Businessperson candidates and their employees: How do businessperson candidates use their firms to get elected?

Businessperson politicians perform well in elections worldwide. What electoral strategy do they employ to win votes? This article highlights private sector employment as an underexplored resource in distributive politics. I argue businessperson politicians leverage their firms to mobilize employees as campaign workers, exchanging jobs for electoral support and services. Using list experiments in Thailand, I find evidence of this exchange: 36.5 % of employees voted for their employer, 27.0 % attended employer's campaign rallies, 17.5 % persuaded acquaintances to support their employer, 18.2 % distributed short-term benefits to voters, and 8.5 % distributed long-term benefits. I also provide evidence that businessperson politicians use private employment to circumvent restrictions limiting use of public resources for electoral gains by showing employees hired within two months before election were more likely to provide services than those hired outside this period, suggesting these hires were intentionally brought to support campaign activities during election season.