I am a professor of political science at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. My main research interests are primary elections and campaign finance. 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 at the University of Arizona.
I’ve written a bit on primary elections, campaign finance, congressional politics and elections, and various sorts of political reform. My most recent book, Reform and Retrenchment, is a history of changes to primary election laws over the course of the twentieth century. Among other things I’ve done in the past few years are an edited volume comparing recent changes in campaign finance laws in Western democracies and 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.
Among the things I’m working on now are an analysis of who votes in primary elections (with Caroline Tolbert), a study of municipal campaign finance (with Ray La Raja and some other folks from the University of Massachusetts), an edited volume on primary election reform (sponsored by Unite America), and a study of changes in how we have understood political corruption.
I’m also 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 all of my ungated published work. If you have an interest in additional materials, please contact me.
