Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Few studies have examined whether there are demographic discrepancies between legislators on the following dimensions: race, gender and region. Although characteristics such as education and party leadership are frequently included as control variables, they are rarely the focus of the study, per se. In this paper, we expand this section of literature by taking a snapshot of the 2006/07 state lower house chambers and examining them for differences across race, gender and region.

We employ an array of data that includes all representatives of all state house chambers for the 11 former confederate states and a sample of 11 non-southern states, coded by gender and ethnic heritage. The non-southern state chambers are sampled with an eye to variation in legislative professionalism and diversity of state population.

The goal of this paper is to determine whether the professional backgrounds of state legislators differ as a function of their race, gender or regional affiliation. Fox and Lawless (2004), Clark (1994) and Jennings and Farah (1981) have all suggested that women may be disadvantaged due to differences in social background, political experience, recruitment opportunities and general levels of ambition. The authors do not explore the question of whether or not regional differences exist or whether discrepancies exist among female minorities and female Caucasians. We assert that there are, and that there is a distinctive Southern pattern: that African American women are more “qualified”, ceteris paribus, than their white counterparts.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study had two central goals: to replicate prior research conducted on the agenda setting effect of candidates’ political advertising on the media agenda and to contribute much needed research on the agenda setting influence of the candidate press release at both the issue level and the attribute level. Breaking analysis into two time periods, a total of 72 press releases were downloaded from the candidates’ Web sites and compared with 107 newspaper articles. Through human-coder content analysis and using cross-lagged correlation analysis, results highlighted that only the incumbent Rick Perry was successful in setting the media issue agenda. The challenger Tony Sanchez was influenced by the media when developing his issue agenda and was also unable to transfer his agenda on Perry to the media’s agenda on Perry. At the substantive attribute level, both incumbent and challenger Sanchez were influential in framing the media’s substantive agendas for themselves and their opponent. The candidate to media correlations for both ranged from .675 to .9, while three out of the four media-to-candidate correlations fell below the Rozelle-Campbell baseline. As hypothesized, the combined affective agenda of both candidates bore strong correlations to the media’s affective agenda on each candidate. Measuring individual influence of candidate and opponent for affective agenda setting revealed that the opponent was more successful at setting the candidate’s affective agenda in the media than the candidate in setting his own affective agenda. These results confirmed the media’s slant towards presenting more negative than positive coverage of political candidates.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: While much research has explored the effects of anxiety on politics, little has examined the causes of political anxiety. This paper examines what candidate characteristics cause anxiety, differentiating between threatening and novel characteristics, and examines anxiety's effects based on whether threat or novelty is the cause of this emotional response.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: I examine the ways in which the information environment of party nomination conventions affects delegates' perceptions of female candidates. I find that information environment influences delegate's likelihood to vote for a female candidate.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Internet plays an important role in political campaigns, but little is known about the effects of citizen exposure to candidate web sites. This experiment tests whether time spent with policy, background, and campaign information on web sites predicts voters’ self-perceived knowledge and evaluations of candidates, and the confidence with which they express their evaluations. The analyses suggest that campaign sites can affect what people think they know about candidates and how they evaluate them.