Political Science 318
Strategy and Ethics in Election Campaigns
September 13, 2004
Assignment #2
This assignment asks you to assess the candidacy of one person from the state of your assigned Senate race. Make an argument that the individual would have been (or was) a good or bad candidate. Explain why you reach that conclusion, and consider evidence running contrary to that conclusion.
The first step in this assignment is choosing the potential candidate to evaluate. You cannot evaluate one of the two major party nominees for the Senate race in your state. You should focus instead on losing primary candidates or other individuals who did not officially run. Make sure that you choose someone who would be a viable candidate. If your assigned state is North Carolina, for example, it would not make sense to choose your favorite political science professor, because he or she would not have a viable chance of winning. Your potential candidate can be from either party. You should also coordinate the selection of potential candidates with the other students assigned to your Senate race, to avoid multiple students picking the same candidate. No more than one student can choose each potential candidate.
To find the pool of potential candidates, you can turn to news stories about your assigned Senate race and other recent elections in your state. These articles are likely to mention individuals either who considered running for the Senate or who would be a viable Senate candidate. You can find these news stories in a number of on-line sources. National Journal's search engine allows you to review recent articles on your state's current and past elections. CQ.com contains extensive information on each state's congressional delegation, as well as detailed statistics on past voting patterns and demographic characteristics. Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe provides access to numerous newspapers and other publications from across the country. You will most likely find at least one newspaper from your assigned state. In addition, you can use Lexis-Nexis to search previous editions of The Hill and Roll Call, two publications from Capitol Hill that regularly report potential candidacies in congressional races throughout the country.
Once you have chosen your potential candidate, write an evaluation of that individual's strengths and weaknesses as a candidate, using the various criteria discussed in class and the assigned readings (such as personal wealth or fit with the state electorate). You can find information about your potential candidate in the on-line sources listed immediately above. The Shea and Burton book (pp. 61-71) also suggests useful sources of information.
Make sure that you pay attention to the following suggestions:
The Honor Code covers this assignment. You should pledge your work by including in the assignment a statement that you have followed the Honor Code in completing the assignment (to save words, you can include this statement on a separate page that is linked to the main page for your assignment). Your page should contain appropriate in-text citations for any sources used. The detailed information for each citation should then appear in a bibliography on another web page (that is linked to the page containing the text of your assignment). The assignment is due at the start of class on September 20. In other words, you should post your page by 2:30 p.m. on this day. Assignments posted more than 10 minutes after the scheduled start of a class period will be considered late. Assignment grades are lowered by 10 points (out of a total 100 points) for each 24-hour period (after the start of class) that they are late.