No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures

Acknowledgments

acknowledgments This book began as a small graduate school project. A professor saw my interest in parties and elections and my curiosity about California politics and encouraged me to dig a little bit. So I dug. I was astounded to ‹nd that, as recently as the 1950s, California had nearly nonexistent legislative parties, and it appeared that most state legislative elections were going uncontested. I was interested, as was my professor, who encouraged me to ‹nd out more. That professor, who later became my mentor, colleague, and friend, is John Zaller. Although he is primarily known for his work in public opinion , he had come to develop an interest in party organization right around the time I started graduate school. The little research project he was prodding me to pursue ultimately became the book you are holding now. His encouragement, his enthusiasm for the project, and the high standards he sets for his own work and for that of his students fueled my long but fascinating journey into the history of California’s political parties and helped me develop a deeper understanding of my home state. John Zaller’s mentorship remains my touchstone as I work with students of my own. I had a stroke of good fortune when Jeff Lewis joined the UCLA faculty and, a few hours later, my dissertation committee. An innovative methodologist with an interest in California politics, he is also a gifted teacher who is generous with his time. This book has pro‹ted tremendously from Jeff’s skills and knowledge. In particular, he devised several clever methods of obtaining, inputting, and interpreting roll call votes that allowed us to develop a dataset of every roll call vote ever cast in the California Assembly. Findings from this dataset lie at the heart of this book’s analysis. Had it not been for Jeff, I’d likely still be entering the votes for 1851 by hand and looking around for 1852. I benefited from critical early advice on this project from Jim DeNardo, Frank Gilliam, and Dan Lowenstein, who kept me on task and helped give my project focus. I received support and some crucial course release time from the University of Denver that enabled me to move the project forward. I remain indebted to the ragtag group of scholars known as the Klugies —Ken Gaalswyk, Phil Gussin, Wesley Hussey, Greg Koger, Hans Noel, and Darren Schreiber—for reading numerous drafts of various chapters and providing me with invaluable feedback. I particularly relied upon Wesley’s encyclopedic knowledge of the politics of Orange County and of California. This book was also markedly improved thanks to input and advice from John Aldrich, Kathy Bawn, Ben Bishin, Shaun Bowler, Marty Cohen , John Coleman, Gary Cox, Joe Doherty, Barbara Geddes, Elisabeth Gerber, Matt Gunning, Martin Johnson, David Karol, Marisa Kellam, Tom Knecht, Eric McGhee, Ellis Perlman, Jennifer Reich, Susan Schulten , Tom Schwartz, Susan Sterett, Jing Sun, Mike Thies, George Tsebelis, Lynn Vavreck, Nancy Wadsworth, Gerald Wright, and Demetria Zaller. Their willingness to read my drafts and listen to my “This one time, in California . . .” stories meant a lot to me. The roll call data collection project was an enormous undertaking, and I am especially grateful to the National Science Foundation for providing the lion’s share of the funding necessary to pull it off. (This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0214514. Any opinions, ‹ndings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily re›ect the views of the National Science Foundation.) Where the NSF’s support fell short, John Zaller and Ken Schultz picked up the slack, for which I thank them. Mat McCubbins generously provided additional roll call votes, and Keith Poole helped me enormously in interpreting the data. I am also grateful for the ›awless data entry and rapid turnaround time provided by Pranit Banthia, Hitesh Mistry , Herat Patel, and the other employees of Hi-Tech Export. I would be most remiss if I failed to acknowledge the small army of research assistants who inputted and proofread roll call votes: Thea Bernas, Andrew Bradley, Jules Butler, Chris Chin, Lauren Costales, Deanna Der, Janaki Dighe, Lauren Hansen, Irmak Ince, Viera Juarez, Andrew Kieser, Steve Kim, Kate Madden, Erica McWhorter, Nana Sogoian, Karl Su, and Bradley Whitworth. x acknowledgments Sheri Annis, Clea Benson, Jimmy Evans, Marc Herman, and Lark...