Does campaign money signal candidate quality?

We match a survey-based dataset about the effectiveness of legislators in North Carolina House and Senate with data on campaign contributions, from 1990 to 2000. We find that voters can learn about the effectiveness of a candidate as a legislator by looking at the total amount of contributions received during the campaign. Indeed, there is a mild and positive relationship between legislator effectiveness and total contributions received. However, when distinguishing between small and large money, it turns out that the sum of contributions below a given threshold ($2,000) is positively and strongly correlated to legislative effectiveness, while the sum of contributions above such threshold is negatively correlated with effectiveness. The latter result is driven by contributions from political parties and private individuals