I am a professor of political science at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. My main research interests are primary elections (particularly congressional and state legislative primaries), campaign finance, and various sorts of election reforms. I teach courses on American political parties, campaigns and elections, interest groups, political participation, and campaign finance. I’m also the co-director of Clark’s Law and Society Concentration.
In addition to my work at Clark, I am also the Director of Research for the National Institute for Civil Discourse a part of the Arizona public university system.
I’ve published a few books over the last three years. My most recent book (co-authored) is Money, Partisanship, and Power in Local Politics, a study of who contributes to city council candidates and why the networks of donors in these ostensibly nonpartisan elections still look a lot like political parties. I have two books due out in 2026. The Problem with Primary Voters (also co-authored) shows why low turnout in primary elections is a problem for democracy and offers solutions. And I’m the co-editor of Reforming Primary Elections, a free open access volume full of the latest research on primaries, which was supported by my friends at Unite America. Finally, Reform and Retrenchment, published in 2023, is a history of changes to primary election laws over the course of the twentieth century.
Among other things I’ve done in the not-too-distant past are an edited volume comparing recent changes in campaign finance laws in Western democracies, a coauthored book with my Clark colleague Valerie Sperling on how the gender themes of the Trump and Clinton campaigns influenced House and Senate races in 2016, and a study of changes in how we have understood political corruption.
A few years ago I was the co-PI, with Vin Moscardelli, on a project funded by the Hewlett Foundation to measure the consequences of primary election dates on various primary and general election outcomes. If you’re here because you’re looking for the data from that project, the download page is here.
I have taught at Clark since 2005. Before that, I taught at Swarthmore College and I worked as a research fellow at the Campaign Finance Institute, as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, and as a research associate at the American Judicature Society. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, received my B.A from Carleton College, and received my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
This website contains pages for my larger ongoing research projects, my vita, and syllabi for my recent classes. I have provided links here for some of my ungated published work. If you have an interest in additional materials, please contact me.
