LOCATING CAMPAIGN SCANDALS

The definition of scandals used in this article involves verified allegations of illegal, unethical, or immoral wrongdoing. The definition includes adultery because of the unique place of inappropriate sexual relationships in the panacea of political scandals (Rosen Reference Rosen2009), especially those on the campaign trail. Including sex scandals ensures that we include some “transgressions” of conventional morality, but we wish to exclude gossip, innuendo, and unsubstantiated rumors of private behavior. This definition is consistent with the sense that scandals involve a “transgression” (Thompson Reference Thompson2000) or an act contrary to conventional morality or “a set of shared values” (Garment Reference Garment1991). For scandals of nonsexual nature, an alleged violation of law or a code of ethics is the threshold criteria. This definition intentionally excludes strategic mistakes, incompetence, unpopular policy decisions, or negative press. This also prominently excludes instances that generate negative publicity, such as missteps when governor Rick Perry in a televised debate could not remember the third executive department he would eliminate (the “oops” moment) (Ceaser, Busch and Pitney Reference Ceaser, Busch and Pitney2013) or gaffes when Mitt Romney bet another candidate $10,000 to correct a point of contention in a debate (Zeleny and Parker Reference Zeleny and Parker2011). This definition of executive scandal requires that the misbehavior identified must involve the candidate (not incumbent candidates), a family member of the candidate, a senior campaign official, or the nominee’s running mate. The definition requires that the scandal was first revealed in the course of the campaign, whether the event happened in the past or recently.

To collect the information pertaining to each individual scandal (including the individual involved, the start of the scandal, the type of scandal, the allegations against the official), several sources were examined. These sources were typically secondary texts, following the lead of other scholars who have searched for a universe of political scandals (Kim and Bahry Reference Kim and Bahry2008; Maltzman et al. 2012; Puglisi and Snyder Reference Puglisi and Snyder2011). First, several newspapers were searched in multiple ways. By using newspapers and official sources to determine when scandals broke (and hence whether or not they existed), this minimized the presence of false or malicious rumors from the data. A series of search terms were used to capture individual scandals.^{Footnote 1} Using Lexis-Nexis Academic and searching by individual years, the search string was used to search Associated Press articles. Second, several excellent encyclopedic texts, which are compendia of scandals, corruptions, or ethics violations in government, were searched.^{Footnote 2} The span of these data include only the nomination period (i.e., until one of the candidates secures enough delegates to be designated the winner) and scandals involving nonincumbents (i.e., Whitewater for President Clinton and the Valerie Plame scandal for President Bush are excluded).

In establishing a time span for the models, the scandal begins when the charges are made public for the first time, and a scandal is considered ended when the accused individual is exonerated or formally leaves his or her position. The origin of the scandal can involve a news story in a major daily newspaper, a report to Congress, an internal investigation, or other secondary sources (see endnote 2 on sources). This variable spans the life cycle of the scandal from the first break of the story to the end of the scandal, whether that end be politically or legally favorable for the individual charged in the scandal. Each scandal has a definite temporal beginning but some scandals emerge and do not end. For instance, allegations might not be resolved by the time a campaign is over or another candidate wins the nomination. An “active” scandal (or scandals) is (are) indicated in the data by an integer registering the total number of scandals dealt with by an individual campaign on a given day (for instance, “1” for one scandal, “2” for two scandals).

Using the definition defended above, 54 scandals that occurred between the 1996 and 2012 election cycles were identified (beginning in January of 1996 and ending in November of 2012 with the end of the election cycle). Table 1 has a list of each scandal and the individuals associated with each scandal. These scandals span several personal, financial, and political issues. For example, in 1996, a top fundraiser for Senator Bob Dole entered a plea agreement to pay $6 million in personal and corporate files for illegally funneling campaign funds to the Dole campaign (Babcock Reference Babcock1996). In the 2008 election cycle, Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a longtime fundraiser for Senator (later President) Obama, was charged with fraud, attempted extortion, and money laundering (Drew and McIntire Reference Drew and McIntire2007). In 2012, Herman Cain acknowledged both new and old allegations of sexual harassment while he was the chief of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s (Rutenberg and Shear Reference Rutengert and Shear2011). As a way to check the accuracy of these individual scandals, the list of events plus all resources—newspaper articles, books, and articles—were given to a research assistant, along with a rubric for deciding whether each event was a scandal. This second coder was assigned a subsample of scandals and asked to apply the same rules as the first coder. This process demonstrated significant agreement between the coders.^{Footnote 3}

Table 1

Campaign Scandals, 1996–2012

NOMINATION RESOURCES DATA

In addition to the scandal data, several additional measures are used to capture key campaign resources or predictors of successful campaigns.

DO SCANDALS HURT CANDIDATES SEEKING THEIR PARTY’S NOMINATION?

As discussed previously, when scandals emerge during the quest for the nomination of a party’s presidential bid, these events should have a negative impact on the candidates involved. But, how much of an effect is there? The results from a series of fixed effects panel OLS models (using the individual campaigns and election year as the unit) for the three key dependent variables, displayed in table 2, demonstrate significant but not uniform effects on key indicators of candidate success.^{Footnote 6} To begin, for the total daily funds raised, candidates affected by political scandal are significantly less likely to raise funds over the course of the life of the scandal. In particular, candidates involved in scandal raise approximately $40,000 less per day than candidates not involved in scandal. The last traded price also has a significant positive effect on fundraising. Candidates who are more likely to win tend to have greater ability to raise campaign funds. Republican candidates’ fundraising is more harmed by scandal given that the coefficient is larger for these candidates than for all candidates. On average, Republican candidates’ fundraising daily yield is about $20,000 less than when examining all candidates combined, about $60,000 less per day.

Table 2

Effects of Scandal on Fundraising, Position and Endorsements, 1996–2012

Note: A fixed effects panel OLS model was used for the analysis (set with election year and individual campaign set as the unit). The dependent variable are the total amount of funds received on an individual day, the last traded price on the Iowa Political Market on an individual day and the number of endorsements a campaign received in an individual day (‡ notes 1996 to 2004 because of data availability). Standard errors in parentheses. *** indicates statistical significance at p<.01 ** indicates statistical significance at p<.05. * indicates statistical significance at p<.10.

Scandals have a negative effect on funds raised but a positive effect on the final price of daily traded shares of individual candidates. The results in table 2 demonstrate that the more scandals faced by a candidate has a small positive effect on a candidate’s position for both all candidates and Republican candidates. That the effect is positive seems to challenge the notion of scandals negatively affecting a candidate’s ability to get the party nomination. Why? It may be that any publicity is good publicity. This may be especially true when considering what amounts to an open seat for the nomination (because the analysis only includes non-incumbents). In a crowded nomination field, as many of the cases examined here were, attention to an individual’s campaign may provide a temporary (and modest) boost to a candidate’s campaign. Some evidence suggests that a candidate’s duration in a race is a function more of their ability to raise their profile rather than raising funds or media coverage (Damore, Hansford and Barghothi Reference Danmore, Hansford and Barghothi2010). Other scholars have demonstrated that the effects of scandal on candidate approval is short lived (Miller Vonnahme 2014). Even so, the substantive results are small, ranging from .02 to .03 on a scale of 0 to 1 per day, making the added positive effect somewhat marginal.

Although there are significant effects for total funds raised and the last traded price of each candidate, there is no effect of scandal on the number of endorsements for all candidates. The effect of scandal on endorsements, as might be predicted, is negative but not statistically significant. Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller (Reference Cohen, Karol, Noel and Zaller2008) report that some potential endorsees hold back endorsements of candidates in the aftermath of scandal (181). This effect does not appear significant when examining all candidates in primaries during this time period. The truncated nature of the data may be causing the limited effect. However, Republican candidates are more likely to lose endorsements than all candidates grouped together, generally as expected. The coefficient for Republican candidates in table 2 shows a negative statistically significant effect of scandals on endorsements, where Republican candidates lose between one and two endorsements per day with the presence of or an increase in the number of scandals associated with the campaign.