UNIONS, PAC CONTRIBUTIONS, AND THE NAFTA VOTE

Political action committees (PACs), especially those controlled by org anized labor and business, have been shown to affect Congressional vot ing. We explore how PACs influenced the House of Representatives' vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAFTA vote is analyzed because organized labor strongly opposed the treaty while bu siness generally supported it and because of the straight-forward voti ng generated by its fast-track status. Probit analysis of a unique, un published data set containing information about PAC and non-PAC contri butions to the 1992 House election campaigns demonstrates that Represe ntatives who depended largely on labor PACs tended to oppose NAFTA, wh ile Representatives who derived a large proportion of their campaign c ontributions from business PACs tended to favor its passage.