State party organizations as campaign service providers: A three-state study of candidate and party perceptions.

Abstract

The advent of the candidate-centered campaign in conjunction with an array of social, political, and economic changes have altered the electoral environment and the way traditional state political party organizations have asserted themselves in campaigns and elections. In response, this study focuses on the electoral relationship between traditional state political party organizations and state legislative candidates in Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. This study poses two questions: Do traditional state political party organizations make a difference in elections? And, are traditional state political party organizations capable of adapting to and surviving in a candidate-centered environment? To answer these questions, a survey was sent to over 400 legislative candidates and interviews were conducted with over 50 past and present members of the state party in Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana after the 2002-2003 electoral cycle. Traditional state political party organizations provide many services that can be classified along five dimensions: campaign finance, candidate recruitment and selection, campaign management, campaign communications, and public opinion gathering and voter mobilization. Within each category the perceived significance of the state party varies, ranging from significant to insignificant, depending upon factors such as the state, party, candidate status, and competitiveness. Overall, this study finds that candidates perceive parties to have played at best only a slightly important role in only one area---public opinion gathering and voter mobilization. In the other four areas candidates generally find the state political party insignificant and not important to their campaign. Although state political parties provide many campaign services, they are not recognized by candidates to be an important campaign services provider. State political parties have survived and have adapted to our candidate-centered electoral environment but must modify the content and delivery of these services and the structure of their organizations if they are to be a more important campaign service provider in the future. Determining the complex and subtle roles played by the traditional state political party organization in state legislative elections allows us to secondarily assess the ability of our traditional state political party organizations to become or act as responsible governing coalitions. If they are to become responsible governing coalitions desired by so many pluralists, then they must first become significant campaign services providers. This study shows that this key ingredient for a responsible governing coalition is missing.