This multi-method dissertation is the first to investigate how race and identity operate for multiracial elites in the United States. Research on minority elites often makes assumptions that multiracial elites, who have become more visible in politics, may bring into question. Does multiracial identification matter for the politics of elites? I explore media coverage of multiracial elected officials, test whether multiracial candidates have an electoral advantage, and explore how once elected, multiracial legislators view their identities. I argue that the politics of multiracial officials depends on their specific racial backgrounds, not just their multiracial status. I find evidence that non-Black multiracial elites have freedom to assert their identities in ways not available to multiracial-Black elites, suggesting that the American historical context of anti-miscegenation and the one-drop rule still has ramifications for minority elites today. This research has implications for campaign and coalition strategies.

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Beyond the Base:

Republican Party Organizations & Minority Outreach in a Context of Reform

by

Nicholas Anthony Boushee

Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Political Science

University of California, Riverside, December 2015

Dr. S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, Chairperson

Following two consecutive presidential defeats and facing rapidly changing racial demographics, the Republican Party has sought to reform its minority outreach strategies. This dissertation looks at how the GOP is making this attempted reform, what the barriers are to doing so, and how successful the national party organization is at gaining compliance across the multiple tiers of the party (i.e. from local party organizations). The Republican National Committee has devoted much attention and significant resources to increasing minority engagement on the state and local level. These outreach efforts are most clearly embodied in the RNC’s Growth and Opportunity Project. With a mixed method approach including a survey of county chairs, my dissertation speaks to the county-level compliance gained by the RNC, and the attitudes of local leadership regarding the national party and the goal of increased minority outreach and racial inclusion. Additionally, with the use of participation observation fieldwork I illustrate how calls for change within a party organization characterized by federalism (i.e. existing across state and national planes) may bring about barriers to collective action in one state (Nevada) while garnering coordination and compliance in another (California). I argue that coordination vs. contention across the levels of party organization is not simply a matter of electoral context (e.g. the market explanation of outreach necessitated by voter demographic change), but rather is in large part due to the attitudes of local leadership, state central committees, and county chairpersons. This research also contributes to our understanding of: party organizations and their motivations and capacity to mobilize minorities, intra-party factionalism and internal campaigning, and the reforming of racialized rhetoric in a context of racially conservative currents. I find that most local party organizations lack the capacity to engage voters beyond the English language, internal campaigning can contribute to intra-party factions and collective action problems, and reform strategy involves a focus on the rhetorical and symbolic more than on issue-based/substantive development as a means to go beyond the partisan base.

Are Muslims incorporated into American politics? The use of both interviews and statistical analyses, I seek to provide an understanding of where Muslim Americans are in the process of political incorporation. By looking at several areas of political incorporation, I establish that Muslim Americans are in the early stages of political incorporation. I begin by providing the American political development of Muslim Americans. This then sets the stage of a series of statistical analyses, where I look at vote choice in two presidential elections, civic and political participation and the relationships between issue preferences, ideology and partisanship. In addition, through the importance of certain predictors, including religiosity, race and ethnicity and discrimination, I show that Muslim Americans may have presence in the politics, but lack any real weight. Muslim Americans may have gained some social, political and economic power but they are unable to shed their stigmatization and emerge from the margins.