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The media play an integral role in communicating political information from elected officials to citizen. Most research examining the relationship between media coverage and governors focuses on campaigns and concludes that the media at times do not always portray campaign messages accurately for female candidates as they overemphasize typically female policy issues (Kahn 1994; Devitt 2002). Very little is known about how the media cover sitting governors much less whether the reporting varies by gender. Less is known about attempts by sitting governors to prime media coverage of their policy agendas. Based on their experiences as candidates, sitting female governors may attempt to prime their resultant media coverage through their press releases. Using their annual state of the state address and the press releases in support of these speeches, we examine the extent to which the gender of the governors affects their propensity to accurately set or alter the agenda for the media through their press releases. Given research on campaigns, we expect female governors to make use of their press releases to reduce the chances of inaccurate reporting of their speeches. Our previous research on media coverage of State of the State speeches found little gender bias in the coverage of governors and it may be that the lack of bias due to such priming. To execute this analysis, we content analyze annual state of the state addresses from 2008 through 2013, and press releases that accompanied them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a growing body of literature demonstrates female and male legislators act differently in the policies they champion, little is known about gender differences at the executive level. The lack of a critical mass of women governors explains this dearth of scholarship. With the increase in the number of female governors, especially in the 2000s, we can begin to fill this gap by analyzing whether female and male governors differ in their policy agendas. We use a computerized content analytic technique to measure gubernatorial policy agendas as evidenced in their state of the state addresses. Based on gender differences among state legislators, we expect female governors to emphasize different policy priorities than their male counterparts. Our findings are mixed. Female democratic governors do prioritize some policy areas differently than their male counterparts yet in other areas their policy agendas are identical. Within the Republican party we find no gender differences. Our findings suggest that the requirements of being a state's top political executive as well as party affiliation limit gender differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we examine the application of Wordscore on State of the State addresses as a viable technique for measuring the ideological positions of governors. We find that careful selection of the reference documents used in this analysis is critical in producing valid scores. The second goal is to explore similarities and differences between male and female governors' ideological views. We know very little about how female and male executives differ since until recently there has not been a critical mass of women governors. We begin to fill this gap by analyzing whether gender differences in ideology found among other elected officials also are present among governors. Contrary to expectations, we find that female Republican governors are significantly more conservative than their male counterparts; we find no gender difference in the ideology of Democratic governors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In state policy making, governors are the only political actors that represent an entire state rather than a legislative subdivision. Governors, with their power of initiation, hold a significant advantage over the state legislatures in setting the policy agenda (Jewell and Morehouse 2001). Despite this key role governors play in shaping policy, the study of what factors influence governors' policy agendas has received little attention in the scholarly literature. What research that has been done on state policy agendas focuses only on governors in several states (Morehouse 1998; Van Assendelft 1997) or on other inputs to the policy making process. In this latter regard, state policy has been found to be reflective of both electoral (legislatures) (Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993) and party activist coalitions (Morehouse 1998). The representational bond, as analyzed by Erikson, Wright and McIver (1993), appears strongest between aggregated opinion of the mass electorate and elected officials. Owing to "measurement considerations, rather than a disregard for the governor's role in the legislative process," the role of the governor is not included in these models of policy representation (Erikson, Wright and McIver 1993, 126). Morehouse (1998), however, suggests that the policy process frequently begins with the governor. We propose to examine the factors that affect the ideological directions of governors' agendas by first developing a reliable way to systematically measure those dispositions. We then consider the state level indicators that shape the political bent of governors' agendas.Since a governor's "state of the state" address outlines the main political priorities he or she wants enacted, they provide the best insight into the governor's political agenda (Coffey 2005). We conduct a content analysis of state of the state speeches from 1991 through 1993 and 2000 through 2002 to measure the ideology of governors' legislative agendas. We then use data from the mass electorate, party activists, state legislatures, and state-level contextual data to test hypotheses about how governors' policy agendas respond ideologically to both elite and mass constituents, political actors in the legislature, and the nature of their states. To develop measures of governor ideology, we rely on content analytic techniques developed by Laver and Benoit (2003) and Laver, Benoit, and Garry (2003). We employ the 1992 and 2000 Convention Delegate Studies to measure elite attitudes ideology as well as data from 1992 and 2000 exit polls to measure the ideology of mass partisans. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her analysis of the political elite, Kirkpatrick (1976) found that women had much lower levels of political ambition than men. Working thirty years later, Lawless and Fox (2005) come to a strikingly similar conclusion; even women who are well positioned to run for office tend to lack political ambition when compared to their male counterparts. Despite the congruency of these findings, we know that the number of women officeholders has increased significantly over the same period suggesting women's political ambition is not stagnant.I propose to examine how levels of political ambition among elite women have changed over the past thirty years using the same population as Kirkpatrick. This analysis will provide insight into the dynamics of political ambition for elite women and help us better understand how the pool of potential women candidates has changed over time. I will use the National Convention Delegate Studies series which surveyed delegates from the 1972 through 2004 conventions. To model expressed and realized political ambition, I will control for factors related to the personal political capital (Guadagnini 1993) and personal situation (Lawless and Fox 2005) of political activists.I anticipate that while similarly situated men may still be more politically ambition then women, gender differences will have decreased significantly over the past thirty years. Moreover, given differences between Democratic and Republican women who are activists (Sanbonmatsu 2002; Fowlkes 1984), I expect that the gap in political ambition to have narrowed more in the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political ambition is a precondition for running for office. Women who are political party activists are well situated to run for office if they have the interest. However, research from the early 1970s found that activist women lacked politically ambition. In this paper, I examine political ambition of activists from 1972 through 2004 using the National Convention Delegate Survey series. While I expect women activists have become more political ambitious over time, I find that is not the case. Women activists have remained less political ambitious than their partisan brethren. I also develop a multivariate model of political ambition based on personal political capital, family situation and recruiting factors. My findings both challenge and confirm assumptions about what factors shape political ambition. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review the linkage between the partisan segment of the electorate and their representatives using the U.S. Senate as the venue for analysis. We argue that the views of the party in the electorate are measured best by using party activists such as those in the RINO killer movements. Given the recent electoral activities of factions within parties, the representational roles of Senators, the increased polarization of the Senate, and recent findings of the electoral fortunes of responsive Senators we expected that party, especially the party in the electorate, will matter to Senators? decision making. The data for this study include the 1988 and 1992 Convention Delegate Studies (CDS), DW-NOMINATE scores, survey data collected by Kahn and Kenney (1999) in their study of Senate campaigns, and NES/Senate Election Study (ANES/SES) conducted in 1988, 1990, and 1992. We use the roll-call votes of Senators in the 101st, 102nd, and 103rd Congresses as dependent variables (1989-1991, 1991-1993, and 1993-1995 respectively). Our study suggests that majority and minority party leaders direct Senators? roll call votes; a finding that supports studies showing polarization in the Senate (Sinclair 2000; Bond and Fleisher 2000; Uslaner 2000). We find the representational bond between Senators and their constituents has strong partisan links; perhaps stronger than the institutional constraints faced by Senators would suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, the strength of party influence on congressional behavior has been strongly contested. Works published in the early 1990’s by Rohde (1991), and Cox and McCubbins (1993) that highlighted the increase of party influence in the U.S. House of Representatives stand in stark contrast to work done by Krehbiel (1993) who suggests a very limited, if not completely absent, role for parties in the legislative process. In the ten years since Krehbiel asked, ‘Where’s the Party?,’ other scholars have detected party influences on congressional organization and behavior in a number of settings. Throughout the debate, Krehbiel has maintained that party affiliation is not an influential force in congressional behavior once a member’s preferences are considered. The debate over the relevance of ‘party’ in congressional decision-making has been conducted with the implicit assumption that there is consensus on the definition of party; what V.O. Key long ago labeled ‘the party in government’ (1958). While political scientists have discussed the difference between legislative and non-legislatively induced preferences, argued over the proper way to measure the influence of party, and disagreed about the optimum measures of actions taken by representatives, a meaningful definition of the party has been missing. Given the importance of addressing the question of whether party matters, we argue that a more complete view of political parties be employed so that if the question is answered affirmatively, we may turn our attention to how the party matters. To that end, we rely on traditional approaches to studying political parties, which leads us back to V.O. Key. In addition to party in government, Key identified what he termed the party in the electorate and the party organization as the three elements of a political party. Using data from the 100th, 101st, and 102nd Congresses along with surveys of partisan activists and members of Congress, we show that the party in the electorate does influence floor votes. We also demonstrate that using proxy measures for the personal preferences of members of Congress in this type of analysis may underestimate party effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of U. S. governors has advanced through the analysis of state of the state addresses (i.e. Hertzik 1991). These analyses, however, only provide limited insight into governors' ideological positions. For example, comparisons across governors and time remain problematic. Laver, Benoit and Garry (2003) developed Wordscore to determine the relative ideological positions of texts. While primarily applied to European party manifestos, Wordscore should be widely applicable. Preliminary analyses of governors (Coffey 2001; Herrera and Shafer 2008; Shafer and Herrera 2008) have been limited by attempts to adapt Wordscore to governors' speeches and by using speeches from only a few years. In addition, the validity and robustness of Wordscore results have not been tested in a longitudinal context. We propose an assessment of Wordscore as applied to state of the state speeches from 1991 to the present. Based on our previous research, several measurement issues regarding Wordscore ideology scores need to be considered. For example, the impact of different reference documents used in generating ideology scores and the stability of these scores have not been tested. We also suggest rules for using reference documents for longitudinal analysis to maximize the measurement quality when using Wordscore to analyze governors and other political actors.In addressing these methodological questions, we test the applicability of Wordscore by analyzing gender differences in gubernatorial ideology. Consistent with findings from the state legislatures (i.e. Carroll 2001), we expect women governors will exhibit a more liberal ideology than their male partisan counterparts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political elite in the United States have undergone a substantive transformation over the last forty years. In 1968, women comprised 13% of the Democratic and 18% of the Republican delegates at the national conventions. By 2004, numeric parity had essentially been achieved. After the 1972 conventions, a number studies provided insight into how men and women delegates differed in terms of socioeconomic factors and approach to politics. However, limited contemporary work has been executed to see if there are still substantive differences between male and female delegates. Understanding these potential differences is important as party activists are often recruited as candidates. If elite women have developed a more professional approach to politics then they are more likely to be successful and win elections.In this paper, I propose to investigate how women activists have changed since 1972. My primary focus will be to determine if elite women are now on par with elite men in terms of having the skills and ambition needed to successfully run for higher office. Using seven National Convention Delegate Studies (from 1972 to 2004), I will address the following: 1. Have the socioeconomic differences (i.e. education, profession and income) between men and women delegates narrowed since 1972?2. How have men and women delegates political styles (i.e. ambition, motivation, and approach to politics) changed since 1972?3.How do contemporary Republican and Democratic women differ in terms of socioeconomic factors and political style? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how the debate and news coverage of the debate influence citizens' impressions of the presidential candidates for the 2004 U.S. election. One of the ways to influence citizens' views and understanding of the candidates is by increasing information about the candidates and the contest. Key findings suggest that voters' attitudes are influenced by the arguments presented by the candidates during a debate.