Abstract:
In spite of the increasing campaign finance legislation aimed at equalizing barriers in political campaigns, a fundraising gap persists across gender and race lines. In the era of modern campaigning, with the expenses of advertising and polling, among others, ample funds are necessary but not universally accessible to all candidates. This dissertation addresses the relationship between the candidate's gender and race with campaign fundraising, and the possible mediating impact of three dimensions of the state political context - state legislative professionalism, state Republican party strength, and state culture (South vs. Non-south). I evaluated fundraising totals across 15 states for over 3,000 candidates in the 2006 state legislative elections. Ultimately, the findings suggest that after controlling for other candidate characteristics, as well as district and state context, there is a slightly negative relationship between gender though not statistically significant and a substantially negative relationship between race, which is statistically significant. It demonstrates that, with other mitigating factors controlled, female candidates fundraise slightly less and non-white candidates fundraise much less than their counterparts. In addition, there appears to be notable variation in the effect of gender/race on legislative professionalization and the Southern states in relation to the fundraising gap. This study finds that candidates from underrepresented groups continue to fundraise less than their white, male counterparts and that state variation is important in understanding the gender/race gap in campaign finance.
