51). Elsewhere, however, he seems to suggest that contributing


Whether donor specialists’ participation promotes social capital formation may depend

partially on the extent to which they give in socially isolated or socially integrative modes. If contributors give largely in asocial modes, increasing the number of donors might add little to social capital stocks and could even deplete them. This concern is warranted by research on interest groups (see e.g., Skocpol 1999, Putnam 2000) that found that citizen participation in some groups consists of little more than mailing a check or using a credit card over the Internet.

But donors do also give in socially integrative modes. Campaigns, parties, and interest

groups often raise money at gatherings that are at least as associational as are forms of campaign work (e.g., envelope stuffing sessions) that many analysts routinely praise for their cooperative character. Additionally, broad, socially integrative support mobilization events organized primarily for some reason other than fundraising may include fundraising as a matter of fiscal prudence. Events for recruiting volunteer phone bank callers or literature distributors, for example, usually cost money. A campaign’s capacity to stage such events depends partially on whether they impose, at worst, low net financial costs. One can object that using a chicken wing eating contest, for example, to raise campaign funds can depoliticize giving as a form of participation. Nevertheless, giving that is incorporated into a social event can promote social capital formation. A. Contributing Money as a Gateway Form of Political Participation

A fourth possible relationship between contributing and other forms of participation intrigues us most. In this scenario, contributing serves as a gateway action that leads to additional political participation in other modes, including modes that sustain or build social capital. In the archetypal case, the sequence of events would proceed as follows. After a donor gives money, the recipient or some other mobilizing agent involved in the transaction may follow up with requests for other forms of participatory support, such as staffing a phone bank. If the donor was previously uninvolved in politics and accedes to the request for volunteer support, the act of giving money contributed to the donor’s further political engagement, perhaps in some collaborative form that adds social capital.

Although we do not yet know how often contributing money leads to additional

participation, our preliminary interviews with some Ohio campaign activists reveal that it can. A member of Ohio’s Delaware County Republican Party (DCRP) Central Committee offered a nearly archetypal example. Each year, the DCRP holds a clay shoot to raise money and build its activist base. A statewide grassroots group of gun owners’ rights advocates, the Buckeye Firearms Association, helps to organize and promote the event, which features an opportunity to meet elected officials. The party committee member described the sequence of events this way: “Our $75 shooters come mostly to shoot. Once we get their checks we put them into our database...Our intent is to ask them to do other things—some grassroots stuff or make future donations to the party.” She elaborated that grassroots work includes door-to-door canvassing, making phone calls on behalf of candidates, and organizing a group of citizens to meet a money, at least in the form of philanthropic giving, can be part of a series of ongoing, reciprocally beneficial collaborative interactions (2000).


candidate who makes a local stop during a campaign bus tour, among other things. For many who eventually provided volunteer support, the contribution at the clay shoot may well have been a gateway political action. According to the party committee member, “About 50 percent of the people who were not politically active become active. I know this because we got them to make some phone bank calls for local candidates last year” (Carducci 2007).

Other accounts indicate that other mobilizers employ the strategy of recruiting donors to

volunteer. During the 2004 presidential election, for example, Karl Rove directed campaign staff in the crucial battleground state of Ohio to keep records of small donors and to ask those donors to contribute time to the campaign. A political professional who worked on the Ohio campaign described the effort this way:

I do recall in the late summer ’04 being asked to make a list of every donor who gave under $50 (or something like that) and contact them to volunteer. The theory was that they’d probably like to give more money but couldn’t afford it…. Therefore, they’d like to make up for that by making phone calls, going door to door, etc. It really did work…. [One elderly lady] wrote checks each month for $28.35, or $15.67 … whatever balance she had at the end of the month. She made more phone calls for us than anyone else.6

Of course, we do not know how many of the small donors in this second example were politically active before they gave for the 2004 campaign. But the account suggests that some campaign professionals conceive of at least a mutually reinforcing relationship between contributing and other, cooperative forms of political participation. An Ohio state legislator who responded to CFI’s 2006 state legislative candidates’ survey reported a similar experience with his own recruiting efforts: “I have a large base of small donors. I love them. Once people contribute to your campaign, they are on the team and really do things for you.”

In one respect, this is unsurprising. Mobilizers are rational prospectors of potential

volunteer activists (Brady, Schlozman, and Verba 1999). From the mobilizer’s perspective, the underlying logic of the gateway sequence is a simple extension of the pervasive commercial sales practices of cross-selling and up-selling, in which a firm attempts to persuade someone who has purchased one of its products to buy another, perhaps more expensive of its product. From this perspective, it would be surprising if candidates, party organizations, and interest groups did not ask at least some of their donors for volunteer support. Indeed, some campaign management software encourages this integrated approach to contacting prospective activists, because it adapts the logic of commercial customer relationship management software.

Nonincumbent candidates may employ this strategy more often, because they are less

likely to have extant lists of donors and volunteers. To the extent that the donors who eventually volunteer were previously active politically, the results of Rove’s strategy are more consistent with the first scenario of our four. But the Ohio Republican party official’s experience with the clay shoot suggests that a nontrivial proportion of donors can experience a gateway effect.7 6 E-mail correspondence from campaign professional, July 26, 2007. 7 Our belief that the sequence of events can follow the “contributing as gateway action” path is also grounded in lessons from decades of community organizing experience. When building a grassroots community group, organizers may ask members to contribute a small amount of money to the organization in the form of annual


B. Policy Opportunities If the act of contributing money to a campaign can take collaborative forms or can serve as a gateway form of political participation, one intriguing policy question is whether these facts hold true for small donors and if so to what extent. Small donors are often less affluent and therefore frequently come from the segment of society that is least inclined to participate in politics (see, e.g., Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995). While people with less disposable money may be a tough group to reach, its low rate of participation also mean it has the most room to grow. In particular, they may be more responsive than richer donors to donor incentive programs (such as a tax credit or rebate), and they may be most sensitive to a program that imposes minimal net transaction costs. This condition is interesting because it holds the potential for states to use public policy to stimulate political involvement and social capital formation beyond whatever might result from the sheer act of giving money – even beyond that of giving in one of the socially integrative modes noted earlier. If incentive program gains are proportionally higher among the less affluent, the program would yield the additional benefit of reducing participatory inequality.

C. Candidates as Mobilizing Agents

An incentive program’s capacity to produce these results depends heavily on the actions of mobilizing agents. As a practical matter, governments that enact such programs will probably not spend much money to advertise them. Even if a government actively promoted such a program, nonpartisanship requirements would probably constrain the promotion effort’s capacity to inspire high response rates. By default, then, donor incentive programs rely primarily on mobilizing agents for implementation. Campaign contributors frequently give in response to a request for money (Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995), and, in the typical cases, this is probably even truer in lower salience elections, such as those for state offices. In a study of Ohio’s tax credit for political contributions, Boatright and Malbin (2005) found that individuals usually gave money to a candidate’s campaign after receiving a request from the candidate.

The degree to which a donor incentive policy achieves the second-order objectives of

catalyzing additional political involvement and social capital formation also depends, at least partially, on whether mobilizing agents ask small donors for volunteer help. Citizens often

membership dues. The Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (ICCI), for example, asks members to pay annual dues that range between $25 (for individuals) member and $35 (for a family membership). ICCI, like many community organizations, does not rely on the membership dues for a significant portion of its annual operating budget. Dues payment is valued more for its presumed role in binding members, particularly new members, to the organization. In this view, the act of contributing money helps to create and sustain members’ sense of ownership investment in the organization. The organization’s leaders then capitalize on the sense of ownership to motivate members to participate in the more socially integrative activities, such as issue-oriented rallies and public “accountability” meetings with government officials (Lenfert 2007). The analogy has limited applicability to political campaigns. Unlike community organizations, many political campaigns, particularly nonincumbent campaigns, are not ongoing concerns. Hence the applicability of the analogy is limited. The analogy is more germane to more durable institutions, such as political party organizations and interest groups.


participate only when such agents ask them to do so (see, e.g., Rosenstone and Hansen 1993). In preliminary interviews, we sensed that at least some candidates and other contribution solicitors may find that their list of small donors is rich ground for cultivating campaign volunteers. There may, for example, be a kind of division of labor among people who contribute various amounts of money. Candidates and others may be less willing to ask for donations of time from people who donate a lot of money. Donors who give large sums know that they have given a lot and may think that by doing so, they have done “their fair share” of the effort to help the candidate or party win the election. Recall the comments from the campaign professional who worked on the Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection effort in Ohio. Some small donors may want to give more than their limited financial means will permit. Hence they make up the difference by giving their time. III. CFI’s Small Donor Project

To probe donors' motivations and the various forms of their political engagement, the bulk of the CFI Small Donor Project’s research will be based on parallel sample surveys of donors and nondonors, supplemented by the candidate surveys to be described in this paper. The donor and nondonor surveys will be administered in three pairs of states (Minnesota-Iowa, Arizona-Colorado and Ohio-Pennsylvania) plus Connecticut and New York City. Each of the three state pairs includes one state with a program designed to stimulate participation by small donors (tax credits or rebates, public matching funds, or full public funding systems with qualifying contributions) and a parallel state that is similar politically and demographically but that does not have such a program. The states and bases for comparison are described and then listed in the table below. The study states and NYC all have lower disclosure thresholds than the federal government, which is what allows us to include small donors in our random selection.

Within each state, we will administer a survey to 800 donors whose names will be chosen randomly from 2006 donor files supplied by the National Institute on Money in State Politics.8 Selection procedures will be designed to produce a sufficient number of cases to permit analyses of small and large donors to gubernatorial and legislative candidates. A second sample of non-donors will also be surveyed The paired surveys within each state will permit us to compare small donors, large donors and non-donors, while the paired states will permit comparisons of states with small donor incentive programs and those without. There will be a substantial overlap of survey questions about motivations, participation and knowledge across states and across the donor and non-donor samples, although a few questions may be specific to each state's law or politics. A. Survey Jurisdictions Minnesota-Iowa: Minnesota gives public money to political parties and to candidates who agree to abide by a spending limit. The amount of public funds varies with the office being 8 The NIMSP files first were treated so individuals who gave more than one contribution would have their names combined into one record.


sought, with grants being no more than fifty percent of the candidate's spending limit. Because these are direct grants, and not matching funds, they do not act directly as small donor incentives. However, individuals may get up to $50 per year in rebates for contributions to political parties or to candidates who participate in the public funding system. Because this is a rebate, and not a tax credit, contributors may get their money back quickly instead of waiting for the next tax season, which makes this a good state to study for the impact of a donor incentive. The comparison state will be Iowa, which is similar to Minnesota in many respects (see Table 1 below) but which has no donor incentive program and no limit on the size of individual contributions to candidates. Ohio-Pennsylvania: Ohio has a 100 percent tax credit for contributions to candidates or parties of up to $50 per individual or $100 on a joint return. The credit, as described more fully earlier in this proposal, is available only on the long form of the state’s income tax return. Therefore, the argument that the credit will stimulate small donors is attenuated by the fact that the two groups most likely to be affected in our previously published Ohio survey – young people and people with below median incomes – are also least likely to use the long income tax return form. Despite this limitation, the state should allow a good analysis of those who choose to use the credit, compared with other donors and non-donors. The comparison state will be Pennsylvania, which is similar to Ohio economically, ethnically and in rates of voter participation. Pennsylvania has no donor incentive program and no limits on contributions from individuals to candidates. Arizona-Colorado: Arizona has a voluntary full public funding system, known as a "Clean Money" system. Under this system, candidates who agree to abide by spending limits, and who raise a specified number of $5 qualifying contributions, receive a grant to cover all of their election expenses. While most of the statewide candidates in the last election were Clean Money candidates, only about 55 percent of the state legislative candidates took the public funding. Therefore, this state lets us look at the political participation behavior of large and small donors to privately funded candidates, as well as at people who give $5 qualifying contributions to publicly funded candidates. To permit a proper analysis of this additional tier of donors, the donor sample in Arizona will be expanded from 800 to 1200. The non-donor sample will remain at 400, as in other states. The comparison state will be Colorado, which is relatively similar ethnically and has reasonably comparable rates of voter turnout. Colorado does not have public campaign finance or political contribution tax credits. The inflation-adjusted limits for 2006 on individual contributions (to candidates who do not accept full public funding) are $760 for a gubernatorial and $296 for a legislative candidate; in Colorado an individual may give $500 to a gubernatorial candidate and $200 to a legislative candidate.

[Table 1 here] In addition to the three basic pairs of states, CFI will be administering its donor and nondonors survey in two additional targets of opportunity. Connecticut will be launching a Clean Money style of full public system in 2008. In November 2006, CFI conducted a pre-election survey of registered voters in Connecticut as part of a team of scholars who are planning a two-election, before-and-after study of that state. (The others are Keith Hamm, Robert Hogan, Raymond La Raja and Kenneth Mayer.) In addition, we will administer the post-election donor


and non-donor surveys in Connecticut to help enrich the Connecticut team's two-election analysis of the impact of public funding on participation and public attitudes in that state. The advantage of including Connecticut in 2006 and 2008 stems not only from the unique opportunity to study a new program before and after its implementation, but from the equally unique fact that Connecticut is the only “Clean Election” state so far in which the initial qualifying contributions may range up to $100. This will provide a rich sample of $50-$100 qualifying donors to compare to people who gave, and who will give, in the same amounts to privately funded candidates.

New York City, unlike the other seven jurisdictions above, will hold its election in 2007 and not 2006. Despite this, we have decided to administer the donor and nondonor survey there because the city – unlike any state – offers a four-for-one match for small contributions to candidates for the city council and not just to executive officers. The typical campaign matching fund formula provides for a dollar-for-dollar match, following the formula for presidential primaries. It is reasonable to believe that a multiple-matching fund system would give candidates a powerful incentive, and a powerful tool, for raising money from small donors. The candidate (like a fundraiser for public broadcasting) would be able to say: "your $20 bill is worth $100 to help win this election." Three states have two-for-one matching programs on the books for statewide offices. Kentucky's has not been operational since the legislature denied funding for the program. New Jersey did not have a statewide election in 2006. Rhode Island's system was used by the state's gubernatorial challenger in 2006 but not the incumbent. Thus New York City is the best available venue for testing a multiple-matching fund program. B. Candidate Surveys

The surveys of donors and non-donors were preceded by a mail survey of 2006 election state legislative candidates in the first six jurisdictions that we chose to study: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. These are the surveys we describe in the rest of this paper. Among other things, we assessed the extent to which candidates’ mobilization activity involves a process of recruiting small donors to participate in other ways. We also asked candidates to tell us whether small donors volunteer for such additional campaign support. For candidates in two of the states with donor incentive programs, Minnesota and Ohio, the survey included questions that tap beliefs about the programs’ incentive power and probed for a possible effect on respondents’ fundraising solicitation strategies. IV. Candidate Survey Methods and Data Most of the data analyzed in this paper come from an original mail survey of incumbent candidates and major party nonincumbent candidates who ran in the 2006 general election. We administered the survey to all 1492 such candidates in the three basic pairs of states identified earlier under “Survey Jurisdictions.” We surveyed the candidates for several reasons. First, as noted above, the research literature contains few studies of the relationship between individual campaign donors and other forms of political participation, particularly in state legislative elections. Accordingly, we asked the candidates in all of our states to tell us about campaign


volunteer support from their donors, and their efforts to recruit both volunteers and donors. Second, also discussed earlier, a donor incentive program will probably depend substantially on election mobilization agents, including candidates, for implementation. Hence in the states with small donor incentive programs, we asked candidates for their views about the program that their state offers. Some questions tapped the candidates’ evaluations of the incentive’s capacity to motivate contributing. Another question inquired about the degree to which the program led candidates to direct donor solicitations at less affluent prospects. Third, to learn more about candidates’ reliance on various methods of soliciting funds, we asked the candidates in all states to tell us how often they use each one of several distinct methods.

We obtained candidates’ contact information from the state office in charge of elections,

or if that was not available we contacted the state parties for more information. We sent an advance letter that described CFI and the survey on the Friday preceding the November 2006 general election. We expected that most candidates would receive the letter immediately after the election. Approximately a week later, we mailed the first wave of the survey instrument and included a postage-paid return envelope. We sent a reminder postcard one week after mailing the survey instrument. A second wave of the instrument went out a week after that. A final reminder letter was mailed a week after the second wave. The schedule was somewhat compressed. To the extent possible, we wanted to avoid complications created by the holiday season. To assist the candidates with any issues they may have, we provided an email address and a dedicated phone line for the candidate survey.

We received 417 survey responses for a response rate of 27.95%. The distribution of

response rates across states appears in Table 2.

[Table 2 about here] The response rate from Arizona is unusually high. This may be attributable to the relatively shorter length of the survey administered to Arizona candidates.9 While the response rate for the candidates in the six states falls below those commonly found in public opinion surveys, it is reasonable by the standard of other surveys of elites (e.g., Herrnson, Lay and Stokes, 2003; Maisel and Stone, 1997). The small number of responses in each state severely limits the generalizability of the results from any individual state. Most analyses in the next section of this paper, however, combine the responses from all of the states. From Arizona, the analyses include only the privately financed candidates. For the analyses of all combined states, we weighted the data to create equal numbers of incumbents and non-incumbents in each state, and to create equal numbers of respondents for each state. The weights prevent one state or one type of candidate from dominating the analysis. Incumbents were generally less likely than nonincumbents to respond to the survey. There are at least two likely explanations for this. First, incumbents often have more to lose by responding to surveys like ours. Second, some incumbents, including some

9 The Arizona version of the instrument included a separate section for candidates who qualified for public campaign funding under the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act. Since the Arizona instrument had to accommodate two separate types of candidates in the same eight-page space that we used in the other states, we could ask fewer questions of the candidates in Arizona.


who ran without opposition, returned the questionnaire with a note indicating that they did not run more than a token campaign at best and therefore did not have much to say about their 2006 campaign activities. The distributions of the unweighted and weighted numbers of respondents appear in Table 3.

[Table 3 about here] In the subsequent discussion of the surveys, we first review combined results from the six states on how the candidates solicit contributions as well as the candidates' perceptions about their donors' nonfinancial volunteer contributions to their campaigns. This is followed by a separate discussion of the candidates' responses to donor incentive programs in Minnesota and Ohio. V. Contributing, Political Involvement, and Social Capital

One potential policy goal for a small donor incentive program is that it could help to stem or even reverse the broader decline of political participation, particularly participation in modes that sustain or renew stocks of social capital. As noted earlier, we suspect that the act of contributing money itself can take collaborative forms that promote the formation or renewal of social ties among citizens. We also suspect that (and therefore our research plans to test whether) the act can trigger a sequence of political interactions that draw new or sporadic donors into more or more regular, respectively, political involvement in nonfinancial modes. In this section, we report on candidates' perceptions of these issues with respect to their own donors and volunteers.

A. Financial Contributing and Social Interaction

We look first at candidates’ reports of the frequency with which they used a variety of methods for raising money. The survey inquired about methods that are socially integrative, such as social events, and others that contact prospective donors through relatively private channels, such as direct mail. We asked candidates to tell us separately about their use of each method for two types of prospective donors: those whom the candidate expected to contribute $50 or less (designated as "small donors" in the tables), and those whom the candidate believed might give the campaign its largest contributions. We used the figure of $50 because the donor incentive programs in Minnesota and Ohio reimburse donors for contributions up to that amount.

The responses, reported in Figure 1, indicate that candidates employ a mix of asocial and

socially integrative fundraising methods. The candidates’ responses about each method appear as a separate graph within Figure 1.

Consistent with the view of donors as check-writing isolates, high proportions of both

types of candidates (incumbents and nonincumbents) reported extensive use of direct mail, particularly when soliciting funds from prospective small donors. A majority of the incumbents (54.7 percent) indicated that they “almost always” used direct mail to solicit funds from potential small contributors. Many nonincumbents (41.9 percent) reported a similar frequency of use for this type of prospect (see Figure 1b.). Less frequently, candidates also reported having sent mass


e-mail messages to recruit small donors (Figure 1c.). Nonincumbents were more likely to have used mass e-mailings; more than a quarter (27.1 percent) said that they “often” or “almost always” sent e-mail to prospective small donors to their 2006 campaigns. Use of paid radio or newspaper ads, reported in Figure 1d, was apparently less common. Nonincumbents were most likely to solicit funds with paid ads. But some of the candidates’ paid ads may have publicized fundraising events. Consequently, we do not know the extent to which we should characterize the ads as 1) an impersonal method of solicitation or 2) part of a socially integrative mode (that is, as an element of the fundraising events).

[Figure 1 here]

Although candidates’ responses reveal frequent use of fundraising methods that

encourage contributing through asocial giving channels, candidates also told us that they frequently used socially integrative methods. As illustrated in Figure 1e, half of the nonincumbents and nearly 40 percent of the incumbent respondents said that they “often” or “almost always” tried to raise small contributions by holding campaign events, such as dinners, rallies, or picnics. Thirty percent of the incumbents and nearly a quarter of the nonincumbent candidates stated that they “almost always” used this method in 2006. For somewhat textured information about the social events, we asked the candidates whether they hold particular fundraising events for prospective donors of $50 or less. Fifty-eight percent of the incumbents and 63 percent of the nonincumbents said that they did, and many described some of their own campaign events in terms that suggest that such events can promote social capital formation. Respondents reported holding an impressive variety of social occasions—chili cook-offs, ice cream socials, karaoke nights, chicken wing eating contests, and even a bowling event—to raise small campaign contributions.

The responses to these questions are merely suggestive. From the measures in this

survey, we do not know how many prospective donors received any particular type of request (e.g., direct mail, invitation to a fundraising event). The survey of donors and non-donors (described earlier in this paper) includes several questions that tap this information. B. Donors’ Additional Political Involvement

We also wanted to know how many donors remain donor specialists and how many contribute time as well as money. Hence we asked the candidates to estimate the proportions of their donors whose campaign participation extend beyond contributing money. To see whether the volunteerism levels differ between a campaign’s small donors and its largest donors, the survey asked candidates to estimate the level of volunteerism for these two types.

[Figure 2 here]

Figure 2 reports candidates’ responses about four types of campaign activity. (We also

asked about help with transporting voters to the polls, but the proportions were too small to merit reporting.) Each figure breaks out the report by the type of candidate who responded, and then the type of donor to the candidate. For example, the third bar from the left in the figure’s first


chart indicates that 24.7 percent of the nonincumbent respondents said that between a quarter to a half of their small donors urged others to vote for the candidate, perhaps by volunteering to make phone bank calls or by participating in a door-to-door canvassing effort. In this same bar, 30.8 percent of the candidates made the same claim about more than half of their small donors (18.1 percent plus 12.7 percent). In sum, the bar indicates that more than half (55.5 percent) of the nonincumbent respondents told us that at least a quarter of their small donors participated in this way. By comparison, 37.8 percent of the incumbents made a similar claim about their small donors (the sum of 11.3 + 9.9 + 16.6 in the bar on the far left in the same chart), while more than one in five (11.3 + 9.9 percent) estimated that at least half of their small donors participated in this socially integrative way.

The results for small donors are striking when compared with the proportion of persons

who tell National Election Studies (NES) interviewers that they urged someone else to vote for or against a particular candidate or political party. In a typical presidential election year, about a third of the NES respondents claim to have done this (see Figure 3). Of course, we expect a random sample of Americans to participate at a lower rate than donors, but this is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that the scope of the NES question is extremely broad. The NES question implicitly encompasses even casual conversations about any candidate or political party seeking elective office in the year of the survey. In contrast, the CFI question asked specifically about a more demanding variant of this form of participation: helping a campaign to ask others to vote for a state legislative candidate, particularly as part of a phone bank calling or canvassing effort. In addition, the combined salience of all elections during a presidential election year will greatly exceed that of a state legislative election. Without making too much of this direct comparison, it does underscore the potential significance of the response levels we are seeing.

[Figure 3 here]

Similar patterns prevail for two other nonfinancial forms of participation: putting up a candidate’s campaign signs and distributing campaign literature at such public places as county fairs, election poll sites, or subway stops. Both incumbent and nonincumbent candidates indicated higher levels of volunteering for nonfinancial participation among small donors than among large donors. As shown in Figure 2c, 57 percent of the incumbent candidates said that at least a quarter of their small donors put up a campaign sign. Seventy percent of the nonincumbents claimed that at least a quarter of their small donors put up a sign. Half of the nonincumbents indicated that at least half of their small donors did so. In comparison, only 21 percent of the NES respondents reported having displayed a campaign sign for any candidate or any political party (see Figure 3) in 2004—arguably the most contentious presidential election year since the cacophonous 1968. One explanation for the difference between small donors’ and large donors’ participation may be that candidates generally tended to ask small donors more often than large donors. We asked candidates to tell us how often they ask the small and large donors on their donor lists “to support the campaign in other ways (for example, by asking others to vote for you, by putting up one of your campaign signs)?” As shown in Figure 4, 59.2 percent of the incumbent respondents told us that they asked for such help from their small donors at least a majority of the time. More than 30 percent said that they “always or almost always” asked for such help from the small


donors on their donor list. Alternatively, slightly more than a quarter of the incumbents indicated that they made such requests of their large donors at least a majority of the time. Barely 12 percent of the incumbents reported that they ask their large donors to do more than give. Nonincumbents seem even more inclined to ask small donors for help. About 43 percent of the nonincumbent candidates “always or almost always” asked small donors for volunteer campaign help. Nonincumbents were more inclined than incumbents to ask their large donors for volunteer assistance. But the figures for both incumbents and nonincumbents suggest that candidates may observe a kind of division of labor among their classes of donors. We have already noted that mobilizing agents play a crucial role in getting people to participate, particularly in low salience campaigns. To the extent that small donors are more likely than large donors to supplement their giving with noneconomic campaign support, the evidence from these surveys is consistent with one partial explanation being the recruiting strategy of candidates. From these data, it is impossible to tell how many of the respondents’ donors participated in nonfinancial modes before they donated to the candidate’s campaign and the proportion that proceeded through the giving-as-gateway-action sequence of events. Again, the survey of donors and non-donors contains questions that will enable us to attempt to tease out the sequence of events. At a minimum, however, we can say that the results are consistent with the theory. VI. Small Donors, Incentive Programs, and Equality in the Participation System If candidates ask small donors to participate in other ways, and if small donors volunteer for additional, often nonfinancial modes of campaign support, an interesting policy question is whether a government incentive program can stimulate more small-level giving, particularly among less affluent citizens. If an incentive induces more people to give, some of those new donors may become more active in other ways. The answer to this policy question depends partially on campaign mobilizing agents’ beliefs about the incentive program. As a practical matter, the implementation of such a program probably will depend significantly on campaign mobilizing agents’ willingness to promote the program. Mobilizers may not bother to publicize the incentive’s availability unless they think that it can bolster their campaign fundraising efforts. Additionally, the incentive will probably not encourage mobilizers to increase attempts to raise small contributions from less affluent citizens unless the mobilizers believe that the incentive increases the cost-effectiveness of targeting those prospects.

In two states with small donor incentive programs, Minnesota and Ohio, we asked candidates to evaluate the motivating influence of their state’s donor incentive program and to tell us whether the program affected their own strategies for recruiting donors during the 2006 campaign. We received a small number of responses from each individual state. Consequently, the number of cases available for interstate comparisons permits little generalization. This is particularly true of the survey results from Ohio; the response rate from Ohio was very low (22.4 percent), yielding a very small number of cases for most analyses. Hence we present these responses more for their suggestive value than for their generalizability.


A. Minnesota’s Program and Candidate Perspectives

In 1992 Minnesota began to offer a “Political Contributions Rebate.” This program allows Minnesotans to receive a rebate of up to $50 per person for contributions to political parties or to candidates who agree to abide by spending limits. (Married couples who file jointly can receive up to $100 each year.) The participating donors usually receive their rebates within four-to-six weeks of submitting the appropriate paperwork to the Minnesota Department of Revenue. In 2006 the state reported that 100,452 rebate request forms were filed amounting to $6,204,121. Note that the number of filed request forms does not reflect the actual number of contributors who participated in the program. The Department of Revenue counts married couples who jointly filed their forms as one filer.

Although the Minnesota rebate bears a family resemblance to a tax credit, the two types

of programs differ in a few significant respects. First, the benefit from a tax credit is available to a donor only after the donor files an income tax return. In Minnesota, the donor can apply for the refund right after giving the contribution. The rebate program has some restrictions. An applicant for the rebate can file for the rebate only once each year, and donations cannot carry over. Consequently, for example, if an individual donates $20 to a candidate and files for the rebate, and later donated $30 he would be unable to apply for any further money. He could, however, wait until he had donated the $50 to file.10

Whether candidates and other mobilizers promote (and thereby help to implement) a

donor incentive program depends fundamentally on whether they believe that prospective donors will respond to the incentive. Accordingly, we asked the Minnesota candidates whether they think that people who contributed $50 or less to their 2006 campaign gave “mostly because they could get the refund.” As shown in Table 4, large majorities of both incumbent (66.7 percent) and nonincumbent candidates (80.7 percent) agreed that “many” or “all or almost all” of these donors gave “mostly” because they could get the rebate. A third of the nonincumbents and more than a fifth (23.1 percent) of the incumbents said that “all or almost all” of their small donors gave mostly because of the rebate program.

We included another question to get an appraisal of the incentive’s efficacy from a

different angle. The survey also asked candidates whether they agree or disagree with the view that the rebate did not help their respective campaigns’ fundraising, but only subsidized contributions from individuals who would have given regardless of the incentive. The distributions of responses appear in Table 5. Most incumbents (56.4 percent) and a large majority of nonincumbents (70.4 percent) “strongly disagreed” with that assessment. Only 7.7 percent of the incumbents and 8.6 percent of the nonincumbents registered any level of agreement with the statement.

Given the high proportions of Minnesota candidates who express belief in the rebate’s

efficacy, we expect that the program influenced many candidates’ fundraising strategies in 2006.

10 Another difference is that Minnesota's rebate allows donations to political parties and Ohio's tax credit does not. Of the 100,452 Minnesota filers in 2006, 55,137 (or 54.9%) of them claimed the rebate for donations to political parties. That year, party organizations received 52.4 percent of the $6,204,121 paid for political contribution rebates


Most candidates agreed. Indeed, huge majorities of both incumbent (81 percent) and nonincumbent (87.8 percent) candidates confirmed that the rebate program led them to ask “for contributions from less affluent people who probably won’t contribute if they can’t receive the refund” (see Table 6). The intensity of agreement is high. Nearly half (48.6 percent) of the incumbents and a strong majority (61 percent) of the nonincumbents “strongly agreed” with the statement. Additionally, large majorities of Minnesota candidates said that low-income donors are “very” or “extremely likely” to participate in the rebate program, as shown in Figure 5. Agreement with this view was strong. A majority of the nonincumbents (56.6 percent) and a high proportion of the incumbents (45.7 percent) said that small donors are “extremely” likely to use the incentive. Note, however, that both incumbents and nonincumbents are even more likely to have told us that moderate income donors are “extremely” likely to file for the rebate. The difference makes intuitive sense. Moderate income donors may be better informed and therefore more likely to know about the rebate in the first place. Interestingly, Minnesota candidates are less likely to say that high income donors are “extremely” or “very likely” to use the rebate.

In Minnesota, then, high proportions of incumbent and nonincumbent candidates

apparently consider the rebate an effective incentive, and, at least in the 2006 campaign, many employed a small donor solicitation strategy that is consistent with the belief. B. Ohio’s Program and Candidate Perspectives

Government incentive programs often take the form of tax credits, and some donor incentive programs employ this instrument. In 1995 the Ohio state legislature passed a tax credit for contributions to political candidates. The credit covers 100 percent of the first $50 an individual (or $100 for a jointly filing married couple) contributes to candidates for state elective office. To take advantage of this credit, however, an Ohio taxpayer must file the longer IT1040 instead of the less complex IT1040EZ.

Compared with the responses from Minnesota candidates, smaller proportions of Ohio

candidates seem to believe that their state’s political contributions tax credit is an effective incentive. As shown in Table 4, only 28.5 percent of the incumbent candidates and 22.3 percent of the nonincumbent candidates indicated that “many” or “all or almost all” of the small donors to their 2006 campaigns gave “mostly” because they could take the tax credit. Far smaller proportions of incumbents (7.1 percent) and nonincumbents (5.6 percent) said that their small donors contributed “mostly” because of the tax credit’s availability.

Responding to the second question that taps appraisal of the incentive’s effectiveness,

Ohio candidates are again less inclined than ones from Minnesota to regard the tax credit as influential, as reported in Table 5. To be sure, a majority (55.6 percent) of the incumbents disagreed with the contention that the tax credit serves less to help fundraising than to subsidize the contributions that individuals would have given regardless of the tax credit’s availability. Yet the incumbents’ disagreement is softer in Ohio than in Minnesota. Among Ohio incumbents, 16.7 percent “strongly disagree” with the statement, while a majority (56.4 percent) of Minnesota incumbents express such a level of disagreement. Ohio nonincumbents were almost evenly divided on this question. Thirty-six percent agreed that the tax credit is more of a subsidy, and


an equal proportion disagreed. (The remaining nonincumbents neither agree nor disagree.) Only about one quarter (24 percent) of the nonincumbents “strongly disagreed” with the statement. In contrast, 70.4 percent of the nonincumbent candidates in Minnesota strongly disagreed.

Despite their apparently mixed reviews of the tax credit’s incentive power, the Ohio

respondents confirmed that the tax credit modified their own strategies for targeting prospective campaign donors. As shown in Table 6, a large majority (72.2 percent) of the incumbent candidates and half of the nonincumbent candidates agreed that the tax credit led them to ask “for contributions from less affluent people who probably won’t contribute if they can’t receive the tax credit.” A third of the nonincumbents and more than a fifth (22.2 percent) of the incumbents strongly agreed with the statement. Again, however, the intensity of agreement is substantially lower than that expressed by Minnesota candidates. Nearly half of the Minnesota incumbents “strongly agreed” that their state’s rebate program induced them to solicit funds from less affluent prospective donors, and 61 percent of the nonincumbents strongly agreed.

Why do the Ohio respondents express less confidence in the incentive power of their

state’s tax credit for political contributions? Potential explanations abound. First, it is entirely possible that many differences between the Minnesota and Ohio candidates’ responses stem from response bias, the small number of responses, or both. Mindful of the limitations of our data, however, we cannot help but notice that the differences in the responses are consistent with some key differences between the two states’ programs. Ohio candidates may believe that the tax credit offers a weak incentive, because it imposes relatively high net participation costs on potential participants. First, consider the tax credit’s higher opportunity cost. As mentioned earlier, Ohio donors receive their program’s benefit only after filing their state income tax returns. In contrast, Minnesota donors can apply for their rebates immediately after making a qualifying contribution, and beneficiaries receive their money within four-to-six weeks of filing the application. The Ohio program thus asks donors to give candidates a longer term bridge loan than does the Minnesota program. Low income citizens, who may live paycheck-to-paycheck, may be less responsive to an incentive program that imposes higher opportunity costs on the use of their money. Additionally, Ohio donors who want to take the tax credit must file the longer version of the state’s individual income tax return form. Consequently, according to several Ohio candidates, citizens often believe that the credit is available only to taxpayers who itemize their state income tax returns. Candidates also believe that many citizens confuse the tax credit with a tax deduction, which amounts to a smaller, presumably less influential financial incentive. Table 7 summarizes some important differences between the programs and program participation. The Ohio program’s eligibility requirements and somewhat higher participation costs may also partially explain the lower expectations in Ohio than Minnesota of participation among low-income donors. As shown in Figure 5, none of the incumbent respondents indicated that low-income donors are “extremely likely” to take the tax credit, compared with 45.7 percent of the Minnesota incumbents who said that such donors are “extremely likely” to file for their state’s rebate. Only 16.7 percent of the Ohio incumbents told us that low-income donors are “very likely” to use the tax credit. Compared with Minnesota, a smaller proportion (38 percent) of Ohio nonincumbent candidates are likely to have said that low-income donors are “very” or “extremely” likely to use the tax credit.


Finally, we return to the question asked in the previous section: do candidates recruit those who give small contributions to perform other volunteer activities? We reported on these answers for all six states in the previous section of this paper. But we did wonder whether donors who essentially were giving "free money" (because of a 100 percent rebate) might be less engaged than those who paid a real financial cost to give. If this were true, we might expect small donors in Minnesota to be less inclined to volunteer than small donors elsewhere, because they did not have to be as committed to become givers. What we found was that the candidates from Minnesota answered this question more or less the same as those from the six states combined For example:

· 72 percent of the nonincumbents and 47 percent of the incumbents from Minnesota reported that at least a quarter of their small donors put up a campaign sign, compared with 70 percent (nonincumbents) and 57 percent (incumbents) for all six states combined.

· Similarly, 52 percent of the nonincumbents and 36 percent of the incumbents in

Minnesota reported that at least one-fourth of their small donors helped the campaign ask others for their vote, compared with 55 percent (for nonincumbents) and 38 percent (for incumbents) in the six states combined.

While we cannot make too much of these numbers11, they nevertheless are suggestive. If a donor incentive program brings new and less affluent donors into the system -- as Minnesota's candidates believe -- and if those new donors volunteer at the same rate as donors from states without an incentive program, that suggests that the incentive program can bring about not only a net increase in donors, but also a net increase in other forms of volunteering. VII. Conclusion The findings from these candidate surveys are generally consistent with a theory that would see at least some small donor contributions as being social activities and that also would see the contributions for a nontrivial number of small donors as being a gateway form of participation. In this respect, we found the candidate surveys to be filled with interesting questions and possibilities. But these surveys can only begin to answer the questions they pose. For one thing, the data themselves impose severe constraints on our ability to generalize from them. More importantly: while the candidates are the best source of information about the perspectives of these key mobilizers, they are not the best source on the motivations and behavior of donors. For this, we must await results from the forthcoming surveys of donors and nondonors in the CFI Small Donor Project's sample states.

11 Some might discount the Minnesota finding because of that state's generally high rate of participation. But the general rate of participation in a state in turn may be discounted because the question was asked only about donors, who already are participants in all of our six states.


REFERENCES

American Political Science Association Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy. 2004. American

Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality. Washington DC: American Political Science Association. Boatright, Robert G. and Michael J. Malbin. 2005. “Political Contribution Tax Credits and Citizen Participation.”

American Politics Research, Vol. 33, No. 6, 787-817 Boatright, Robert G., Donald P. Green and Michael J. Malbin. 2006. "Does Publicizing A Tax Credit for Political

Contributions Increase Its Use? Results from a Randomized Field Experiment." American Politics Research. Vol. 34, No. 5: 563-582.

Brady, Henry E., Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Sidney Verba. 1999. “Prospecting for Participants: Rational

Expectations and the Recruitment of Political Activists.” American Political Science Review. 93:1, pp. 153-168.

Carducci, Mary. 2007. Telephone interview conducted August 13. Cmar, Thomas. 2004. “Toward a Small Donor Democracy: The Past and Future of Incentives for Small Political

Contributions.” Washington, DC. U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. September. Francia, Peter L., John C. Green, Paul S. Herrnson, Lynda W. Powell, and Clyde Wilcox. 2003. The Financiers of

Congressional Elections: Investors, Ideologues, and Intimates. New York: Columbia University Press. Hasen, Richard L. 2004. "Buckley is Dead, Long Live Buckley: The New Campaign Finance Incoherence of

McConnell v. Federal Election Commission. University of Pennsylvania Law Review. 153:31-72. Herrnson, Paul S. J. Celeste Lay and Atiya Kai Stokes. 2003. ”Women Running ‘as Women’: Candidate Gender,

Campaign Issues, and Voter-Targeting Strategies. Journal of Politics 65:1, pp. 244-255 Irvine, James. 2007. Telephone interview conducted August 7. Lenfert, Carissa. 2007. Interview conducted August 1. Maisel, L. Sandy and Walter J. Stone. 1997. "Determinants of Candidate Emergence in U.S. House Elections: An

Exploratory Study." Legislative Studies Quarterly 22:1; pp. 79-96. Malbin, Michael J. and Sean A. Cain. 2007. The Ups and Downs of Small and Large Donors: An Analysis of Pre-

and Post-BCRA Contrbutions to Federal Candidates and Parties, 1999-2006. Washington DC: The Campaign Finance Institute.

Persily, Nathaniel and Kelli Lamie. 2004. "Perceptions of Corruption and Campaign Finance: When Public Opinion

Determines Constitutional Law." University of Pennsylvania Law Review. 153:119-180. Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon

and Schuster. Rosenstone, Steven J., and John Mark Hansen. 1993. Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America.

New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Skocpol, Theda. 1999. Advocates without Members: The Recent Transformation of American Civic Life.” In

Civic Engagement in American Democracy. Edited by Theda Skocpol and Morris P. Fiorina. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution and the Russell Sage Foundation.


Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Wilcox, Clyde, Alexandra Cooper, Peter Francia, John C. Green, Paul S. Herrnson, Lynda Powell, Jason Reifler,

Mark J. Rozell and Benjamin A. Webster. 2003. "With Limits Raised, Who Will Give More? The Impact of BCRA on Individual Donors." In Michael J. Malbin, ed., Life After Reform, When the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act Meets Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.


Table 1. Paired States for Surveys

Juris-diction

Disclosure Threshold

Contri-bution Limit*

Pres. Vote

Turnout 2004 as %VAP

Cong. Vote

Turnout 2002 as %VAP

Total population (millions)

% Black

% Hispanic

Median Household Income ($ thousands)

MN 100 2000 / 500 73 59 4.9 4 3 47 IA 25 None 66 45 2.9 2 3 41 OH 25 10,000 65 37 11.4 12 2 40 PA 50 None 60 35 12.2 10 3 38 AZ 25 760 / 296‡ 48 30 5.1 3 25 37 CO 20 500 / 200 62 42 4.3 4 17 48 CT 30 2500 / 250 59 38 3.4 9 9 51 US 200 2100 56 35 281.4 12 13 41

* All limits shown are for are for contributions from individuals to candidates. Where two numbers are shown, the first is for gubernatorial candidates and the second for the lower house of the legislature.

‡ AZ limits are for contributions to candidates who do not accept full public funding.

Table 2. Survey Response Rates, by State

State Candidates Returned Surveys Response Rate AZ 145 57 39.31% CO 151 41 27.15% IA 200 56 28.00%

MN 395 132 33.42% OH 223 50 22.42% PA 378 81 21.43%

Totals 1492 417 27.95%


Table 3. Distribution of Unweighted and Weighted Responses to the

Survey of 2006 State Legislative Candidates, by State and Type of Candidate

State Incumbency

Status Unweighted

N Weighted

N AZ Incumbent 20 35 Non-Incumbent 37 35 CO Incumbent 14 35 Non-Incumbent 26 33 IA Incumbent 24 35 Non-Incumbent 33 35 MN Incumbent 41 35 Non-Incumbent 90 35 OH Incumbent 20 35 Non-Incumbent 29 35 PA Incumbent 25 34 Non-Incumbent 56 35 Total 415 417


Table 4. Did people give mostly because they could get a refund/tax credit? Minnesota Ohio

Incumbents

(%) Nonincumbents

(%) Incumbents

(%) Nonincumbents

(%) None or almost none 2.6 7.7 28.6 38.9 Some 30.8 11.5 42.9 38.9 Many 43.6 47.4 21.4 16.7 All or almost all 23.1 33.3 7.1 5.6 (n = 39) (n = 78) (n = 14) (n = 18)

Question text. Some donors may give to a campaign mostly because they can get the refund. To the best of your knowledge, how many of your small donors (that is, people who donated $50 or less) to your campaign gave mostly because they could get the refund? (For Ohio candidates, the survey replaced the word “refund” with “tax credit.” Source: CFI Survey of 2006 State Legislative Candidates, unweighted data.) Table 5. Did the refund/tax credit only subsidize those who would give anyway? Minnesota Ohio

Incumbents

(%) Nonincumbents

(%) Incumbents

(%) Nonincumbents

(%) Strongly agree 2.6 3.7 11.1 20.0 Agree somewhat 5.1 4.9 11.1 16.0 Neither agree nor disagree 2.6 1.2 22.2 28.0 Disagree somewhat 33.3 19.8 38.9 12.0 Strongly disagree 56.4 70.4 16.7 24.0 (n = 39) (n = 81) (n = 18) (n = 25)

Question text: The refund did not help my campaign’s fundraising efforts. It only subsidized contributions from people who would have given anyway. (For Ohio candidates, the survey replaced the word “refund” with “tax credit.” Source: CFI Survey of 2006 State Legislative Candidates, unweighted data.) Table 6. Did the candidate ask less affluent people because of the refund/tax credit? Minnesota Ohio

Incumbents

(%) Nonincumbents

(%) Incumbents

(%) Nonincumbents

(%) Strongly agree 48.6 61.0 22.2 33.3 Agree somewhat 32.4 26.8 50.0 16.7 Neither agree nor disagree 16.2 3.7 11.1 8.3 Disagree somewhat 0.0 0.0 0.0 25.0 Strongly disagree 2.7 8.5 16.7 16.7 (n = 37) (n = 82) (n = 18) (n = 24)

Question text: People have different opinions about Minnesota’s refund for political contributions. Please indicate whether you agree or disagree with each of the following statements. “Because of the refund, I asked for contributions from less affluent people who probably won’t contribute if they can’t receive the refund.” (For Ohio candidates, the survey replaced the word “refund” with “tax credit.” Source: CFI Survey of 2006 State Legislative Candidates, unweighted data.)


Table 7. Select Attributes of Ohio Political Contribution Tax Credit and Minnesota

Political Contribution Rebate Programs.

Minnesota Ohio

Amount of Refund/Rebate per person

$50/$100 per married filing joint return

$50/$100 per married filing joint return

When can the refund/rebate be applied for?

As soon as donation is made

Only when the tax return is filed

How is the refund/rebate applied for?

Form PCR (separate form)

IT1040 (Long form Tax Return)

How many filers for each program?

100,452 70,308

When does filer receive refund/rebate?

Four to six weeks from the date of filing

Reduces tax owed or is returned with the rest

of the tax refund Who can receive funds? State and local

candidates and political party organizations

State and local candidates

Percentage of state’s voting-age population using the

program*

2.67% 0.84%

Amount of money dispersed $6,204,121 $4,991,101 *based on 2005 US Census Data

Figure 1. Candidate Use of Different Fundraising Methods,by Type of Candidate and Prospective Donor

1.a. Use of personal requests from candidate

41.1%24.2% 26.4%

11.9%

15.9%

19.6%27.0%

16.3%

15.2% 42.5%32.1%

65.0%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%

For potentialsmall donors

For potentiallargestdonors



Incumbents Nonincumbents

Perc

enta

ge o

f Can

dida

tes

1.c. Use of mass e-mail

13.3%4.4%

16.6% 14.9%

8.9%8.8%

13.2%5.4%

4.4%

2.2%

13.9%

2.7%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%






Perc

enta

ge o

f can

dida

tes

1.b. Use of direct mail

15.7% 18.7% 17.5% 24.1%

16.4%24.0% 22.5%

18.4%

54.7% 33.3% 41.9%24.1%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%






Perc

enta

ge o

f can

dida

tes

1.d. Use of phone calls (other than those made by candidate)

26.6% 24.1% 27.0% 24.2%

5.8% 14.9% 9.9% 13.7%2.2%

7.1% 5.3%10.5%

0.0%10.0%20.0%30.0%40.0%50.0%

60.0%70.0%80.0%90.0%

100.0%






Perc

enta

ge o

f can

dida

tes

Occasionally used this method Often used this method Almost always used this method

Source: CFI Survey of 2006 General Election State Legislative Candidates (weighted data)

n = 151

n = 153 n = 159n = 160

n = 139

n = 141 n = 152 n = 153

n = 135

n = 136

n = 151

n = 148

n = 159

n = 150n = 160

n = 158

The CFI Small Donor Project 26 ©2007 The Campaign Finance Institute

Figure 1. Candidate Use of Different Fundraising Methods,by Type of Candidate and Prospective Donor

1.e. Use of campaign events (such as dinners, rallies, picnics)

33.6% 30.7% 31.3% 30.3%

17.8% 18.0% 25.6% 18.1%

29.5%20.0%

24.4%16.8%

0.0%10.0%20.0%30.0%40.0%50.0%60.0%70.0%80.0%90.0%

100.0%

Forpotential

smalldonors

Forpotentiallargestdonors

Forpotential

smalldonors

Forpotentiallargestdonors


Perc

enta

ge o

f can

dida

tes

1.f. Use of door-to-door canvassing

10.6% 3.5%20.8%

6.7%1.4%

1.4%3.4%

2.1%

5.2%

2.7%

1.3%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%






Perc

enta

ge o

f can

dida

tes

1.g. Use of paid advertisements (such as radio or newspaper)

7.7% 0.0%9.9% 4.2%

1.4%4.3%

5.9%1.7%

2.1%2.6%

2.0%

1.7%0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%

For potentialsmall

donors


For potentialsmall

donors



Perc

enta

ge o

f can

dida

tes

Occasionally used this method

Often used this method

Almost always used this method


n = 146

n = 150

n = 160

n = 155

n = 141n = 143

n = 154

n = 149

n = 142 n = 115

n = 152n = 118

Questions: When asking for donations from people whom you expected to give $50 or less, how often did your campaign use each of the following ways of requesting funds? a. Personal requests from you (the candidate); b. Direct mail (delivered by a surface carrier, for example U.S. Postal Service; c. Mass e-mail; d. Phone calls (other than those made by you, the candidate); e. Campaign events (such as dinners, rallies, picnics; f. Door-to-door canvassing; g. Paid advertisements (such as radio or newspaper ads); h. and i. Other (specify). (Answer options: Never used / used occasionally / used often / used almost always for potentially small donors.

When asking for donations from people whom you expected to give your largest contributions, how often did your campaign use each of the following ways of requesting funds? (Same list of solicitation options a-i used for preceding question about prospective small donors. Answer options: Never used / used occasionally / used often / used almost always for potentially largest donors.

The CFI Small Donor Project 27 ©2007 The Campaign Finance Institute

Figure 2. Candidate Estimates of Proportion of Donors Who Helped the Campaign in Other Ways, by Type of Candidate and Donor

2.a. Helped campaign ask others to vote for the candidate (e.g., phone bank calls, canvassed)

16.6% 11.5%24.7% 19.6%

9.9%7.2%

12.7%11.8%

11.3%

2.9%

18.1%

11.1%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%

Small donors Largestdonors



Perc

enta

ge o

f can

dida

tes

2.b. Helped campaign ask others to donate money tothe candidate's campaign

8.0% 8.8% 14.5% 18.2%5.1% 3.7%3.8%

8.1%

2.2% 4.4%3.1%

5.4%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%

Smalldonors

Largestdonors

Smalldonors

Largestdonors


Perc

enta

ge o

f can

dida

tes

2.c. Put up one of the candidate'scampaign signs

18.5% 12.9%20.1% 20.0%

21.0%

4.8%

16.5% 14.7%

17.3%

11.6%

33.5%

14.7%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%




Perc

enta

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f can

dida

tes

2.d. Distributed campaign literature at a public place(such as a county fair, election poll site)

17.4%4.2%

16.8%9.5%

8.3%

1.4%

6.8%

4.7%

2.1%

1.4%

6.8%

2.7%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%

Smalldonors

Largestdonors

Smalldonors

Largestdonors


Perc

enta

ge o

f can

dida

tes

1/4 - 1/2 of candidate's donors 1/2 - 3/4 of candidate's donors More than 3/4 of candidate's donors


n = 151

n = 139

n = 166

n = 153

n = 162

n = 147

n = 164

n = 150

n = 137 n = 136n = 159

n = 148

n = 144

n = 144

n = 161

n = 148


Figure 2. Candidate Estimates of Proportion of Donors Who Helped the Campaign in Other Ways, by Type of Candidate and Donor


Questions: Please give us a rough estimate of how many small donors (those who gave $50 or less) on your donor list also helped you in the ways indicated below? a. Helped your campaign ask people to vote for you (for example, worked on a phone bank, canvassed door-to-door; b. Helped your campaign ask people to give money to your campaign (for example, worked on a phone bank, hosted a house party); c. Put up one of your campaign signs; d. Helped coordinate or provide voter transportation to the polls; e. Distributed your campaign materials at a public place, such as a county fair, a subway stop, or an election poll site. (Answer options: Less than 1/4 of my small donors; between 1/4 and 1/2 of my small donors; between 1/2 and 3/4 of my small donors; more than 3/4 of my small donors.

Please give us a rough estimate of how many of the largest donors on your donor list also helped you in the ways indicated below? (Same list of campaign participation options a-e used in the preceding question about small donors. (Answer options: Less than 1/4 of my largest donors; between 1/4 and 1/2 of my largest donors; between 1/2 and 3/4 of my largest donors; more than 3/4 of my largest donors.


Figure 3. Citizens' Nonfinancial Participation in American Election Campaigns: 1952 - 2004

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1952

1954

1956

1958

1960

1962

1964

1966

1968

1970

1972

1974

1976

1978

1980

1982

1984

1986

1988

1990

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

2002

2004

Perc

enta

ge o

f res

pond

ents

who

per

form

ed a

ctio

n

Tried to influence how others vote Attended political meeting

Worked for a party or candidate Displayed button, sticker or campaign sign

Source: The American National Election Studies

Questions: During the campaign, did you talk to any people and try to show them why they should vote for (1984 and later: or against) one of the parties or candidates? Did you go to any political meetings, rallies, (1984 and later: speeches,) (1978,1980,1982: fund raising) dinners, or things like that (1984 and later: in support of a particular candidate)? Did you do any {other} work for one of the parties or candidates? 1956,1960,1962-1982: "Did you wear a campaign button or put a campaign sticker on your car?" 1984 AND LATER: "Did you wear a campaign button, put a campaign sticker on your car, or place a sign in your window or in front of your house?"


Figure 4. Candidate Attempts to Recruit Campaign Volunteers from Donors,by Type of Candidate and Donor

26.8%42.9%

18.3%33.1%

27.9%14.3%

36.6%21.1%

31.3%11.9%

42.9%

22.9%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%

Small donors Largest donors Small donors Largest donors


Perc

enta

ge o

f Can

dida

tes

Occasionally asked these donors Asked these donors a majority of the time, but not always

Always or almost always asked these donors

Questions: Did your campaign ask small donors (those who gave $50 or less) on your donor list to support your campaign in other ways (for example, by asking others to vote for you, by putting up one of your campaign signs? Did your campaign ask the largest donors on your donor list to support your campaign in other ways (for example, by asking others to vote for you, by putting up one of your campaign signs? (Answer options: Never, or almost never; occasionally; a majority of the time, but not always; always, or almost always; don't know.)

n = 175

n = 179n = 166

n = 168



Figure 5. Candidates' Expectations of Donors' Likelihood of Using Incentive Program,by Donor Income Bracket, State, and Type of Candidate

Candidates' Expectations of Low-income Donors' Use of Donor Incentive

28.6% 22.4%

50.0%

16.0%

16.7%

45.7%56.6%

12.0%15.8%

20.0% 16.0%

0.0%10.0%20.0%30.0%40.0%50.0%60.0%70.0%80.0%90.0%

100.0%

Incumbents Nonincumbents Incumbents Nonincumbents

Minnesota Ohio

Perc

enta

ge o

f Can

dida

tes

Candidates' Expectations of Moderate-income Donors' Use of Donor Incentive

10.8% 2.6%

33.3% 36.0%

37.8%32.9%

33.3% 28.0%

51.4%64.5%

27.8% 24.0%

0.0%10.0%20.0%30.0%40.0%50.0%60.0%70.0%80.0%90.0%

100.0%


Minnesota Ohio

Perc

enta

ge o

f Can

dida

tes

Candidates' Expectations of High-income Donors' Use of Donor Incentive

46.9%33.8% 33.3% 37.5%

12.5%26.8%

16.7%20.8%

18.8%32.4%

38.9% 25.0%

0.0%10.0%20.0%30.0%40.0%50.0%60.0%70.0%80.0%90.0%

100.0%


Minnesota Ohio

Perc

enta

ge o

f Can

dida

tes

Somewhat likely to use incentive Very likely to use incentive Extremely likely to use incentive

n = 35 n = 76

n = 18

n = 25

n = 37 n = 76n = 18

n = 25

n = 32

n = 71 n = 18n = 24

Question: Some types of donors may be more likely than others to use the Minnesota political contributions refund. Please indicate the degree to which you think that each type of donor to your campaign listed below used the refund. (a. Low-income donors. b. Moderate-income donors. c. High-income donors.) (Answer options: Not at all likely; somewhat likely; very likely; extremely likely; don't know.) In Ohio, the question asked about use of the "Ohio political contributions tax credit."


The CFI Small Donor Project - Campaign Finance Institute · 2019. 1. 29. · The CFI Small Donor...

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