Presidential Party Fundraising in Hopes of Not Having to Govern by Himself
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Brendan J. Doherty
Brendan J. Doherty is Associate Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy. He is the author ofThe Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign (University Press of Kansas, 2012).
Abstract
The extent to which presidents embrace the role of electoral leader of their party is important but relatively understudied. Each of the past three presidents devoted substantial time to the role of chief party fundraiser during his first 2 years in office, hoping to avoid having to govern by himself in the final 2 years of his first term. Key institutional and contextual factors drive these dynamics. Presidents are incentivized to spend time fundraising for their co-partisans because of the interaction of the high costs of campaigns and the contribution limits mandated by campaign finance laws in an era of intense partisan competition. While even unpopular presidents are in demand as fundraisers, popularity does relate to fundraising dynamics. An unpopular Bill Clinton aggressively embraced fundraising efforts behind closed doors in his first 2 years in office, supporting his fellow Democrats with a kind of hidden-hand leadership, while over 90% of George W. Bush’s fundraisers were open to the media in 2001 and 2002, as his popularity surged following 9/11. Popularity makes a difference in terms of where presidents raise money for their fellow party members as well. While Clinton and Barack Obama largely confined their efforts to states in which they had found electoral support, the more popular Bush headlined fundraisers for fellow Republicans in states across the political spectrum. Presidents’ efforts can win them more political allies in elected office, but also expose them to criticism and may make it more difficult for presidents to work across the aisle on questions of public policy.
About the author
Brendan J. Doherty is Associate Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy. He is the author of The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign (University Press of Kansas, 2012).
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The detailed review of a wide variety of presidential records to create this article’s dataset of presidential fundraisers has made it clear that almost all fundraisers that did not appear in the Public Papers were closed to the press. I did find a handful of examples when the media were allowed into a fundraiser at which the president did not make a speech, and thus there was no entry in the Public Papers for what was an open press fundraiser. These instances appear to have been very rare. Thus, whether a fundraiser appeared in the Public Papers is a very good, if not absolutely perfect, proxy for whether a fundraiser was open to the press or not, and is the best way to get at these dynamics when creating a data set going back in time over multiple decades, since the actual information on press coverage is not available for most events.
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©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction
- “We Can’t Wait”: Barack Obama, Partisan Polarization and the Administrative Presidency
- The Letter of the Law: Administrative Discretion and Obama’s Domestic Unilateralism
- Presidential Policymaking: Race to the Top, Executive Power, and the Obama Education Agenda
- Presidential Party Fundraising in Hopes of Not Having to Govern by Himself
- Obama’s Choice: Bowling Alone in the White House
- The Hope for Audacity: The Understated Unilateralism of President Obama
- The President, Polarization and the Party Platforms, 1944–2012
- Book reviews
- Disaster and the American State: How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and the Public Prepare for the Unexpected
- This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral – Plus Plenty of Valet Parking! – in America’s Gilded Capital
- The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction
- “We Can’t Wait”: Barack Obama, Partisan Polarization and the Administrative Presidency
- The Letter of the Law: Administrative Discretion and Obama’s Domestic Unilateralism
- Presidential Policymaking: Race to the Top, Executive Power, and the Obama Education Agenda
- Presidential Party Fundraising in Hopes of Not Having to Govern by Himself
- Obama’s Choice: Bowling Alone in the White House
- The Hope for Audacity: The Understated Unilateralism of President Obama
- The President, Polarization and the Party Platforms, 1944–2012
- Book reviews
- Disaster and the American State: How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and the Public Prepare for the Unexpected
- This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral – Plus Plenty of Valet Parking! – in America’s Gilded Capital
- The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War
