The Ballpark podcast Extra Innings: African Americans in a White house: an event with Professor Leah Wright Rigueur

On the 5th of March 2020, Professor Leah Wright Rigueur joined the LSE US Centre for the event “African Americans in a ‘White’ House: Presidential Politics, Race, and The Pursuit of Power.” At the event, using one of the most outrageous scandals in modern American political history as a case study – the Housing and Urban Development Scandal (HUD) of the 1980s and 1990s which saw political officials steal billions in federal funding set aside for low-income housing residents – Professor Leah Wright Rigueur told the complex story of the transformation of Black politics and the astonishing racial politics of presidential administrations that have paved the way for patterns of political misconduct that have continued into the present. This seminar was chaired by Professor Imaobong Umoren, Assistant Professor at the Department of International History at LSE. The event was part of the ‘Race and Gender in US Politics in Historical and Contemporary Perspective’ seminar series organized by the LSE United States Centre. Professor Leah Wright Rigueur is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Harry S. Truman Associate Professor of American History at Brandeis University. She is the author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power and is currently working on the book manuscript Mourning in America: Black Men in a White House

The Ballpark Podcast: Extra Innings: Black Republicans, power and the Reagan administration, interview with Professor Leah Wright Rigueur

In this Extra Inning, Ballpark co-host Michaela Herrmann is joined by Professor Leah Wright Rigueur, who discusses the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) scandal of the 1980s, the experiences of Black Republicans in the last 50 years, the racial politics of the Reagan administration, and how #BlackLivesMatter protests can be linked back to long-standing trends like inequality and policing practices

The Party’s Primary Preferences: Race, Gender, and Party Support of Congressional Primary Candidates

Party support has a strong influence on candidate success in the primary. What remains unexplored is whether party actions during the primary are biased along racial and gender lines. Using candidate demographic data at the congressional level and measures of party support for primary candidates, we test whether parties discriminate against women and minority candidates in congressional primaries and also whether parties are strategic in their support of minority candidates in certain primaries. Our findings show parties are not biased against minority candidates and also that white women candidates receive more support from the Democratic Party than do other types of candidates. Our findings also suggest that parties do not appear to strategically support minority candidates in districts with larger populations of minorities. Lastly, we also find no significant differences in the effects of party support on the likelihood of success in the primary by candidate race or gender