Raymond La Raja

Raymond J. La Raja is a nonresident senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at Brookings, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and co-founder and co-director of the UMass Poll, which does comprehensive national surveys of American voters. He is an expert on campaign finance, U.S. political parties, and political representation in local politics. He is a co-author of “Race, Class and Representation in Local Politics“ (Cambridge U. Press 2020) and “Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail” (U. Michigan Press 2015), which was the Winner of the Virginia Gray Best Book Award and a forthcoming book, “Small Donors in US Politics: Myth and Reality.” He has been an expert witness in federal court cases involving campaign finance regulation, including the U.S. Supreme Court case McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, and served in leadership positions on several national task forces of scholars aimed at improving federal and state elections.

La Raja was a co-founder and former editor of The Forum, a journal of applied research in contemporary American politics. He has been a president of the Political Organizations and Parties section of the American Political Science Association and served on the Academic Advisory Board of the Campaign Finance Institute. He was former Associate Dean for Program Innovation at the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is currently the founder and director of the UMass Faculty for Open Inquiry and Civil Dialogue. 

La Raja received his B.A. and M.P.P. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in political science from UC Berkeley.