This book begins with a simple but important premise: “When political activists have distinctive views and special access to policymakers, representation and democracy may become distorted” (p. 18). Building on previous research showing that such representational “distortion” is particularly large in the case of campaign contributors, Peter Francia, John C. Green, Paul S. Herrnson, Lynda Powell, and Clyde Wilcox collect and analyze an ocean of new survey data on the characteristics, motives, participation, and activities of significant donors (those who contributed more than $200 to at least one congressional candidate in 1996). The authors reach the “troubling” conclusion that significant donors do, in fact, “have a greater voice both in elections and the policymaking process than do most other Americans…. The degree to which donors hold diverse views on policy and possess different motives for giving serves to mitigate but not eliminate this distortion” (p. 162).

The analysis confirms some of the current conventional wisdom and calls other elements of it into question. Not surprisingly, significant donors are wealthier and better educated than the general population. They are overwhelmingly white and male, and they tend to be members of a variety of groups and associations (although only a tiny fraction are members of labor unions). The donor pool “has a significant pro-Republican tilt” (p. 37); approximately one-half of significant donors identify with or lean toward the Republican Party. Of significant donors, 97% contributed less than $5,001 during the 1996 election cycle, and 92% gave to a total of five or fewer candidates. Using factor analysis of responses to their questionnaire, the authors find that like those who participate in other dimensions of political life, significant donors are driven by a variety of motives—material (investors), purposive (ideologues), and solidary (intimates). The authors show that candidates and professional fund-raisers are aware of this variety of goals and factor it into their solicitations. Because campaigns lean heavily on those who have given in the past, and because so many of those who have given in the past continue to give, significant donors receive multiple solicitations. This results in a higher yield for candidates, but “reinforces the static composition of the donor pool” (p. 16). Like political action committees, significant donors give disproportionately to incumbents to ensure access, and they follow up on their contributions by contacting members of Congress—81% have, at least once, contacted a member or aide in an effort to influence the legislative process (p. 136). Finally, despite their central role in the system—or perhaps because of it—significant donors expressed substantial dissatisfaction with the pre-McCain-Feingold campaign finance regime and supported many of the reforms that found their way into the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002.

The Financiers of Congressional Elections has a number of strengths. Arguably, its key contribution is the identification and discussion of the diversity of donors' motives. The authors show that significant “donors are more diverse than the popular stereotype,” and illustrate this state of affairs through the introduction of three “composite” donors. “Investors” like “Tom Smith … contribute to advance their economic self interest,” while “intimates” like “Dick Jones are interested in the social side of giving.” Finally, “ideologues” like “Harriett White” are more purposive in their giving—they are “interested in broader public goods, such as a clean environment” (p. 67). In addition, this rich, original data set will be a resource for students of political participation for years to come.

The book's few weaknesses are minor, but several merit mention here. First, probably because it was written by five authors over an 11-year period (p. vii), on occasion the authors seem to lose sight of their primary purpose. Most of the book reads as a traditional social scientific study, but in places it reads more like a “how to” manual for fund-raisers (see, e.g., pp. 78–83). Second, the graphical presentation of data in Chapter 3 (“Donor Motives”) may overstate the degree to which material, purposive, and solidary motives are related to various social and political variables. While this presentation highlights the differences (in income, gender, partisanship, etc.) between donors with different motives, it downplays the fact that despite being driven by different motivations, significant donors are, in fact, very much alike socially, politically, and economically. Third, in Chapter 5 (“The Contribution”), the authors show that “investors emerge as most likely to indicate that business concerns, such as ensuring their business is treated fairly or that the candidate is friendly to their industry, motivate their giving” (pp. 103–4). However, the evidence for this conclusion is circular; the battery of questions from which the “investors” dimension was generated includes questions about the importance to donors that a candidate treat their business fairly or that a candidate is friendly to their industry. The authors acknowledge this possibility in an endnote, but then proceed to commit the same error in subsequent discussions of ideologues and intimates. Fourth, in their effort to present this wealth of new data and analysis, model results often receive limited, and in some instances insufficient, discussion. For example, the authors find that after controlling for other factors, women are more likely to be solicited by candidates for contributions than men. However, this interesting result receives only a brief discussion at the top of page 87, and it left the reviewer wishing that the authors had investigated it in greater depth.

Finally, the authors conclude that to the degree the current system is characterized by “representational distortion,” it might be reduced by a system of publicly financed elections (ironically, the major reform of the system most unattractive to the significant donors they surveyed). Yet their discussion of public financing ignores many of the major critiques of such a system. For example, would a poorly funded system of publicly financed elections actually increase, not decrease, the advantages incumbents have over challengers in getting their messages out to the electorate, as some have argued?

In the end, though, the story of this book is not its minor weaknesses but its innovation and creativity, its rich empirical underpinning, and the care with which the authors conducted the research and analysis. The book increases substantially our understanding of who these significant donors are, what motivates them, and how they behave. The recent doubling of the limit on contributions by individuals to candidates from $1,000 to $2,000 per election may enhance the role of these significant contributors in future elections, making the book even more timely. By tying their empirical work directly to a rich literature on political participation, the authors expand its relevance to a wide audience of political scientists and practitioners. It should be read by any “Tom, Dick, or Harriet” who considers him- or herself a serious student of congressional elections, campaign finance, or political participation, whether inside academe or inside the Beltway.