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INTRODUCTION
A long-standing tradition of representation scholarship revolves around questions about social identity and political representation. There is an extensive representation literature exploring various forms of representation for disadvantaged groups such as racial and ethnic minorities (Hero and Tolbert 1995) and women (Selden 1997). Following Pitkin (1967), scholars focus on the link between descriptive and substantive representation with many contending that increasing descriptive representation of disadvantaged groups is likely to produce policy outputs and outcomes that substantively benefit these groups (Mansbridge 1999).
Political scientists have also renewed interests in studying the representation of racial minorities in elected political offices. Studies on minority legislators largely draw from roll-call data (Broockman 2013; Swain 1995; Whitby 2000) and conclude that minority lawmakers, compared with their non-minority peers, are more attentive to minority concerns (Griffin 2014). Scholars also find that the presence of minority legislators shifts agenda setting toward policy areas that disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minority communities (Barrett 1995; Bratton and Haynie 1999; Hero and Preuhs 2010; Juenke and Preuhs 2012), but both electoral systems and political parties can alter the link between the descriptive and substantive representation of minorities. Nevertheless, many studies focus on how legislators behave once elected to office (Broockman 2013; Griffin 2014; Hero and Tolbert 1995).
Yet, less attention has been given to other important questions concerning what enables minority candidates to hold office. Despite the progress in including members of disadvantaged groups in legislative offices, gains for minorities in state legislatures have failed to match the demographic changes in state populations. In some states, the shortfall is even growing. For example, blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population and Hispanics account for about 17% of the U.S. population, the proportions of state lawmakers with these racial identities are far smaller––9 and 5%, respectively. Political scientists have addressed this under-representation with both a demand-side perspective focusing on voters' ideology and policy preferences and a supply theory focusing on minority candidate emergence (Shah 2014). Going beyond what drives candidate supply, scholars also have examined how macro-level institutional factors, such as electoral rules, affect the representation of minorities (Meier et al. 2005; Treggbi, Aghion, and Alesina 2008).
We extend the existing literature by providing a resource-based perspective of disadvantaged groups' electoral success. We theorize...