Biography

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. My research investigates how voters behave and how officials translate voters’ preferences into public policy in local and state politics in the United States.

My dissertation — The Supply and Demand of Municipal Policy in a Polarized Era — asks how much voters know about the policy choices of their city governments and whether that knowledge (or lack thereof) strengthens or hinders government accountability. To answer this, I track the policymaking behavior of 484 U.S. cities across 90 issue domains over time and conduct an original survey to test voters’ knowledge of their cities’ policy choices.

My work has been published in the Urban Affairs Review, conditionally accepted at the American Political Science Review, and has been supported financially by the Urban Communication Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies, the UCLA Division of Graduate Education, and the UCLA Institute to Study Hate.

Prior to attending UCLA, I grew up in Boise, Idaho and received my bachelor’s degree in Political Science at Brigham Young University.

Education

B.A. Brigham Young University 2022

Research Interests

Local/urban politics, political behavior, representation, and accountability

Graduate Advisors

Chris Tausanovitch (chair), Julia Payson, Lynn Vavreck, and Dan Thompson