Money isn't everything: Self-financing candidates in United States House elections, 1992--1998

In a game of Monopoly, each player starts with ;In this doctoral dissertation I scrutinized several aspects of self-financing in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, including the conditions under which one should expect candidates to self-finance, the effects of self-financing on the quality of the roster of candidates from which voters must choose, the relationship of self-financing to the balance of electoral competition, the impact of self-financing on election outcomes, and the relationship of self-financing to the electoral incentives and campaign experiences that influence the activities of elected representatives. My primary method is statistical analysis of House elections held from 1992--98.;The study produced several significant findings. (1) Candidates who self-finance heavily tend to be inexperienced in politics and are therefore deficient in the skills and political resources, like name recognition and organizational support, that are necessary to run an effective campaign. (2) The prospect of facing a self-financed opponent dissuades some candidates with experience in elective office from running for Congress. (3) Self-financing improves candidates' vote margins and chances of winning an election, but personal money is significantly less effective than funds raised from campaign contributors. Furthermore, the marginal effect of self-financing is usually not large enough to fortify the weak political positions of most self-financers, so the overall election rate of extreme self-financers is unimpressive. (4) The overwhelming majority of self-financing takes the form of loans, which candidates can repay later with contributions. This pattern suggests that self-financing is a one-time-only phenomenon, and indeed the few self-financers who win seats in Congress are more likely to repay self-debt from their first campaigns than to self-finance re-election expenditures.