High-Dollar Donors and Donor-Rich Neighborhoods: Representational Distortion in Financing a Municipal Election in Seattle

Abstract

Candidates for municipal office collect millions of dollars to fund their campaigns. While previous research about local fundraising coalitions investigates the role of specific interest groups—for example, real estate professionals and developers—and donors outside the political jurisdiction, there has been little systematic investigation of individual donors classified by the size of their contribution or their geographic concentration within the city itself. In this article, we draw on administrative records of campaign contributions from the 2013 Seattle elections to answer two questions about the financing of municipal elections. First, drawing on research from federal elections, we ask whether candidates build fundraising coalitions comprised primarily of small-dollar donors or whether they rely heavily on high-dollar donors to fund their campaigns. In Seattle, we find that only one-fifth of donors in the mayoral election contributed at least $500, but their contributions account for 55% of the money raised in the election. Next, we ask how concentrated campaign contributors are within Seattle neighborhoods. Candidates collected nearly 25% of their funds from the wealthiest 10% of neighborhoods. By pointing to an outsized role for high-dollar donors and donors concentrated in affluent neighborhoods, this article identifies a critical dimension of representational distortion in municipal elections. In doing so, it opens a new window into the local campaign finance system—an aspect of our political process that has been largely overlooked in research on campaigns and elections.

Keywords

campaigns local elections public financing politics

In 2015, voters in Seattle, Washington, passed I-122, an initiative to create a taxpayer-funded “democracy vouchers” program to finance municipal elections. Concerned about the growing influence of money in politics, proponents of I-122 argued that a public campaign finance system would return control of local politics to the residents of Seattle. Under the rules of the program, every voter in Seattle would receive four vouchers, each worth $25, to assign to the candidate(s) of their choice. The initiative, which passed with more than 60% support on Election Day, sought to ensure that the people of Seattle participated in the electoral process not just by voting in the election, but also by funding candidates for local office (Berman 2015; Young 2015).

In the months leading up to the election, Honest Elections Seattle, an advocacy group behind the ballot referendum, argued that publicly funded elections would address concerns about representational distortion in the campaign finance system (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). In their campaign materials, the group drew attention to the small share of the electorate contributing to campaigns. They worried that high-dollar donors and contributors from outside the city itself would play an outsized role in financing the election. With the creation of a system of “democracy vouchers,” the leaders of Honest Elections Seattle hoped to empower the people of Seattle and limit the role of wealthy donors.

Cities such as Seattle are an important place to study the role of money in politics because, compared with state and federal races, their elections are funded by a relatively small number of donors who are likely to have greater access to elected officials. There are nearly 20,000 municipal governments in the United States, most of which include elected mayors and city councilors (National League of Cities 2016). These governments control many issues central to the everyday lives of citizens, including land-use planning, taxation, public safety, sanitation, and the regulation of public spaces (Adams 2011; Trounstine 2009, 2010). In fact, as Oliver, Ha, and Callen (2012) note, many of the decisions made by local governments are more influential to the everyday lives of citizens than those made by the federal government. Recognition of the role of local governments in the everyday lives of citizens has generated a resurgence of interest in patterns of representation in local governments, especially regarding voter participation (Caren 2007; Hajnal and Lewis 2003; Trounstine and Valdini 2008).

Yet, as we argue in this article, efforts to evaluate campaign finance as a form of representational distortion have been limited. Historically, studies of the role of money in city elections have focused largely on the influence of organized interests, including real estate professionals and labor organizations, in the funding coalitions assembled by municipal candidates. More recently, a series of case studies identifies donors from a more heterogeneous set of industries and occupations in these funding coalitions (Adams 2006, 2007; Fleischmann and Stein 1998; Krebs and Pelissero 2001). We extend this research by examining the composition of individual donors not by their occupation or industry affiliation, but by the size of their contribution and their concentration within the city. To do so, we utilize a case study of the 2013 mayoral and city council elections in Seattle, Washington—the last election before the voucher system was approved.

Our analysis of the donor composition in local funding coalitions focuses on two interrelated issues. First, we ask what share of campaign contributions are collected from high-dollar donors or donors contributing at least $500 in the election. Although these donors account for only a small share of the donor pool, their contributions make up an overwhelming share of the money collected in local campaigns. This issue is pertinent to identifying representational distortion because campaign contributors tend to be descriptively unrepresentative of the electorate. Campaign donors tend to be whiter, wealthier, more educated, and disproportionately male compared with the population at large—a pattern that is even more pronounced among donors making large contributions (Brown, Powell, and Wilcox 1995; Francia et al. 2003). Moreover, large contributors are more likely than those who make small contributions to donate for material reasons—a key rationale for evaluating their role in funding municipal elections (Joe et al. 2008).

Next, we examine the concentration of donor networks within particular city neighborhoods. In contrast with previous research, which reveals that candidates for local office collect only a small share of their funds from outside their political jurisdiction, there is little analysis of the spatial concentration of donor networks within the city (Adams 2006). Our analysis reveals that donors are spatially concentrated in a handful of wealthy neighborhoods—neighborhoods that are largely unrepresentative of the city as a whole. Because many government services and resources are distributed geographically across the city, the spatial concentration of donors raises the possibility that residents in donor-rich neighborhoods benefit from amplified voice in advocating for these resources.

To evaluate the role of high-dollar donors and donor-rich neighborhoods in financing municipal elections, our analysis proceeds in four sections. First, we draw on existing studies of campaign finance at the local, state, and national levels to motivate our analysis. We use the first section to theorize the nature of funding coalitions assembled by local candidates, including the heterogeneity of donors according to the size of their contribution. In this section, we also consider the potential impacts of geographically concentrated donor networks for the distribution of city resources. Next, we describe a unique dataset collected by the Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) in Washington State to track the campaign contributions made to candidates for public office. Drawing on these records of every campaign donation, we are able to both describe the contribution patterns of individual donors and outline the composition of the funding coalition assembled by political candidates in Seattle. First, we quantify the degree to which campaigns for municipal office are funded by donors contributing at least $500. Then, we describe the concentration of donor networks within specific Seattle neighborhoods. In the final section, we build on these findings by underscoring the importance of studying the municipal campaign finance system. While previous research centers on voter participation, we argue that the campaign finance system is a key site to understand patterns of representational distortion in local politics. These analyses lay the groundwork for future research on Seattle’s voucher program by offering a snapshot of the campaign finance landscape prior to the passage of I-122.

Financing Municipal Elections

Municipal governments play an important role in the everyday lives of city residents. Elected officials oversee a myriad of issues that impact the citizens they represent, including property taxation, school funding issues, and the delivery of neighborhood services (Oliver, Ha, and Callen 2012). Unlike elected representatives at the federal level, city officials are often deeply responsive to the needs and demands of their constituents (Mladenka 1989; Tausanovitch and Warshaw 2014). They engage in regular contact with people in their districts, including meeting with neighborhood groups and fielding requests from constituents. This pattern of frequent, sustained contact with constituents creates opportunities for both city residents and organized interests to shape the political agenda. City residents and organized interests may advocate for particular policy positions or emphasize specific concerns through regular political channels. This dynamic raises the possibility of citizens amplifying their political voice by contributing to political campaigns. In this section, we motivate our research by developing a theoretical framework to understand the composition of individual donors in funding coalitions assembled by municipal candidates.

Individual Donors in Municipal Elections

While municipal elections are funded from multiple sources, including individual donors and organized interest groups, much of the research focuses on the role of developers and real estate professionals. This focus on the development industry underscores the importance of local elected officials in shaping development decisions. Proponents of the urban growth machine argue that these organized real estate professionals contribute to municipal campaigns to steer development activity in their favor and deepen their partnerships with municipal leaders (Logan and Molotch 2007; Mollenkopf 1983; Stone 1989, 2005). Other studies point to a role for labor organizations as key municipal actors in building support for local candidates (Krebs 2005b). While organized development and labor groups play an important role in municipal elections, the funding coalitions assembled by candidates for municipal office are substantially more heterogeneous than these studies often suggest (Adams 2007).

A handful of case studies from major American cities, including Los Angeles (Krebs 2005a), Chicago (Krebs 2001, 2005b), Atlanta (Fleischmann and Stein 1998), and St. Louis (Fleischmann and Stein 1998), foreground the role of donors across industries and professions. Studying the 2001 municipal election in Los Angeles, Krebs (2005b) reported an extensive donor base of both corporate and noncorporate actors. Among individual donors, Krebs (2005b) found that only 15% of itemized contributions to the winning mayoral candidate were associated with development interests—a surprising finding given the primacy of growth machine models. Similarly, Fleischmann and Stein (1998) pointed to other organized businesses interests beyond real estate professionals and developers in financing municipal elections in Atlanta and St. Louis. In these elections, Fleischmann and Stein (1998) reported that contributions from individuals and political action committees (PAC) associated with development activity in the city made up 20% to 30% of funds raised—again, a significant minority, but far less than theories of the urban growth machine would predict. In St. Louis, individuals involved in insurance, accounting, and legal fields made up 10% of contributors. Those involved in other businesses comprised nearly one-third of the donor coalition (Fleischmann and Stein 1998).

The focus on development and real estate professionals has obscured efforts to understand the involvement of other actors involved in funding local elections, including the role of individual donors making large contributions to political candidates. While the research on city politics has overlooked these contributors, recent scholarship on federal elections has investigated these donors after a near-exclusive focus on organized interests, such as corporate PACs (Barber, Canes-Wrone, and Thrower 2016). Individual donors—and specifically, wealthy individuals—constitute the backbone of the federal campaign finance system (Jacobson 1980, 2004; Magleby and Goodliffe 2014). In their comprehensive study of nationwide participation in political and civic activities, Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995) reported that affluent Americans are significantly more likely to make a campaign contribution. While these affluent Americans constitute just 4% of voters, they contributed fully 35% of campaign funds (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). These wealthy donors also contribute larger sums of money to political candidates (Brown, Powell, and Wilcox 1995; Francia et al. 2003). As a result, the overrepresentation of wealthy Americans in the pool of campaign contributors far exceeds their overrepresentation in other forms of political participation.

The overrepresentation of wealthy individuals in the campaign finance system is notable for another reason: large donors may be more likely than small donors to give for material, rather than ideological, reasons. In their survey of donors to state races, Joe et al. (2008) found that material reasons are the most common motivation for large contributors, many of whom are narrowly concerned about their economic interests. To measure these material interests, Joe et al. (2008, p. 23) included survey items asking whether a candidate or elected official would fairly treat a donor’s business, industry, or job, and if the candidate cares about “things that directly affect the property values” in a neighborhood. Small donors, by contrast, were more likely to donate on the basis of ideological motivations—to advance a cause, push a party platform, or advocate for an ideological position (Joe et al. 2008). These divergent motivations in state elections, based on the size of the contribution, suggest that high- and low-dollar donors in municipal politics may follow similar patterns. In fact, the material–ideological divide may be especially pronounced in local races given both the nonpartisan nature of many local political contests and the wide range of local issues that are routinely debated.

With these lessons from the federal and state campaign finance systems in mind, we turn our attention in this article to the composition of local funding coalitions according to the size of donations, rather than the occupation or industry of the donor. Candidates for municipal office can assemble different types of funding coalitions. On one hand, an egalitarian donor coalition would bring together a large number of contributors making small contributions to the campaign. This strategy of building a broad fundraising coalition may be effective for candidates without access to established networks of wealthy donors or for populist candidates looking to assemble an ideological coalition of donors. In addition, an egalitarian coalition may emerge from candidates relying on fundraising technologies such as direct mail, telephone, or e-mail solicitations (Herrnson 2012; Hindman 2005). One of the most noteworthy examples of an egalitarian coalition at the federal level is the unprecedented primary campaign of 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean, which relied heavily on Internet fundraising. The Dean campaign received 61% of its donations from small donors contributing less than $200, and only 11% from those donating the maximum (Hindman 2005, p. 124).

On the other hand, a wealthy donor coalition centers on high-dollar donors, including donors contributing the maximum contribution to a political candidate. Even though high-dollar donors are likely to represent a minority of contributors to the donor pool in these coalitions, their contributions will make up a significant share—or even the majority—of funds raised by political candidates. By skewing the fundraising toward wealthy donors, these coalitions reinforce patterns of representational distortion in municipal politics, exacerbating concerns about the responsiveness of elected officials to the demands of high-dollar contributors.¹ These dynamics may be especially pronounced in the context of local races where relatively few citizens contribute to a political candidate.

Wealthy donor coalitions are the dominant type of funding coalition in federal races where candidates routinely rely upon established fundraising networks and high-dollar fundraisers (Herrnson 2012). Although both journalistic and scholarly accounts of the 2012 presidential election highlighted the prodigious role of small-dollar donors in funding the reelection of incumbent Barack Obama, Obama raised only about 28% of his individual funds from small donors (and his general election opponent, Mitt Romney, raised only 12% of his funds from small-dollar donors) (Campaign Finance Institute 2017a). In the same year, Senate candidates, on average, received about a quarter of their funds from donors contributing less than $200, while House candidates received about 17% (Campaign Finance Institute 2017b, 2017c). The fact that candidates for federal office routinely rely on coalitions of large donors has prompted growing concerns about the influence of money in national politics (Achen and Bartels 2016; Gilens 2012; Herrnson 2012; Lessig 2011).

While presenting the composition of fundraising coalitions as ideal types, this theoretical framework considers the degree to which funds come from high-dollar donors and, in turn, the degree of overrepresentation of these donors in the coalition. This has important implications for representativeness and voice in local politics. Fundraising coalitions assembled largely of high-dollar donors exacerbate representational distortion in municipal campaign finance, especially in the context of local elections where relatively fewer citizens participate. However, without previous research into the composition of these coalitions, we have little basis upon which to compare the experience of Seattle with that of other cities. With little existing research about the degree to which candidate coalitions are comprised of high-dollar donors, our research offers an opportunity to better understand the composition of individual donor coalitions in local elections.

The Geographic Concentration of Donors

While candidates for municipal office solicit votes only from within their jurisdiction, they are permitted to collect campaign cash from individuals outside of the city. Funds raised outside a candidate’s jurisdiction—for example, in the surrounding suburban communities or other parts of the country—may create representational distortion by giving political voice to individuals and interests beyond the candidate’s electoral constituency. For this reason, past work on local elections has examined the role of out-of-state and out-of-district donors in funding local contests (Fleischmann and Stein 1998; Krebs 2001).

While candidates are permitted to fundraise outside of their political jurisdiction, most candidates for municipal office rely heavily on their own constituents to fund their campaigns. In the 1998 city council election in Atlanta, Fleischmann and Stein (1998) reported that 60% of funds were raised within the city itself, and 34% were raised from the surrounding suburbs, leaving only a small share of funds raised from donors beyond the larger metropolitan area. In Chicago, Krebs (2001) reported that 25% of contributors to Mayor Daley’s 1995 campaign came from outside of Chicago, but within the state of Illinois—possibly from the suburban communities of the larger metropolitan area. Another 8% were out-of-state donors. Adams (2006) echoed these findings in his analysis of the funding coalitions in mayoral and city council races in four cities. Together, these findings affirm the importance of reorienting research to evaluate the distribution of donors within a political jurisdiction, rather than focusing on those outside of it.

Within the city itself, representational distortion may result from the geographic concentration of donor networks within particular neighborhoods. In federal elections, political donors are concentrated in specific geographic areas and drawn into the political process through local social networks. Gimpel, Lee, and Kaminski (2006) report that the funding coalitions of both parties are geographically similar—indeed, the geography of their donors remains much more similar than the geography of their electoral support. While the partisan distribution of voters has distinct geographic patterns, with Democratic voter coalitions in cities and Republican voter coalitions outside of them, donors to both political parties overwhelmingly come from densely populated, wealthy neighborhoods, regardless of the political leanings of the jurisdiction. This finding is particularly important given related research that shows a sharp contrast between public opinion in donor-rich neighborhoods and opinion in areas with fewer donors (and the nation at large; Bramlett, Gimpel, and Lee 2011). These findings underscore the significance of geographically based networks for federal funding coalitions, as candidates, regardless of their political identification, are dependent on campaign funds from the same affluent, unrepresentative neighborhoods.

While the concentration of donors in federal elections hints at the possibility that municipal candidates search for money in similarly unrepresentative neighborhoods, studies of local elections have largely overlooked the geography of campaign donors within the city. As a result, we know virtually nothing about the degree to which donors are concentrated in particular neighborhoods or whether those neighborhoods are representative of the city at large. Given the spatial concentration of wealthy individuals in specific neighborhoods, we would expect candidates, to the extent that they rely on high-dollar donors, to concentrate their fundraising efforts in a subset of wealthy neighborhoods.

Understanding the concentration of donor networks is important because municipal services and resources are often distributed geographically (DeHogg 1997; Kelly and Swindell 2002; Lineberry 1977). These services, including fire protection, library services, and recreational facilities, primarily serve neighborhood residents and contribute to the quality of life within neighborhoods. Community members reap the benefits of extra police protection in their neighborhoods. They benefit from additional resources directed at neighborhood schools, recreational centers, and libraries. If concentrated political contributions in city neighborhoods amplify political voice and enable geographically concentrated citizens to more effectively advocate for city resources, then the geography of donor networks could impact patterns of urban inequality.

Although most research on the responsiveness of city government to the concerns of their community focuses on political resources within neighborhoods, including the strength of organized groups and the level of citizen engagement, we note that campaign contributions are also a powerful form of political voice. When concentrated geographically, political donations in local races may amplify voices within a neighborhood, leading to inequalities in patterns of responsiveness and service delivery in the city. Neighborhoods with concentrated support for political leaders may receive higher levels of service provision if legislators are responsive not only to the voters in a community, but also to the depth of fundraising activities in those neighborhoods (Cingranelli 1981).

The 2013 Municipal Election in Seattle

To investigate the financing of municipal elections in Seattle, we assembled a database of campaign finance records encompassing all donations made in the 2013 election to candidates for city council and mayor. We focus on the 2013 election because it is the final election (for both mayor and city council) before the voters in Seattle passed I-122—the ballot referendum that radically restructured the way local campaigns are financed. The 2013 election, thus, serves as a baseline for understanding local campaign finance against which future analyses can be compared.

Candidates in Seattle’s municipal elections can accept contributions from individuals and businesses (and the PACs associated with them). Under Seattle law, these contributors can give a maximum of $700 to each candidate. Contributions made to candidates for elective office in Washington State are reported by political campaigns to the PDC. Candidates who raise more than $5,000 must record and report the sources of their contributions to the PDC (Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission 2013, p. 10). They must disclose the name, address, date of receipt, and amount of each donation, regardless of the size of the contribution. For individual contributors who have given more than $100 to a single candidate, the candidate is also required to collect and report the contributor’s occupation and employer.² For this analysis, we obtained all of the itemized contributions and corresponding candidate files for the 2013 election.³

As in the federal disclosure system, the Washington State disclosure records catalog individual contributions made to candidates and campaign committees. However, the records do not contain a unique identification number to link multiple contributions made by the same individual. For example, if a single donor made a contribution to a mayoral candidate and a candidate for city council, the PDC records do not include any identification number indicating that these contributions came from the same donor. As a result, we begin our analysis by assigning donor identification numbers using a deterministic match procedure. In a deterministic match procedure, records are brought together into a group only if they match exactly on the match variables. In this case, we link contribution entries using a contributor’s full name, street address, and zip code. This process enables us to investigate contributor patterns rather than just contributions (Malbin, Brusoe, and Glavin 2012).

Individual Donors in the 2013 Elections

Before analyzing the funding coalitions for candidates in the 2013 municipal elections, we begin by describing the individual donors that contributed to these candidates. We identify 11,371 unique individual contributors in the Seattle municipal election. Of these contributors, 57% (n = 6,480) gave only in the mayoral election, and 34% (n = 3,891) of contributors gave only in the city council races. The remaining 9% of contributors (n = 1,000) made at least one contribution in both the mayor and city council races. These descriptive statistics are reported in Table 1.

Table 1.

Number and Percentage of Individual Donors, by Race and Geographic Location.

	Individual Donors
City council only	3,891
City council only	34.22%
Mayor only	6,480
Mayor only	56.99%
Both	1,000
Both	8.79%
Total	11,371
In Seattle	8,234
In Seattle	72.61%
In Washington	2,259
In Washington	19.92%
Out-of-state	847
Out-of-state	7.47%
Total	11,340

Note. A total of thirty-one contributors were missing addresses.

While most donors reported an address in the city of Seattle, candidates collected donations from a significant number of contributors outside of the city, including other parts of Washington State and other locations throughout the country. Overall, about 73% of contributors (n = 8,234) resided in Seattle. Another 20% (n = 2,259) of donors listed an address in Washington State. The remaining 7% were from elsewhere in the United States.⁴

Although the majority of contributions came from residents of Seattle, only a fraction of Seattle residents contributed to a campaign. In fact, a mere 1.49% of the voting-age (18 and over) population made a political contribution in the 2013 municipal election.⁵ By contrast, about 39.06% of the voting-age population voted in the election in 2013 (Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission 2014). The voter participation rate was more than twenty-six times higher than the funding participation rate—a fact that underscores the substantial mismatch between voter participation and donor participation.

In Figure 1, we report the total contribution per candidate separated for donations to mayoral candidates and candidates for city council. When a single donor gave to multiple candidates, we use the average size of their contributions.⁶ The figure shows that the modal contribution category to a city council candidate was $100 or less. In fact, 68% of contributions given to city council candidates were $100 or less. About 24% of donors to city council races gave between $101 and $499. Only 8% of donors to city council candidates gave at least $500 per contribution. For donors in the mayoral election, 46% gave $100 or less. About one-third of contributors to the mayoral race donated between $101 and $499. About 20% gave $500 or more.

Figure 1.

Distribution of candidate contributions per donor in mayoral and city council campaigns.

Funding Coalitions in Municipal Elections

The 2013 municipal elections in Seattle featured nonpartisan contests to select four (of nine) at-large members of the city council and a mayor.⁷ In the mayoral race, we limit our analysis to the five candidates who received at least 2% of the primary vote.⁸ The top two vote-getters in the primary election on August 6, 2013—State Senator Ed Murray and incumbent Mayor Michael McGinn—proceeded to the general election on November 5, 2013. In the general election, Murray was elected mayor of Seattle with 51.55% of the vote. On average, mayoral candidates raised $386,070, as we report in Table 2. The two candidates who would go on to contest the general election, McGinn and Murray, substantially outraised the other candidates in the field, pulling in $457,205 and $773,254, respectively. In Panel A of Table 2, we list the five candidates included in our analysis of the mayoral election.

Table 2.

Panel A and B: Candidates and Funding Coalitions in the 2013 Seattle Municipal Election.

	Mayoral Candidate	Total Amount Raised	Mean Donation	No. of Donors	% from Individuals	% from Development
	Bruce Harrell	$295,796.10	$267.69	1,105	88.52	10.42
	Michael McGinn (I)	$457,205.50	$263.06	1,738	95.16	9.94
	Edward Murray*	$773,254.70	$289.50	2,671	87.31	10.29
	Charles Staadecker	$201,761.10	$317.23	636	98.91	19.37
	Peter Steinbrueck	$202,337.10	$185.63	1,090	93.95	11.70
Mean		$386,070.90	$264.62	1,448.00	92.77	12.34
City Council Pos.	City Council Candidate	Total Amount Raised	Mean Donation	No. of Donors	% from Individuals	% from Development
4	Sally Bagshaw* (I)	$98,026.46	$293.49	334	75.91	13.37
2	Richard Conlin (I)	$224,977.50	$231.94	970	84.42	18.19
6	Nicholas Licata* (I)	$86,805.62	$130.53	665	86.4	4.18
8	Michael O’Brien* (I)	$146,748.00	$76.71	1,913	87.66	6.40
2	Kshama Sawant*	$105,457.10	$153.73	686	98.16	6.91
8	Albert Shen	$180,285.00	$294.10	613	87.87	12.09
Mean		$140,383.28	$196.75	863.5	86.74	10.19

Note. Asterisks indicate winners. In parentheses, we indicate incumbents with an “I.” City council candidates Sam Bellomio (4) and Edwin Fruit (6) raised no money and are not included here.

Two of the four city council races were closely contested.⁹ For City Council Position No. 2, Kshama Sawant defeated the incumbent Richard Conlin in the general election with 50.7% of the vote. For City Council Position No. 8, Mike O’Brien, the incumbent, defeated Albert Shen with 61.8% of the vote. The winning candidates for the other two positions, incumbents Nick Licata and Sally Bagshaw, each claimed victory with more than 80% of the vote. These six candidates are listed in Panel B of Table 2. While the mean fundraising totals for city council candidates were significantly lower than those of the mayoral candidates, these candidates also raised a substantial sum of money. Each of the six city council candidates in our analysis raised at least $86,000 for their campaigns. On average, these city council candidates raised $140,383.

Candidates for city council and mayor relied heavily on individual donors, rather than businesses or committees, to assemble funding coalitions. On average, candidates for city council raised nearly 87% of their funds from individual donors. The pattern is even starker in the mayoral election. On average, mayoral candidates raised nearly 93% of their funds from individual donors. Even the mayoral candidate with the smallest share of individual contributors, Edward Murray, raised 87% of his funds from individuals. Notably, these patterns are similar to those in congressional elections, where a majority of candidate receipts in both House and Senate races come from individual donors, rather than PACs (Heerwig 2016). Our descriptive findings in Table 2 also echo those of previous case studies that point to a heterogeneous coalition of funding interests in local elections (Adams 2007; Krebs and Pelissero 2001). Together, individual donors representing development interests—including realtors, developers, and builders—contributed less than 12% of the funds donated by individuals in the election.¹⁰

While candidates relied extensively on individual donors outside of development industries, the size of their funding coalitions varied substantially. On average, candidates for city council assembled 864 unique individual donors to their fundraising coalition. Their coalitions ranged from 334 to 1,913 unique donors. Notably, the funding coalitions assembled by mayoral candidates were, on average, nearly 75% larger. The typical funding coalition assembled by mayoral candidates included 1,448 unique individuals. The mayoral candidate with the largest number of individual contributors raised money from 2,671 individual donors, and the candidate with the smallest number of donors assembled 636 individual donors.

Findings

High-Dollar Donors in Candidate Funding Coalitions

Our descriptive findings in the previous section confirm that individual donors in Seattle—and specifically, individual donors without ties to the development industry—are the single most important funding source for candidates in this municipal election. This finding echoes an emerging consensus from case studies of other American cities. To better understand how local elections are financed, we next examine the relative role of high- and low-dollar donors in the Seattle election. Instead of categorizing donors according to their industry or occupational characteristics, we classify them by the size of their contribution. Low-dollar donors contributed $100 or less to the campaign of a candidate. Medium-dollar donors gave more than $100, but less than $500. High-dollar donors contributed at least $500 (and include those who contributed the maximum amount of $700). Without previous research on the collective contribution from each category of donors, we have very little basis upon which to predict the degree of egalitarianism within coalitions, or the extent to which candidates will rely on high-dollar donors. While high-dollar donors, by definition, give larger sums of money to political candidates, their influence is diminished to the extent that the composition of funding coalitions skews toward low-dollar donors. Alternatively, to the extent that these high-dollar donors comprise a larger share of the funding coalition, then municipal elections will be subject to deep representational distortion. To understand the role of individual donors in financing municipal elections, we first identify the share of low-, medium-, and high-dollar donors in the mayoral and city council elections. Then, we identify the share of funds raised from each category of donors.

In Figure 2, we first graph the number of low-, medium-, and high-dollar donors in the funding coalition for each city council candidate. Contributors giving $100 or less were the modal category of donors in city council elections. In fact, the average funding coalition assembled by candidates for city council included 580 low-dollar donors. These contributors made up 67% of contributors to the average candidate. In contrast, contributors donating at least $500 made up a substantially smaller share of the funding coalitions. On average, city council candidates reported only seventy-seven unique contributors donating at least $500. These high-dollar donors account for about 9% of donors in the funding coalitions assembled by the average candidate for city council.

Figure 2.

Number of donors in city council races, by contribution size.

While high-dollar donors account for a small share of the overall number of donors in each candidate’s funding coalition, their contributions made up a substantial share of the total funds raised by candidates for city council. In Figure 3, we report the share of campaign funds raised from donors in each contribution category. On average, city council candidates raised less than a quarter of their funds from low-dollar donors, even though these donors comprised more than two-thirds of donors. In contrast, candidates raised about 38% of funds from donors contributing more than $100, but less than $500. Candidates for city council relied on a small share of donors contributing at least $500 to raise nearly 40% of their campaign funds.

Figure 3.

Share of funds in city council races, by contribution size.

The importance of high-dollar donors is even starker when we look at the mayoral election. These findings are reported in Figures 4 and 5. On average, about 47% of donors in the funding coalitions for mayoral elections contributed $100 or less—a smaller share than in the city council races, but still the modal category for contributors. The average mayoral candidate relied on 676 low-dollar donors in their funding coalitions. However, high-dollar donors make up a comparatively larger share of the funding coalition assembled by mayoral candidates. Donors contributing at least $500, including those who gave the maximum donation, comprise 21% of donors for the average mayoral candidate. These donors were substantially more numerous in the funding coalitions assembled for the mayoral race compared with those assembled for the city council contests.

Figure 4.

Number of donors in mayoral race, by contribution size.

Figure 5.

Share of funds in mayoral race, by contribution size.

While nearly half of the contributors to the mayoral funding coalitions contributed $100 or less, their contributions accounted for only 14% of the total funds raised. In fact, in Figure 5, we show that every mayoral candidate raised less than 20% of their money from these low-dollar donors. In contrast, high-dollar donors played a striking role in the funding coalitions of mayoral candidates. Donations from high-dollar donors contributing at least $500 accounted for 55% of the money raised by the average mayoral candidate even though they accounted for only 21% of the donors. While Figure 5 reveals some variation across candidates, every mayoral candidate raised at least 45% of their funds from high-dollar donors.

The Local Geography of Campaign Donors

The previous section identifies an outsized influence for high-dollar donors in funding municipal elections in Seattle. While these donors are more likely to contribute for material reasons, as we noted earlier, their influence may be magnified by their geographic concentration within certain Seattle neighborhoods. After all, many city resources and services are distributed by neighborhoods, and the concentration of campaign donors within particular communities is likely to magnify their voice in the political process. In this section, we move beyond previous analyses that identify the influence of donors outside of cities. Recognizing that nearly three-quarters of donors to the municipal election reside within the city itself, we investigate the geographic clustering of donors within a subset of affluent Seattle neighborhoods. To do so, we identify the census tract of each contributor to the mayoral election using the street address and zip code provided to the PDC. We then aggregate contribution records to correspond with the 136 census tracts in the city of Seattle and match tracts to neighborhood characteristics from the American Community Survey. In each Seattle neighborhood, we examine both the percentage of residents donating in the mayoral election and the total amount of money raised in the mayoral election.

To offer a snapshot of the geography of campaign contributions in Seattle, we begin by descriptively mapping the concentration of Seattle political donors in Figure 6. In total, 4,868 unique individuals contributed in the mayoral election. Each contributor is identified according to the size of their contribution in the mayoral election.¹¹ The map highlights the uneven geography of campaign funding in Seattle. Donors—and specifically, donors contributing at least $500 to the mayoral election—are concentrated in centrally located neighborhoods in downtown Seattle. These neighborhoods, which include the communities of South Lake Union, Capitol Hill, and Downtown Seattle, are among the wealthiest in the city.

Figure 6.

Geography of Seattle donors in the mayoral election, by average contribution size.

Next, we describe the spatial distribution of donors across the city. In Figures 7 and 8, we present a measure of the spatial concentration of political donors in affluent neighborhoods by plotting the share of neighborhood residents contributing to the mayoral election against the mean neighborhood income. This per capita measure controls for variation in population across neighborhoods.¹² The percentage of neighborhood residents contributing to the mayoral election is highly correlated with neighborhood income. In Figure 7, we show a strong, positive relationship (Pearson’s r = .5996) between these measures. In wealthy neighborhoods, a substantially higher share of residents becomes involved in local campaigns by making a donation.

Figure 7.

Scatterplot of mean neighborhood income and percentage of residents making a contribution, mayoral election.

Figure 8.

Scatterplot of mean neighborhood income and total contributions raised, mayoral election.

Wealthy neighborhoods were overrepresented not only in the number of donors, but also in the amount of money collected by mayoral candidates. Again, we turn to a scatterplot comparing the total amount of money raised in mayoral elections with the mean neighborhood income. This is reported in Figure 8, which again reveals a moderate-to-strong, positive correlation (Pearson’s r = .5420). Consistent with candidates relying on more donors in affluent neighborhoods, candidates also raise more campaign cash in wealthy neighborhoods. Echoing research on federal elections, these findings suggest the density of donor networks is stronger in high-income neighborhoods, and mayoral candidates rely on these affluent, centrally located communities to finance their campaigns.

While these findings confirm that neighborhood income is highly correlated with both the total amount raised by mayoral candidates and the share of neighborhood residents contributing to mayoral campaigns, we conclude this section by analyzing the concentration of donor networks for each mayoral candidate. In Table 3, we show that all of the mayoral candidates relied disproportionately on the wealthiest neighborhoods in Seattle to raise funds. After ranking Seattle neighborhoods by their mean income, we identify the amount of campaign cash that each candidate raised in the wealthiest city neighborhoods. In column 1, we report the share of their funds that came from the top quintile of neighborhoods (ranked by mean income); in column 2, we report the share of their funds that came from the top decile of neighborhoods (again, ranked by mean income).

Table 3.

Share of Funds Raised from the Wealthiest Quintile and Decile of Neighborhoods in Seattle, by Candidate.

Candidate	Share from Top 20% (n = 27)	Share from Top 10% (n = 13)
Harrell	33.51%	24.10%
McGinn	32.17%	18.59%
Murray	40.66%	28.14%
Staadecker	29.84%	21.70%
Steinbrueck	38.11%	20.52%
Total	36.34%	23.68%

If fundraising activity is distributed evenly across the city, we should observe that approximately 20% of campaign funds came from the top quintile of neighborhoods, and approximately 10% came from the top decile. On average, however, mayoral candidates raised 36% of their money from the wealthiest 20% of neighborhoods in Seattle—nearly twice as much as we would expect if fundraising activity were evenly distributed across the geography of the city. Most important, this distortion is present for all of the mayoral candidates in 2013. Each of the candidates raised between 30% and 40% of their funds from the wealthiest tracts, as we report in column 1. In column 2, we show that candidates raised nearly 24% of their money from the wealthiest 10% of neighborhoods. These findings suggest that all candidates—not just the most prolific fundraisers—are focused disproportionately on the same set of wealthy neighborhoods in Seattle.

Discussion and Conclusion

Patterns of representational distortion in municipal elections are shaped by the rules governing the campaign finance system. In Seattle, the recent referendum to revamp the campaign finance system called attention to fears of overrepresentation by particular types of donors in the municipal election. Proponents of the initiative grounded their advocacy in concerns about representational inequalities in the ways candidates raise money in Seattle. They expressed concerns about a small share of residents funding political campaigns, thereby enabling wealthy donors to disproportionately influence local politics or distort the distribution of resources in the city. Although the referendum brought to the forefront concerns about representational inequalities, the funding coalitions behind municipal campaigns remain a black box for researchers. While candidates for local office raise millions of dollars each year, there has been surprisingly little effort to understand who funds municipal elections.

In this article, we make three key contributions—both theoretical and empirical—to the study of representational distortion in municipal elections. First, we offer a theoretical framework to consider the composition of funding coalitions according to the size of a donation, rather than the occupation of the donor. Extending studies of federal elections, where researchers have paid careful attention to both the concentration of high-dollar donors and efforts to amass low-dollar contributors, we argue that these issues should be at the forefront of research in local campaign finance. Because local campaigns are funded by a relatively small number of contributors with greater access to candidates, the composition of these funding coalitions is particularly important for understanding the dynamics of local politics. We contrast egalitarian coalitions to those comprised largely of high-dollar donors, considering the consequences for representational distortion from coalitions that rely heavily on donors making large contributions. This theoretical foundation is critical for evaluating public policies, such as Seattle’s voucher initiative, that have the potential to reshape funding coalitions in a way that increases their representativeness.

Second, we point to the small share of eligible citizens that participate in these funding coalitions by noting that only a fraction of the voting-age population contributed to a political campaign. While nearly 40% of the population voted in the recent election, a mere 1.5% contributed to a political campaign. As a result, candidates in municipal elections relied heavily on a small number of donors to build a funding coalition. Moreover, we reveal that the funds raised from a small number of high-dollar donors provided the lion’s share of money to political candidates. In city council elections, only 9% of donors contributed at least $500, but their contributions made up nearly 40% of the money raised by the average candidate. In the mayoral race, only 21% of donors contributed at least $500, but their contributions accounted for more than half of the funds raised by the average candidate for mayor. In contrast, although donors contributing $100 or less accounted for 47% of contributors in the mayoral race and 67% of contributors in the city council race, their contributions made up less than 14% and 25%, respectively, of the money raised in local elections.

While these findings mirror the outsized role that large donors play in federal elections, the influence of these donors in local politics may be enhanced by the greater level of access to elected officials afforded by local government. The small size of the donor pool raises the specter that donors—and particularly high-dollar donors who are more likely to contribute for material reasons—may seek favor or work to steer resources in the small ecosystem of the city. While our findings offer a snapshot of a recent election in Seattle, further research is needed to make comparisons between coalitions across cities (and to track longitudinal changes within cities). A comparative approach to the study of municipal campaign finance can both deepen the theoretical framework offered in this article and begin to identify municipal-level factors that shape the fundraising coalitions assembled in city politics.

Our third key contribution points to the previously overlooked geographic concentration of donor networks within the city. While we acknowledge the minor role played by out-of-state donors—a finding consistent with previous research on municipal elections—we also note the absence of research on the geographic distribution of donors within the city. In Seattle, candidates are dependent upon a handful of wealthy neighborhoods to find contributors and raise money. In fact, each mayoral candidate was dependent upon the city’s wealthiest enclaves to raise money—a finding that suggests political candidates rely on geographically similar donor pools to fund their campaigns. To the extent that these geographic networks enable donors to amplify their political voice as they advocate for city services or resources, then these patterns of geographic clustering may contribute to other forms of spatial inequality in the city.

While the data from the PDC offer a unique opportunity to investigate the system of campaign finance in a municipal election, they do so with specific limitations. Most important, these data collected by the PDC do not include individual donor attributes such as income, homeownership status, length of residency in a neighborhood, level of educational attainment, or race. While these characteristics are highly correlated with other forms of political and civic participation, our data prevent us from identifying the degree to which these characteristics influence contribution patterns in municipal elections. For example, we may expect homeowners to play an outsized role in financing local political campaigns given their efforts to protect their material interests through the political process (McCabe 2016). By evaluating whether homeowners are more active donors to local politics, researchers could better understand the way housing decisions shape local political behaviors.

While this article offers a valuable snapshot of a municipal election in Seattle, future research should extend this case study of one city to explore differences in funding coalitions across municipalities. The laws governing campaign finance systems vary across political jurisdictions. While recent analyses reveal how institutional structures shape voter turnout in local elections, there has been little comparative analysis of the way regulations and institutions influence the way funding coalitions are assembled (Caren 2007; Hajnal and Lewis 2003). Continued analyses of local campaign finance structures could investigate the relative role of individual donors and organized interests or the way campaign finance laws create opportunities for small-dollar donors to play a more influential role in municipal politics. A more comprehensive investigation of local campaign finance across municipalities would provide a useful comparative framework for this topic.

Still, the singular case study of Seattle offers a baseline comparison for future analyses of Seattle’s new system of publicly financed campaigns. In 2015, as we note at the beginning of the article, voters in Seattle approved a system of public financing that introduced “democracy vouchers.” The system was rolled out with the Seattle City Council and City Attorney races in 2017. While this initiative spearheaded a new system of campaign finance, it did so with only a limited understanding of the funding coalitions behind municipal elections. Although the system in Seattle is unique, publicly financed election systems have the potential to transform the nature of campaigns and elections (Boatright, Green, and Malbin 2006; Malbin, Brusoe, and Glavin 2012; Mayer 2013; Schwam-Baird et al. 2016; L. Young and Austin 2008). In Seattle, advocates for the publicly financed system expressed concerns about the limited involvement of city residents in financing their campaigns and the influence of high-dollar donors—both concerns evaluated in the empirical analysis in this article. This analysis of the final election before the passage of I-122 will enable future studies to determine the effectiveness of the “democracy voucher” program in broadening the donor pool to increase the number of small-dollar donors and reshaping the spatial distribution of participation to create more inclusive patterns of political representation.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Gerard Torrats-Espinosa for his help with geocoding the data and preparing Figure 6. We would also like to thank Wayne Barnett and the staff at the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission for their assistance and support throughout the project.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Jennifer Heerwig is an assistant professor of sociology at State University of New York (SUNY)-Stony Brook. Her work on campaign finance examines the donation strategies of affluent individuals in federal elections. She holds a PhD in sociology from New York University.

Brian J. McCabe is an associate professor of sociology at Georgetown University. His first book, No Place Like Home: Wealth, Community and the Politics of Homeownership, was published in 2016. He holds a PhD in sociology from New York University.

References

Achen

Christopher H.

Bartels

Larry M.

2016. Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.

Adams

Brian E.

2006. “Suburban Money in Central City Elections: The Geographic Distribution of Campaign Contributions.” Urban Affairs Review 42 (2): 267–80.

Adams

Brian E.

2007. “Fundraising Coalitions in Open Seat Mayoral Elections.” Journal of Urban Affairs 29 (5): 481–99.

Adams

Brian E.

2011. “Financing Local Elections: The Impact of Institutions on Electoral Outcomes and Democratic Representation.” PS: Political Science & Politics 44 (1): 111–12.

Barber

Michael J.

Canes-Wrone

Brandice

Thrower

Sharece

. 2016. “Ideologically Sophisticated Donors: Which Candidates Do Individual Contributors Finance?” American Journal of Political Science 61:271–88.

Berman

Russell

. 2015. “Seattle’s Experiment with Campaign Funding.” The Atlantic, November 10. Accessed August 17, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/seattle-experiments-with-campaign-funding/415026/.

Boatright

Robert G.

Green

Donald P.

Malbin

Michael J.

2006. “Does Publicizing a Tax Credit for Political Contributions Increase Its Use? Results from a Randomized Field Experiment.” American Politics Research 34 (5): 563–82.

Bramlett

Brittany H.

Gimpel

James G.

Lee

Frances E.

2011. “The Political Ecology of Opinion in Big-Donor Neighborhoods.” Political Behavior 33 (4): 565–600.

Brown

Clifford W.

Powell

Lynda W.

Wilcox

Clyde

. 1995. Serious Money: Fundraising and Contributing in Presidential Nomination Campaigns. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.

10.

Campaign Finance Institute. 2017a. “Aggregated Individual Contributions by Donors to 2012 Presidential Candidates.” Accessed June 13, 2017. http://www.cfinst.org/pdf/federal/president/2012/Pres12Tables_YE12_AggIndivDonors.pdf.

11.

Campaign Finance Institute. 2017b. “House Receipts from Individuals, PACs, and Others, All General Election Candidates, 1999–2012.” Accessed June 13, 2017. http://www.cfinst.org/pdf/historical/Donors_HouseCand_2000-2012.pdf.

12.

Campaign Finance Institute. 2017c. “Senate Receipts from Individuals, PACs, and Others, All General Election Candidates, 1999–2012.” Accessed June 13, 2017. http://www.cfinst.org/pdf/historical/Donors_SenateCand_2000-2012.pdf.

13.

Caren

Neal

. 2007. “Big City, Big Turnout? Electoral Participation in American Cities.” Journal of Urban Affairs 29 (1): 31–46.

14.

Cingranelli

David L.

1981. “Race, Politics and Elites: Testing Alternative Models of Municipal Service Distribution.” American Journal of Political Science 25 (4): 664–92.

15.

DeHogg

Ruth Hoogland

. 1997. “Urban Service Delivery.” In Handbook of Research on Urban Politics and Policy in the United States, edited by Vogel

Ronald K.

Westport: Greenwood Press, 197-209.

16.

Fleischmann

Arnold

Stein

Lana

. 1998. “Campaign Contributions in Local Elections.” Political Research Quarterly 51 (3): 673–89.

17.

Francia

Peter L.

Green

John C.

Herrnson

Paul S.

Powell

Lynda W.

Wilcox

Clyde

. 2003. The Financiers of Congressional Elections: Investors, Ideologues, and Intimates. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.

18.

Gilens

Martin

. 2012. Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.

19.

Gimpel

James G.

Lee

Frances E.

Kaminski

Joshua

. 2006. “The Political Geography of Campaign Contributions in American Politics.” Journal of Politics 68 (3): 626–39.

20.

Groover

Heidi

. 2015. “Seattle Has a New Way to Elect City Council Members.” The Stranger, March 18. Accessed June 15, 2017. http://www.thestranger.com/news/feature/2015/03/18/21921708/seattle-has-a-new-way-to-elect-city-council-members.

21.

Hajnal

Zoltan L.

Lewis

Paul G.

2003. “Municipal Institutions and Voter Turnout in Local Elections.” Urban Affairs Review 38 (5): 645–68.

22.

Heerwig

Jennifer A.

2016. “Donations and Dependence: Individual Contributor Strategies in House Elections.” Social Science Research 60:181–98.

23.

Heerwig

Jennifer A.

Shaw

Katherine

. 2014. “Through a Glass, Darkly: The Rhetoric and Reality of Campaign Finance Disclosure.” Georgetown Law Journal 102:1443–1500.

24.

Herrnson

Paul S.

2012. Congressional Elections: Campaigning at Home and in Washington. 6th ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press College.

25.

Hindman

Matthew

. 2005. “The Real Lessons of Howard Dean: Reflections on the First Digital Campaign.” Perspectives on Politics 3:121–28.

26.

Jacobson

Gary C.

1980. Money in Congressional Elections. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.

27.

Jacobson

Gary C.

2004. The Politics of Congressional Elections. New York: Pearson.

28.

Joe

Wesley

Malbin

Michael J.

Wilcox

Clyde

Brusoe

Peter W.

Pimlott

Jamie P.

2008. “Do Small Donors Improve Representation? Some Answers from Recent Gubernatorial and State Legislative Elections.” Presentation at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 28-31, in Boston, MA.

29.

Kelly

Janet M.

Swindell

David

. 2002. “Service Quality Variation Across Urban Space: First Steps Toward a Model of Citizen Satisfaction.” Journal of Urban Affairs 24 (3): 271–88.

30.

Krebs

Timothy B.

2001. “Political Experience and Fundraising in City Council Elections.” Social Science Quarterly 82 (3): 536–51.

31.

Krebs

Timothy B.

2005a. “Money and Machine Politics: An Analysis of Corporate and Labor Contributions in Chicago City Council Elections.” Urban Affairs Review 41 (1): 47–64.

32.

Krebs

Timothy B.

2005b. “Urban Interests and Campaign Contributions: Evidence from Los Angeles.” Journal of Urban Affairs 27 (2): 165–76.

33.

Krebs

Timothy B.

Pelissero

John P.

2001. “Fund-Raising Coalitions in Mayoral Campaigns.” Urban Affairs Review 37 (1): 67–84.

34.

Lessig

Lawrence

. 2011. Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It. New York: Twelve Books.

35.

Lineberry

Robert L.

1977. Equality and Urban Policy: The Distribution of Municipal Public Services. Beverly Hills: SAGE.

36.

Logan

John R.

Molotch

Harvey L.

2007. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

37.

Magleby

David B.

Goodliffe

Jay

. 2014. “Interest Groups.” In Financing the 2012 Election, edited by Magleby

David B.

, 215–61. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

38.

Malbin

Michael J.

Brusoe

Peter W.

Glavin

Brendan

. 2012. “Small Donors, Big Democracy: New York City’s Matching Funds as a Model for the Nation and States.” Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy 11 (1): 3–20.

39.

Mayer

Kenneth R.

2013. “Public Election Funding: An Assessment of What We Would Like to Know.” The Forum 11 (3): 365–84.

40.

McCabe

Brian J.

2016. No Place Like Home: Wealth, Community and the Politics of Homeownership. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

41.

Mladenka

Kenneth R.

1989. “The Distribution of an Urban Public Service: The Changing Role of Race and Politics.” Urban Affairs Review 24 (4): 556–83.

42.

Mollenkopf

John H.

1983. The Contested City. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.

43.

National League of Cities. 2016. “Number of Municipal Governments and Population Distribution.” Accessed March 31, 2017. http://www.nlc.org/number-of-municipal-governments-population-distribution.

44.

Oliver

J. Eric

Shang E.

Callen

Zachary

. 2012. Local Elections and the Politics of Small-Scale Democracy. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.

45.

Schwam-Baird

Michael

Panagopoulos

Costas

Krasno

Jonathan S.

Green

Donald P.

2016. “Do Public Matching Funds and Tax Credits Encourage Political Contributions? Evidence from Three Field Experiments Using Nonpartisan Messages.” Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy 15 (2): 129–42.

46.

Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission. 2013. “Candidate and Political Committee Guide.” Accessed June 10, 2017. http://www.seattle.gov/ethics/elpub/CandidateGuide.pdf.

47.

Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission. 2014. “2013 Election Report.” Accessed June 10, 2017. http://www2.seattle.gov/ethics/elpub/2013Report.pdf.

48.

Stone

Clarence N.

1989. Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946–1988. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

49.

Stone

Clarence N.

2005. “Looking Back to Look Forward: Reflections on Urban Regime Analysis.” Urban Affairs Review 40 (3): 309–41.

50.

Tausanovitch

Chris

Warshaw

Christopher

. 2014. “Representation in Municipal Government.” American Political Science Review 108 (3): 605–41.

51.

Trounstine

Jessica

. 2009. “All Politics Is Local: The Reemergence of the Study of City Politics.” Perspectives on Politics 7 (3): 611–18.

52.

Trounstine

Jessica

. 2010. “Representation and Accountability in Cities.” Annual Review of Political Science 13:407–23.

53.

Trounstine

Jessica

Valdini

Melody E.

2008. “The Context Matters: The Effects of Single-Member Versus At-Large Districts on City Council Diversity.” American Journal of Political Science 52 (3): 554–69.

54.

U.S. Census Bureau. 2017. “DP05: ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates, 2013 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates.” Accessed March 28, 2017. https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/13_1YR/DP05/1600000US5363000.

55.

Verba

Sidney

Schlozman

Kay Lehman

Brady

Henry E.

1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.

56.

Young

Bob

. 2015. “‘Democracy Vouchers’ Win in Seattle; First in the Country.” The Seattle Times, November 3. Accessed August 17, 2017. http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/democracy-vouchers/.

57.

Young

Lisa

Austin

Samuel

. 2008. “Political Finance in City Elections: Toronto and Calgary Compared.” Canadian Political Science Review 2 (3): 88–102.