Chapter 13 AMSCO

Reform Party

A minor party founded by Ross Perot in the 1990's. Focuses on national government reform, economic/fiscal responsibility and political accountability.

4 Functions of Political Parties

Educate and get people to vote. Create platforms that emphasize their ideas and goals. Get candidates and manage their campaigns. Govern so they can get their desired policies across. (This is what they hope to do).

Issue Ads

Advertisements emphasizing an issue of concern. As long as these Ads didn't ask you for a specific candidate, they were fair game. Soft money lead to an increase in political parties' strength.

Independent Expenditures

Advertisements that support or discourage a candidate. Only can be used if the Super Pac didn't formally work with the candidate.

Shifts Since the 1960s

After World War II, the fight for equality for African Americans was largely fought by the Northern, liberal wing of the Democratic party. The results of this became apparent when in 1964, democratic nominee, LBJ, easily won the election. Republican nominee, Goldwater won the Deep South states. Southern white voters joined the Republican Party due to opposition to civil rights reforms, busing public school kids for racial balance and legalization of abortion. 1968/afterwards - The Vietnam War and Nixon's scandal let to a lot of mistrust and questioning that resulted in many Americans becoming Independents or leaving politics all together.

Political Action Committee (PAC)

An organization that accumulates political contributions from its members and uses the money to influence an election, by way of supporting or opposing a candidate.

Dark Ads

Anonymously placed status updates, photos, videos, or links that pop up in the feed's of the target audience, but not everyone's feed. They try to match the personality types of their audience and to manipulate people's feelings.

Hard Money

Any money subject to the regulations of the Federal Election Commission, or FEC, which was founded in 1974 to monitor campaign contributions. There are restrictions on how much can be given, and where donations come from. Corporations or labor unions may not give money.

Hill Committees

Both parties have non-lawmaking committees in the Senate and House. They try to figure out how to win seats in the House and the Senate. Hill committee members are also members of Congress. The chair of the Hill committee holds a leadership position in the chamber/section they are in. All four Hill Committees have offices and support staff. They get candidates for open seats and seats held by the other party and try to reelect those already in a seat. They organize polls, help candidates with funding, contribute to campaigns, make political ads, and buy television time. PARTIES IN CONGRESS: National Republican Senatorial Committee National Republican Congressional Committee Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

Ideological Parties

Socialists and Libertarians. Have a particular set of beliefs when it comes to social, economic, and political matters.

Party Chairperson

Chief planner and spokesperson. Runs the logistics of the party, essentially. Jobs: being featured political television shows and at important party events, guiding the party's daily performance, looking for funding, recruiting candidates for office, emphasizing the party philosophy to voters. The position is non-governmental.

McGovern-Fraser Commission

Created by the democratic party, it examined, pondered over, and eventually rewrite convention rules. The commission gave minorities, women, and younger voters representation at future conventions. Later, the Democrats modified the system's stress on the party's rank-and-file voting so the party's elites would have more independence. The party devised the system of Superdelegates.

The Expanding Economy and Realignment of 1896

During this period, it was still very much an era of big business and expansion, the Republicans dominating. The economic depressions/panics of the 1880's and 1890's were rough for the South and the Midwest. The Democratic Party joined with third parties like the Greenbacks and Populists to protest fair conditions for the working class and represent voters in areas that had been hit hard. Also, the Democratic Party was anti-liquor. William Jennings Bryan - Democrat. William McKinley - Republican. (1896 election). The Republicans were much for big business, industry, capitalism, urban interests, and immigrant groups. These groups didn't like the anti-liquor stance. When Democratic legislatures began to put more laws in place to protect workers, Republicans deemed them unconstitutional. This divide in this case is still prevalent, today.

Critical Elections

Elections that reveal drastic and lasting changes in terms of loyalty to parties.

Green Party

Emerged in the 1970's to endorse environmental awareness, social justice, and non-violence.

State and Local Parties

Every state has a state-wide party organization. Located in the state's capital city. The organization does a lot of the same jobs that the national party does. Many counties have a party chair too. Population size, the history of the local party, and its strength determine size and influence when it comes to the state/local level. Some chairs work all the time and collect a pretty good salary. Some parties have office space or their own building. Some county-level chairpersons from smaller counties volunteer part-time and work out of their homes with just a web page and voter registration cards to work with. State and local organizations can operate by themselves, without the help of the national party committee.

Economic Protest Parties

Example: In the late 19th century, the Greenback Part was against monopolies. At the same time, farmers founded the Populist Party to fight against railroads, big banks, corporations, and the politicians that were controlled by all of this. Greenback, Populist.

Social Media

Examples: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress, Tumblr, Quora, and Diggs. All of these platforms let people connect virtually, support brand awareness and allow for posts to be shared an unlimited amount of times, allow for images that emphasize the message, let people share their own opinions (can be anonymous). Barack Obama is called the first "social media" president a lot. His campaign spent many years researching how to use social media to increase his chance of winning the election. Advertising on social media isn't very expensive.

Superdelegates

High-ranking delegates not owing anything to any state primary vote. This category of people includes members of Congress, governors, mayors of large cities, and other party regulars. Before the Democratic Convention in 2016, the DNC Unity Reform Commission had a meeting for the purpose of changing the superdelegates' role in elections to make them more democratic. It was made so that the percentage of uncommitted delegates (free to vote for whomever they want to vote for) to one third, which ensured that the other two-thirds of the superdelegates cast their votes in relation to the popular vote in their states.

Shifting trend to candidate-centered campaigns

History tells us that candidates usually felt more comfortable about picking a certain political party rather than the individual candidate. In the 1960's this trend shifted. This can be attributed to television and a changing society. Television let candidates attract a following based on themselves, not the party. During the 60's, society questioned political parties due to the Vietnam War, race riots, and Nixon lying about personal and public issues. Also, today, social media and the Internet makes for even more of an emphasis on candidate-centered campaigns.

Whig Party

In 1824, Jackson founded the Democratic Party, which had very similar principles to the Democratic Republican party. The National Republican party was founded the same year. Jackson won the presidency in 1828. Suffrage expanded during this time, which ultimately led to a shift toward the Jacksonian Democracy; greater democracy for the common man. Opponents of this philosophy belonged to this party. They wanted a strong central government that would encourage westward expansion and investment in infrastructure and endorse these investments with a strong national bank. Northers and Southerners joined. Some were against slavery and some were lenient about it. This disagreement would lead to the downfall of the party.

"Grand Old Party"/ GOP

In 1860, abolitionists and Whigs joined together as "Republican" and nominated Abraham Lincoln, who won. The 1860 election was the time of the second national realignment. The new Republican Party was a third party at the time, technically. It began to dominate in politics very quickly. They are referred to by this name today because of this history. From 1860-1932, Republicans came out on top with their pro-growth and pro-business agenda. Democrats were the party of the South.

Jeffersonians/ Democratic Republicans

In the 1800's power shifted over to them. They favored state's right, limited national government, and less laws. This power originally belonged to the Federalists (Washington, Adams, and Hamilton), who endorsed a strong national government that put ins money into national infrastructure and banking. This shift between power was America's first peaceful transition of it. For 20 years after the 1800 election, the only part was the Democratic Republican party.

New Deal Coalition

In the 1930's most of America shifted over to the Democratic Party because of this Coalition. It consisted of Democratic state and local party organizations, labor unions and blue-collar workers, minorities, farmers, white Southerners, those in poverty, immigrants, and intellectuals. The 1932 presidential election was the first time that more blacks voted Democratic than Republican, which showcases this shift. FDR's leadership during the Great Depression and most of World War II allowed for the Democrats to dominate Congress for a generation.

Money and Resources

It is harder for minor-party candidates when it comes to financing, ballot access, and exposure. The Republican and Democrat parties have tried to raise money to convince donors that their candidate can win. Full-time employees at the DNC and RNC are always looking for money between elections. Something that must be taken note of is that the nominee's party must have won a certain percentage of the vote in the past election to get government funding in the present election. Also, Independents have a hard time with ballot access. To be able to put their names on the ballot, there is fee, and the candidate must accumulate 1.5 million signatures. Minor parties have to get these signatures themselves, whereas the Democrats and Republicans have volunteers who will convince people to sign the petition. The media doesn't really cover minor party candidates. Independents aren't really invited to public debates and such. Getting all this advertising and support is very costly.

Party Platform

List of beliefs and political goals. When writing this, parties try to think about the views of all the voters in the country.

Conventions

Meetings where party representatives come from all over the nation to nominate the party's presidential candidate.

Citizens United v. FEC (2010)

Reversed the soft money prohibitions. It allowed the Super Pac, a new organization, that could gather funds from many different sources (corporations and labor unions included) as long as the money didn't go right to a candidate's election campaign or to a party. The money COULD be used for advertising to endorse or discourage any candidate as long as the Super Pac didn't work with the candidate. These ads are called independent expenditures, and parties can construct them.

Soft Money

Money not regulated by the FEC that could be given to parties. It had to be for the purpose of "party-building" reasons, not endorsing a specific candidate. Parties used the money to create issues ads, anyway.

Campaign Management

Most higher-office campaigns have a two stage process. First, the party's general public voters nominate their candidates in a primary election. Factions of members rally around their choice candidate. A very important part of the first-stage is party-sponsored debates involving the party's declared candidates. The second stage is the general election. In this phase, the party usually rallied around its nominees for different offices and puts in a lot of effort to get them elected. Parties host political rallies, fundraiser, stickers, signs, buttons, etc. to get more people to vote for them. The party helps the candidate get ready for the debate, helps them make web-pages, and tries to help in any way possible to make events happen. Parties run field-offices, where they come to brainstorm and work on the campaign effort.

Super PAC

New organization that could gather funds from many different sources (corporations and labor unions included) as long as the money didn't go right to a candidate's election campaign or to a party.

Fundraising and Regulations

One of the party's most important jobs in terms of the campaign is to raise and spend money to win elections. Campaign finance laws for the nation and states limit how much people can give to candidates, parties, and interests and group, figure out what this money can be used for, and monitor this flow of of money. The Federal Election Commission or FEC, an executive branch agency controls the flow of money and stresses financial limits. National and state party organizations have to register with the FEC when they spend more than 1,000$ toward federal election effort in a year. If a party does anything relating to finance, within 20 days of a federal election, these activities must be funded with the money under federal limits. At present, state, local, and district-level party organizations can give a federal candidate's campaign committee up to $5,000 per election. The national party can give up to $5,000 per election for the primary and general elections, so it would be a total of $10,000.

Candidate Recruitment

Parties are always looking for candidates to run for office, especially those who have their own money to use for the campaign and such and a strong following. Party officials sometimes look for presidential candidates, but there are so many qualifiers that this is not always necessary. The party puts more emphasis on looking for candidates to run for the state legislature or the U.S., especially in districts where a certain party is guaranteed to win. Both parties have big recruitment programs in D.C. These recruiters mark swing districts and swing states and look for potential there. National officials from D.C. will sometimes contact these prospects and convince them to run. On the local level, a local-county level party chair might convince a friend to run for city commissioner or school board member.

Education of Voters

Parties at the national, state, and local levels try to educated their members to key issues and candidates. They also try to let their members know about the activities of the government. Parties train candidates so they will know how to make a good campaign. They train volunteers trying to spread the party's ideals as well. Also, parties conduct opinion surveys to what voters think about certain issues, and this is shared with officeholders and candidates to educated them on what needs to be done.

Party Realignments

Parties have adjusted to changes that affect their structure. Throughout history, there have been times where changes in voter alignments gave power to the opposite party and therefore made each party alter their missions. Changes in "underlying electoral forces" due to to different party identification. They are marked by critical elections. Essentially, it's just voters changing their political alignment. The elections of 1800, 1860, 1896, 1932, and 1968 each marked the coming of a different party system. There are 2 causes of realignments: a party loses so badly that it fades away as another one takes it place or large amounts of voters shift their allegiance to a different party.

Splinter Parties

Parties that break off from a major party. Bull moose, American Independent.

Mobilization of Voters

Political parties are always looking for more members from the general public in order to win elections and implement their policies. Local parties try to get more people to vote in order to get more people on their side, and also to try to attract those who don't really know which party to vote for. Volunteers contact citizens in many different way in order to get them to vote, including using robocalls.

Media Strategy

Political parties try to use the power of the television to their advantage in order to get themselves in the media because so many people watch television. Candidates might use either a news story or a commercial when it comes to the television. A news story shows the candidate in action. Candidates send out press releases declaring their events, which usually makes the evening news. This is free media coverage because the campaign doesn't have to pay for it. A campaign commercial must be paid for. Television advertising is the most costly part of any campaign. How a candidate looks on camera can make a big impact on the election as well. (Clothing, confidence level, charm, etc.).

Robocalls

Pre-recorded messages that can be sent right way to large numbers of people.

McCutcheon v. FEC (2014)

Removed the limit that was imposed by BCRA on how much someone could spend on multiple candidates in two years. This greatly impacted the popularity of the joint fundraising committee (JFC), which was a fundraising effort of candidates and committees. Contributions are shared among the members of the JFC according to their own terms.

Swing States

States that go to any side in an election. Swing states usually implement their party resources in certain areas, which makes it hard for third-party and independent candidates to match that kind of backing.

Democratic Party Platform

Supports efforts for minority rights and stronger protection for the environment. Want more government services to fix public problems and to give public services.

Minor Parties/ Third Parties

Technically, at the beginning, the Jacksonian Democrats and Lincoln's Republicans were minor parties. Since Lincoln won in 1860, no third parties have ever won the presidency. However, they have managed to send members to Congress, add amendments to the Constitution, and make the larger parties pay attention their ideas. In general, they don't really have a lot of influence.

Single-Member Districts

The candidate who wins the most votes wins.

Winner-Take-All-Voting

The largest challenge to third-party and independent candidates. This system involves each state awarding all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the majority of the popular vote. Third-Party and Independent candidates rarely win a state's popular vote.

Democratic National Committee (DNC) Republican National Committee (RNC)

They both meet formally every four years at their national conventions and between presidential elections to review their initiatives and such. Each is made up of hundreds of employees, a complex network, public leaders, and other elite activists. They both have subcommittees that control recruitment, manage communication, and get-out-the-vote operations, and write the party platform. Employees carry out surveys to make sure the party's philosophy lines up with it's members and the other way around. Staffers meet with interest groups that have the same goals and meet with their congressional leaders to advance their policy agenda.

Single-Issue Parties

They rise and fall based on the current events. Example: The Prohibition Party was founded in 1869 because of the temperance movement to ban alcohol that was going on at the time. Also, American (Know-Nothings)

Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA)

This act put an end to the whole soft money and issue ads cycle. Money that would have been soft money for the parties was given to special interest groups in support of a candidate, instead. Candidate centered campaigns became the big thing, as a result. This adjustment weakened the influence of political parties. Candidates who were supported by interest groups with a lot of money often won their positions, and as a result, there was a greater political divide.

Two-Party System

This is the system that the United States has. It does not encourage third-party and independent candidates, especially nationally.

Role of Third Parties in America

To get third-party candidate's voters, the most similar party will work their ideas into its agenda. This discourages third-party candidates from running, but can lead to positive social change. Example: Socialists endorsed women's suffrage and child labor laws in the early 20th century, and now both parties endorse it.

Republican Party Platform

Today, it supports more conservative ideas. For multiple decades, this party has stressed the need for a national defense, reduction of unnecessary government spending, and limited restraints on businesses.

Party DE alignment

When citizens become independent or leave politics altogether. Explained in detail above, as well.

"Shoe-leather Campaign"

When political parties hold registration drives. When it comes time for the election, volunteers go through neighborhoods promoting their party and their causes. On election day, volunteers might even give people a lift to the polls.

Divided Government

When voters voted for candidates from both parties, it led to the presidency being held by one party and one or both houses of Congress being held by the opposite party. Pretty common at the federal level.