| Abstract: | We argue that U.S. senators from the same state and in the same party form different winning coalitions. We also develop a theory that stipulates that parties encourage these senators to form very distinct constituency coalitions. Parties use committee assignments as a carrot to give these senators an incentive to represent different groups. In our empirical analysis, we find that there are fewer overlapping committee assignments among senators in the same state when they are from the same party. We also consider the case of John Heinz and Arlen Specter, both Pennsylvania Republicans. When John Heinz died in a plane crash, Political Action Committees (PACs) that bought influence from Specter but not Heinz now had the possibility that the new senator replacing Heinz would include them in his resource constituency. The resulting competition by the new Pennsylvania senator and Specter for campaign resources would lower the price these firms had to pay for representation, thus improving their expected future earnings. |
