Leveraging National Party Leaders in Congressional Campaigns: The Case of Nancy Pelosi

Existing scholarship on negative campaigning has focused on the communication strategies of candidates who are actively contesting specific seats or offices. Yet, political leaders are often featured in ads where they are not a contestant. For example, between 2018 and 2022, the Republican Party spent over 227 million dollars on negative campaign ads featuring Nancy Pelosi, hoping to capitalize on her unpopularity with a wide swath of the voting public. In this paper, we develop a theoretical perspective on this kind of attack by association that emphasizes two processes – ideological signposting and transfer of affect – to explain why campaigns might choose to adopt this strategy. Using Pelosi as a case study, we analyze her depictions in televised U.S. House race ads from 2010 to 2020 and compare them with similarly situated male Congressional leaders. Our approach blends a content analysis of the visual and verbal elements of campaign ads with metadata from the Wesleyan Media Project, providing insights into the conditions under which attacks against Pelosi are likely to emerge. Our findings have implications for understanding not only negative campaigning but also the nationalization of political discourse and the challenges facing women as they advance to leadership positions within Congress.