caa a22 4500 388028521 CHVBK 20180307124942.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199806 xx s 000 0 eng 10.2307/420242 doi S1049096500054172 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.2307/420242 Medvic Stephen K. Old Dominion University The Effectiveness of the Political Consultant as a Campaign Resource [Elektronische Daten] [Stephen K. Medvic] Professional political consultants have acquired a mythic ability to single-handedly deliver victory for their client-candidates. Yet, among political scientists, factors other than consultant use appear to explain the difference between electoral success and failure. To this point, however, little quantitative work has been done to measure the impact political consultants have on American elections. In this article I will examine the relative influence political consultants and financial support from the political parties can have upon U.S. House elections. Definitions and Data For my purposes, a political consultant is anyone who worked in two or more congressional and/or statewide campaigns during the most recent campaign cycle, was among the highest grossing consultants in his/her field, or was a member of the American Association of Political Consultants. This operationalization is based on Larry Sabato's definition of a political consultant as "a campaign professional who is engaged primarily in the provision of advice and services (such as polling, media creation and production, and directmail fundraising) to candidates, their campaigns, and other political committees.” Noting that not every campaign staffer who is paid for his/her work qualifies as a consultant, Sabato narrowed the category of professional political consultants to "the relatively small and elite corps of interstate political consultants who usually work on many campaigns simultaneously and have served hundreds of campaigns in their careers” (1981, 8). The operational definition employed here focuses attention on only those campaign operatives who are "political consultants” in the most meaningful sense of the phrase. Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1998 PS: Political Science & Politics Cambridge University Press 31/2(1998-06), 150-154 1049-0965 31:2<150 1998 31 PSC https://doi.org/10.2307/420242 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2307/420242 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Medvic Stephen K. Old Dominion University NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- PS: Political Science & Politics Cambridge University Press 31/2(1998-06), 150-154 1049-0965 31:2<150 1998 31 PSC CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge