I am a professor of political science at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. I teach courses on American political behavior, political parties, campaigns and elections, interest groups, political participation, and political theory. I am chairing the department through 2022.
My primary field of research is campaign finance, but I have written on a variety of other subjects, including congressional politics and elections, redistricting, and various aspects of jury service. I have published three books on congressional primaries, and in 2011 I published a book analyzing the effect of campaign finance reform laws on US and Canadian interest groups. I recently completed 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.
I’m currently working on two different projects: a history of changes in primary election laws during the mid-twentieth century, 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.
In addition to my work at Clark, I am also the director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse Research Network at the University of Arizona.
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.
