By: Gabriel Foy-Sutherland, University of Chicago; Daniel J. Moskowitz, University of Chicago; Jon C. Rogowski, University of Chicago
The following blog post is a summary of the research that won the Midwest Political Science Association’s Patrick J. Fett Award for research presented at the 2023 MPSA Annual Conference. The award recognizes the best paper on the scientific study of Congress and the presidency.
My research centers on campaigns and elections, particularly focusing on the U.S. Congress. I am especially interested in campaign finance, electoral reforms, political advertising, and the effects of outside money on politics. My dissertation, titled “The Submerged Campaign: Citizens United, SpeechNow, and the Transformation of American Campaign Strategy”, explores the growth and usage of two novel campaign strategies: “redboxing” and B-Roll or image provision. Redboxing refers to efforts by candidates and parties to instruct outside spending groups such as super PACs, which they are legally prohibited from coordinating with, as to the preferred message, medium, and target group of “independent” external advertising. Campaigns do this by providing specific instructions in a distinctive, red-bordered text box on their official campaign website, exploiting legal protections for publicly communicated information. Alongside or instead of redboxing, B-Roll or image provision refers to efforts by candidates and parties to ensure that outside ads use the precise footage and images of the candidate anticipated to be most appealing to voters. Overall, I find that these strategies are ubiquitous in contemporary congressional elections, allowing campaigns to orchestrate the activities of non-party actors and direct vast sums of outside spending.
This research has been supported by funding from the Stan I. Bach Fellowship for Congressional Studies, the Malyi Center for the Study of Institutional and Legal Integrity at the University of Chicago Law School, the Bradley Fellowship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and the Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University. More extensive descriptions of current work can be found at https://gfoysutherland.com/ and I can be contacted at gsutherland@uchicago.edu.