Nowhere to Run : Race, Gender, and Immigration in American Elections

"Why has the underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in elected office proved so persistent? Many researchers have asserted that the main shortfall happens at the candidacy stage--women and people of color are competitive candidates, but too few throw their hat into the ring. However, these studies are animated by two assumptions that tend to speak past each other. On the one hand, gender and politics scholars often suggest that women lack sufficient ambition to run for office relative to men. On the other hand, race and politics scholars have suggested that districts with majority white populations do not provide adequate resources or opportunities for minority candidates to succeed. These approaches tend to treat women and racial minorities as parallel social groups, and fail to account for the ways in which race and gender simultaneously shape candidacy. Nowhere to Run introduces the intersectional model of electoral opportunity, which argues that descriptive representation in elections is shaped by intersecting processes related to race and gender. Across states, realistic opportunities for potential candidates of color to get on state legislative ballots are sharply circumscribed by the distribution of white majority populations in most districts; and within the districts that are most widely viewed as winnable seats--majority minority districts--the perceived scarcity of viable electoral opportunities exacerbates factors that tend to push women of color farther from the candidate pipeline. These overlapping constraints result in an electoral landscape where women of color face constraints on electoral opportunity that are intersecting and multilayered. Drawing on an original dataset encompassing nearly every state legislative general election from 1996-2015, as well as interviews and surveys with candidates, donors, and other political elites from 42 states, Nowhere to Run tests this theory with a first of its kind study of Asian American and Latina/o candidacies, and the first simultaneous look at the relationship between changing populations and descriptive representation for African American, Asian American, Latina/o, and white women and men. The book sheds new light on how multiple dimensions of identity simultaneously shape pathways to candidacy and representation for all groups seeking a seat at the table in American politics."--Provided by publisher Why has the underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in elected office proved so persistent? Many researchers have asserted that the main shortfall happens at the candidacy stage - women and people of color are competitive candidates, but too few throw their hat into the ring. However, these studies are animated by two assumptions that tend to speak past each other. On the one hand, gender and politics scholars often suggest that women lack sufficient ambition to run for office relative to men. On the other hand, race and politics scholars have suggested that districts with majority white populations do not provide adequate resources or opportunities for minority candidates to succeed. These approaches tend to treat women and racial minorities as parallel social groups, and fail to account for the ways in which race and gender simultaneously shape candidacy. This book introduces the intersectional model of electoral opportunity, which argues that descriptive representation in elections is shaped by intersecting processes related to race and gender. Across states, realistic opportunities for potential candidates of color to get on state legislative ballots are sharply circumscribed by the distribution of white majority populations in most districts; and within the districts that are most widely viewed as winnable seats - majority minority districts - the perceived scarcity of viable electoral opportunities exacerbates factors that tend to push women of color farther from the candidate pipeline. These overlapping constraints result in an electoral landscape where women of color face constraints on electoral opportunity that are intersecting and multilayered. Drawing on an original dataset encompassing nearly every state legislative general election from 1996-2015, as well as interviews and surveys with candidates, donors, and other political elites from 42 states, this book tests this theory with a study of Asian American and Latina/o candidacies, and takes a simultaneous look at the relationship between changing populations and descriptive representation for African American, Asian American, Latina/o, and white women and men. The book sheds light on how multiple dimensions of identity simultaneously shape pathways to candidacy and representation for all groups seeking a seat at the table in American politics. -- Provided by publisher Nowhere to Run: Race, Gender, and Immigration in American Elections advances an intersectional account for why the underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in elected office has proven so persistent. Using an original dataset encompassing nearly every state legislative general election from 1996 to 2015, and interview and survey data from 42 states, the book demonstrates that factors in candidate emergence that have long been treated as exclusively “racial” or “gendered” in political science are, in fact, shaped by race and gender simultaneously. Focusing on women and men from the two fastest-growing racial groups in the United States—Asian Americans and Latina/os—the book shows that prevailing conceptions of the utility of majority-minority districts and the importance of individual-level concerns like ambition in explaining representation on the ballot require revision. The intersectional model of electoral opportunity presented in the book argues that overlapping and simultaneous structural factors play a previously underappreciated role in shaping who runs for office—and who does not. At the national level, the distribution of majority-white populations across most districts sharply constrains the number of realistic opportunities for nonwhite women and men to get on the ballot. At the local level, within districts and communities of color, the scarcity of viable opportunities to run exacerbates informal processes and institutions that tend to push women of color further from the candidate pipeline. These interactive features of the landscape of electoral opportunities produce a systemic absence of competition for descriptive representation in most state legislative elections. cover 1 Nowhere to Run 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of Figures 10 List of Tables 12 Acknowledgments 14 1 Introduction 18 2 Empirical Strategies for Intersectional Research 46 3 Candidacy in Contexts 64 4 Demographics Are (Men’s) Destiny 86 5 The Rest of the Pie: Partisanship and Race-​Gendered Opportunities in Predominantly White Districts 110 6 If Not Here, Then Where?: Constrained Opportunities for Immigrant Representation in Los Angeles County 128 7 “She Came out of Nowhere”: Elite Networks and Candidate Emergence in Los Angeles 156 8 Conclusion: The Future of Candidacy and Representation in American State Legislatures 184 Appendices 202 Notes 224 Index 264 Works Cited 244 'Nowhere to Run' introduces the intersectional model of electoral opportunity, which argues that descriptive representation in elections is shaped by intersecting processes related to race and gender. Drawing on an original dataset encompassing nearly every state legislative general election from 1996-2015, as well as interviews and surveys with candidates, donors, and other political elites from 42 states, the book tests this theory with a first of its kind study of Asian American and Latina/o candidacies, and the first simultaneous look at the relationship between changing populations and descriptive representation for African American, Asian American, Latina/o, and white women and men