What do candidates maximize (and why should anyone care)?

Much empirical work on Congressional elections implicitly assumes that cand idates are vote-maximizers; this may be a fair assumption for challengers, but it is not a good description of incumbent behavior. I present a general intertemporal utility maximizing model of candidate behavior, which includ es vote-maximization as a special case. I then demonstrate that these model s have important consequences for both the design and interpretation of emp irical work.