| Most students of the political consulting industry emphasize the use of consultants by political candidates for their expert services, which I label this the instrumental theory of consulting. I challenge this theory as an incomplete and posit an alternative, strategic theory. Under this approach, politicians and political consultants make decisions observable to other political elites. Challengers for congressional office have a demand for political consultants not only for the quality of their services (polling, advertising, etc.) but to signal to political elites (PACs, the news media, etc.) that they can wage competitive contests. Challengers must persuade not only voters but also elites of their viability. Moreover, the demand for consultants is particularly high because there is a limited supply of the relatively few big-name firms whose signal is strongest in this regard and who hold a considerable market advantage over the majority of consulting firms. The core analogy here is to a market for status goods. In this model of House campaigning, competitiveness is a scarce, elusive, and ephemeral form of status, as perceived by political elites, and it is was non-incumbents desire in order to increase their chances of winning and success at fundraising. To assess the validity of the strategic approach, I show that the presence of top consultants increases the chances of elites, namely journalists, selecting the non-incumbent's race as competitive. Second, I construct a recursive model of the relationship between PAC receipts, consultant use, and competitiveness, and I find that challenger use of big-name firms enhances competitiveness, which in turn boosts receipts. Third, by collecting itemized expenditure records and identifying dollars spent on consultants, I find that challenger spending for big-name consultants has no effect on incumbent vote share independent of competitiveness but a strong negative effect when competitiveness is excluded from the analysis. Lastly, I compare the instrumental and strategic views with respect to consultant influence on campaign advertising and find that the use of lesser-known media specialists increases the number of ads aired. Despite their advertising specialty, top media firms had no such effect because their hiring is strategic and unrelated to instrumental goals. |
