I am an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. From 2017–2020, I was an assistant professor at the University of Rochester. I received my PhD in 2017 from Princeton. My research interests are in U.S. state politics, American political institutions, bureaucratic–legislative interactions, state–federal bureaucratic interactions, and interest group politics.
Book
Ghostwriting Legislation: How the Unelected Write State Policy (In production with Cambridge University Press)
Publications
“Policymaking Institutions and Majority Party Power in the U.S. States.” with Andrew Ballard and James Curry. 2025. Legislative Studies Quarterly.
“Legislative capacity limits interest group influence: Evidence from California's Proposition 140.” with Alex Garlick and Paige Pellaton. 2024. Legislative Studies Quarterly.
“Motivated Corporate Political Action: Evidence from an SEC Experiment.” with Maria Silfa. 2023. The Journal of Politics.
“Model Bills, State Imitation, and the Political Safeguards of Federalism.” with Timothy Callaghan and Andrew Karch. 2022. Legislative Studies Quarterly.
“Democracy by Deterrence: Norms, Constitutions, and Electoral Tilting.” with Gretchen Helmke and Jack Paine. 2022. American Journal of Political Science, pp. 434–450.
“Groups as Lawmakers: Group Bills in a US State Legislature.” 2022. State Politics & Policy Quarterly.
“Model State Legislation and Intergovernmental Tensions over the Affordable Care Act, Common Core, and the Second Amendment.” with Timothy Callaghan and Andrew Karch. 2020. Publius: The Journal of Federalism.
“Bureaucrats as Lawmakers.” 2020. Legislative Studies Quarterly.
State Politics and Policy Quarterly Best Paper Award, 2019
MPSA's Kenneth J. Meier Award for 2018
MPSA's Evan Ringquist Award for 2018
“Companion Bills and Cross-Chamber Collaboration in the U.S. Congress.” with Justin Kirkland. 2017. American Politics Research.
“Large-scale Text Processing Pipeline with Apache Spark.” with Alexey Svyatkovskiy, Kosuke Imai, and Yuki Shiraito. 2016. IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Washington, DC, pp. 3928–3935.
Working Papers
“Effective Lawmaking Behind the Scenes.” with Erinn Lauterbach, Kelsey Shoub, Craig Volden, and Alan Wiseman. Submitted.
“Partisan Commenting: Evidence from State and Local Government Involvement in Rulemaking.” with Maria Silfa. Submitted.