Kerry L. Haynie

Agenda Setting and Legislative Success in State Legislatures: The Effects of Gender and Race

In this paper, we investigate the agenda-setting behavior of female and black state legislators, and examine whether women and blacks are as successful as white men in passing legislation. Using a six-state, three-year sample, we test a descriptive representation model in which group members (blacks and women) represent group interests above and beyond the extent motivated by constituency and party pressures. Moreover, in keeping with the social distance between the races, we expect blacks to be less successful than whites at passing legislation. We find that although constituency influences sponsorship agendas, blacks and women share a set of distinctive policy interests. Women are generally as likely as men to achieve passage of the legislation they introduce, whereas blacks are, in three states, significantly less likely than whites to pass legislation.

Agenda Setting and African American Women in State Legislatures

SUMMARY Political scientists have, in recent years, uncovered substantial evidence that political representation in the United States is influenced by gender and race, yet generally examine the effects of gender entirely separate from the effects of race. In this article, we explore the agenda-setting behavior of African American female state legislators. We find that African American women do respond to both womens interests and black interests. We also find that while the sponsorship of black interest measures by African American women (or other legislators) is not influenced by the proportion of African Americans within the chamber, African American women are less likely to sponsor womens interest measures in legislatures with a relatively high proportion of women present. We conclude that because of their focus on multiple groups, black women occupy a unique place in representation, and that their choices are influenced by the institutional context in which they work.

The Color of Their Skin or the Content of Their Behavior? Race and Perceptions of African American Legislators

Previous studies have shown that, because of their race, African American candidates for public office are often evaluated less favorably than their colleagues by voters. Does this dynamic continue when black candidates become elected officials? Using data on the North Carolina General Assembly, I address this question by examining the effects of race on perceptions of legislative effectiveness. When the dependent variable is the average effectiveness rating given by three groupslobbyists, journalists, and other legislators-there is evidence that African American representatives are evaluated negatively because of their race. When the dependent variable is disaggregated into the separate effectiveness ratings given by each of the respondent groups individually, these negative perceptions of blacks on account of race remain on the part of lobbyists and other legislators, but not for journalists. Moreover, the negative perceptions of black representatives are not mitigated by these representatives possessing certain characteristics (e.g., seniority and leadership positions) that previous studies have found to be correlated with positive effectiveness evaluations. The presence of an African American Speaker in one legislative session did, however, seem to attenuate the negative perceptions.

New Race Politics in America: Understanding Minority and Immigrant Politics

1. New race politics: the changing face of the American electoral landscape Jane Junn and Elizabeth Matto 2. In whose interest?: political parties, context, and the political incorporation of immigrants Kristi Andersen 3. Beyond black and white: the experiences and effects of economic status among racial and ethnic minorities Dennis Chong and Dukhong Kim 4. Activity amidst diversity: political participation among Asian Americans Janelle S. Wong, Pei-te Lien and M. Margaret Conway 5. Get me to the polls on time: co-ethnic mobilization and Latino turnout Rodolfo O. de la Garza, Marissa A. Abrajano and Jeronimo Cortina 6. Se habla espanol: ethnic campaign strategies and Latino voting behavior Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto and Jennifer M. Merolla 7. Structuring group activism: a macro model of black participation Fredrick C. Harris, Brian D. McKenzie and Valeria Sinclair-Chapman 8. Black elites and Latino immigrant relations in a southern city: do black elites and the black masses agree? Paula M. McClain, Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto, Monique L. Lyle, Niambi M. Carter, Gerald F. Lackey, Jeffrey D. Grynaviski, Kendra Davenport Cotton, Shayla C. Nunnally, Thomas J. Scotto and J. Alan Kendrick 9. Understanding the new race politics: conclusions and challenges Kerry L. Haynie.

The Obama coalition and the future of American politics

Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama incited a wave of news articles and commentary discussing the United States’ changing voter demographics and what it could mean for the future of the Republican Party. Conservative commentators, such as Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, publicly lamented the loss of “traditional” white America, to be replaced by a country of non-white voters who “want stuff” from government. What this framing ignores is that the “white”America they lament never actually existed. Since its founding, the United States included a significant non-white population, including Native Americans and African Americans, among others. As Rogers Smith (1997) demonstrates, it was the colonists’ desire to maintain the “white” character of America that helped foster the revolution. Yet, this “white”America was always a social construction, one that was maintained through Native American genocide and African-American slavery (Smith 1997; Jacobson 1999; King 2000). Later, national elites developed the reservation system and elaborate electoral restrictions (in the North and South) to ensure that the electorate, at least, did not reflect the population (Gilmore 1996). Through these explicit government policies, “white America,” as understood by these conservative pundits, was made, not given. Even now, the electorate remains much more white than the population. In 2008, whites made up 73% of the nation’s citizen population, yet comprised 76% of voters in that election. This was despite record turnout amongAfrican-American, Latino, and Asian-American voters. This helps to explain why, in 1980, Ronald Reagan won the white vote over Jimmy Carter by 20 points – 56% to 36% – and was able to win the White House in a landslide, while, in 2012, Mitt Romney won the white vote overBarackObama by the same 20-pointmargin – 59% to 39% – and lost the election. In 1980, whites comprised 88% of the electorate; in 2012 they made up 73%. Many Republican political consultants, like Dick Morris and Karl Rove, were surprised by the outcome. They assumed the demographics of the 2008 electorate were an anomaly, and that the white proportion of US voters would return to 2004 levels in 2012. So long as whites were significantly overrepresented among voters, appealing to whites, and, therefore, winning them by large margins, could be a winning strategy for Republicans. This calculus largely explains why the Republican party spent a great deal of political capital in 2011 and 2012 working within state legislatures to pass laws that would have the effect of suppressing the votes of Democratic-leaning constituencies, especially Blacks and Latinos. Since 2011, 19 states have passed laws that restrict voter registration efforts and establish voter identification requirements – laws that the Brennan Center for Justice estimates will disenfranchise the 11% of eligible voters that do not have a government-issued photo identification. In Texas, a three-judge

Blacks and the democratic party: A resilient coalition

1. Changing American Political Parties (Jeffrey M. Stonecash) 2. Social Change in America: The Context for Parties (Jeffrey M. Stonecash) 3. Strategic Maneuvers: Political Parties and the Pursuit of Winning Coalitions in a Constantly Changing Electoral Environment (Mark D. Brewer) 4. Parties and the Media: Getting Messages to Voters (Danny Hayes) 5. Party Organization and Mobilization of Resources: Evolution, Reinvention and Survival (Diana Dwyre) 6. Blacks and the Democratic Party: A Resilient Coalition (Kerry Haynie and Candis S. Watts) 7. Class in American Politics (Jeffrey M. Stonecash) 8. Ideological Realignment Among Voters (Alan Abramowitz) 9. Religion, Moralism and the Cultural Wars: Competing Moral Visions (Laura Olson) 10. Immigrants and Political Parties (Marika Dunn and Jane Junn) 11. Partisan Trends in the South and Northeast: Political Ping Pong (Howard L. Reiter) 12. The President as a Partisan Actor (Sidney M. Milkis) 13. Consequences of Electoral and Institutional Change: the Evolution of Conditional Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives (David Rohde and John Aldrich) 14. Parties, Public Policy Differences, and Impact (Rebekah E. Liscio and Jeffrey M. Stonecash)