Month: April 2009

• MN-Sen: After the court-ordered opening of the 351 previously rejected absentee ballots, Al Franken’s lead just grew to 312 votes (up from 225 votes after the hand recount). Although the Minnesota Supreme Court still has to rule on some miscellaneous issues (the possibility of some double-counts), these questions affect fewer than 300 ballots, meaning that it is now mathematically impossible for Norm Coleman to prevail.

• RI-Gov: After backing off and saying he wouldn’t decide anything until May, it seems like Lincoln Chafee has turned around again and has officially formed his exploratory committee. He will be “putting together a plan that will lay the groundwork for an Independent campaign for governor in 2010.”

• PA-Sen: Arlen Specter has come out firing against Pat Toomey’s likely primary challenge… and he’s already shooting blanks. He had to pull down and revise his attack ad for a factual error. He had accused Toomey of having traded credit default swaps while a Wall Street trader in the 80s (turns out CDSs hadn’t been invented yet at that point). Trying a new tack on today’s Morning Joe, Specter said that Toomey is too conservative to win statewide, accusing him of being “to the right of Rick Santorum.”

• AR-Sen: Looks like Wal-Mart may have sent Blanche Lincoln a cheap Chinese-made horse head for her bed. Lincoln, who supported the Employee Free Choice Act last time it came up, has announced she won’t be supporting it this time around, at least “in its current form.” Even if Franken gets seated and Specter flip-flops again, this probably defers EFCA until after 2010 (unless it passes in a gutted form).

• NV-Sen: John Ensign is making his first speaking appearance in Iowa later this spring. Signs of a presidential run? Possible, considering the paltry lot the GOP has on tap so far. This is of SSP interest primarily because Ensign is up for re-election in 2012 and would leave behind an open seat in this newly blue seat in order to run.

• IL-Sen: Big first-quarter haul for Treasurer (and Friend of Barack) Alexi Giannoulias, the only announced candidate for IL-Sen so far. He pulled in $1.1 million, none of which was from corporate PACs.

• FL-Sen: When asked for his assessment of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s job performance, Democratic Senate candidate Kendrick Meek dodged the question, telling the St. Petersburg Times that “I haven’t yet reviewed his work”. Sharp answer! (J)

• FL-Gov: Hey, pallie – you better watch it! Charles Bronson says he’s going to run for governor of Florida if Charles Crist runs for the Senate. And you thought Charles Bronson was dead! Wrong again, pallie! (D)

• FL-02: State senator Al Lawson, who’s primarying Allen Boyd from the left, seems like he won’t be pulling punches in going after Boyd. Lawson (who’s said a few Blue Doggish things of his own in the past) says “From my perspective, a Blue Dog is just a closet Republican,” and is “committed to being a true Democrat.”

• LA-Legislature: There were three special elections in Louisiana legislative races over the weekend (a Democratic senate seat in Opelousas, a Democratic house seat in New Orleans, and a GOP house seat in Baton Rouge suburbs). Despite the GOP contesting all three seats, Democrats held the line in their two open seats (including one to replace Don Cravins, who’s moved to Washington). The candidates in both runoffs will be Democrats, meaning Dems will hold their 4-seat edge in the senate and 1-seat edge in the house.  

• IL-05: It’s special election day in the dark, dark blue 5th. Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley faces off against GOP activist (and Minutewoman) Rosanna Pulido and a Green party candidate. In a big surprise, SSP will not be liveblogging the results.

{First, a cheap plug for my blog Senate Guru.}

In a story released today by The News & Observer, North Carolina’s Democratic state Attorney General Roy Cooper indicated that he may decide on whether or not to run for Senate in 2010 IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS!

Polls by Civitas and Public Policy Polling already show Attorney General Cooper beating Republican incumbent Richard Burr (who has recently gained notoriety by blocking Tammy Duckworth’s appointment to a Veterans Affairs post).

If you so see fit, PLEASE call Roy Cooper’s campaign office at 919-832-4312 (you’ll probably get voice mail) and leave a simple message encouraging Roy Cooper to run for Senate in 2010.  Explain that North Carolina and all of America would benefit by having his common sense voice replace Richard Burr’s obstructionist voice.

Every word of encouragement he receives makes him more likely to run — and, if he runs, we can replace Republican backbencher Richard Burr with a strong Democrat like Roy Cooper!

On the web: Draft Roy Cooper for U.S. Senate in 2010 Facebook Group

On the web: Draft Coop

Via SG, the North Carolina’s News & Observer sayeth:

Attorney General Roy Cooper said he hopes to make a decision on whether to challenge Republican Sen. Richard Burr some time this spring, Rob Christensen reports.

“I want to continue with public service to the people of North Carolina,” Cooper said Tuesday morning after attending a meeting of the Council of State. “I’m going to determine the best way to do that. I’m going to decide that very soon.”

Technically speaking, that gives Cooper until June 20th to make up his mind – summer officially starts on the 21st. A few other folks have also offered some soft deadlines.

RI-Gov – Lincoln Chafee (I):

But in a visit to Barrington Congregational Church, where he spoke about America’s world role in the post-Bush era, the 56-year-old Chafee said again that he is “very, very interested” in running and will decide this spring, based on whether he thinks he can raise the money to run a campaign and whether he has a chance to win. …

He said he expects to decide on a gubernatorial run when the fellowship ends in May.

NY-Sen-B – Peter King (R):

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y), the leading Republican contender for the New York Senate seat, praised newly-appointed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and said he won’t decide whether to run against her until this summer.

OR-Gov – Greg Walden (R):

Whatever the case, Walden sounds like he’ll be quicker to make a decision about the governorship than DeFazio. While the Democrat said he has no deadline, Walden said he wants to make his intentions clear by summer.

FL-Sen – Charlie Crist (R):

Few Republicans are entering the race so far. Most are waiting a decision from Governor Charlie Crist, who says he’ll make an annoucement on whether or not he’ll make a run for Washington after the state legislative session wraps up in May.

Do you know of any others? Please let us know in comments (with links). Thanks!

Haha.  Despite Governor Douglas’s grandstanding the bill still passed.  Vermont becomes the first state where the legislature successfully passes full marriage equality without intervention of the courts.

Now the time has come to run that clown of a Governor out of office come 2010.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/w…

Vermont has become the fourth state to legalize gay marriage – and the first to do so with a legislature’s vote.

The Legislature voted Tuesday to override Gov. Jim Douglas’ veto of a bill allowing gays and lesbians to marry. The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House. Under Vermont law, two-thirds of each chamber had to vote for override.

The vote came nine years after Vermont adopted its first-in-the-nation civil unions law.

It’s now the fourth state to permit same-sex marriage. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa are the others. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.

There’s nothing opponents of marriage equality can do to stop gay and lesbian couples from getting married in Iowa starting on April 24, but the political battle over marriage equality will go on for a long time after wedding bells start ringing.

After the jump I will bring you up to date on the political reaction to last Friday’s Iowa Supreme Court ruling, prospects for amending Iowa’s constitution and the latest statewide opinion poll on same-sex marriage.

First, a quick note for anyone planning to come to Iowa to get married. Daily Kos user Wee Mama posted information about getting a marriage license in Iowa for those who live elsewhere. If you would like to have a religious ceremony, I recommend contacting The Interfaith Alliance of Iowa for help in finding a sympathetic officiant, most likely to be from a United Church of Christ, United Methodist or Unitarian Universalist congregation. Couples wanting a Jewish wedding should contact Rabbi David Kaufman of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines, if at least one partner is Jewish and the couple is open to raising children as Jews. Rabbi Kaufman has officiated at a same-sex commitment ceremony and published this blog post on Friday demolishing the arguments against legalizing gay marriage in Iowa.

We now resume our previously scheduled diary…

At the Iowa progressive community blog Bleeding Heartland I published longer posts on reaction to the Varnum v Brien decision from Iowa Democrats and Iowa Republicans, so I’ll just hit the highlights here.

I was very happy to read the joint statement from Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal and Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy. I liked it so much, I am re-posting the whole thing:

“Thanks to today’s decision, Iowa continues to be a leader in guaranteeing all of our citizens’ equal rights.

“The court has ruled today that when two Iowans promise to share their lives together, state law will respect that commitment, regardless of whether the couple is gay or straight.

“When all is said and done, we believe the only lasting question about today’s events will be why it took us so long. It is a tough question to answer because treating everyone fairly is really a matter of Iowa common sense and Iowa common decency.

“Today, the Iowa Supreme Court has reaffirmed those Iowa values by ruling that gay and lesbian Iowans have all the same rights and responsibilities of citizenship as any other Iowan.

“Iowa has always been a leader in the area of civil rights.

“In 1839, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected slavery in a decision that found that a slave named Ralph became free when he stepped on Iowa soil, 26 years before the end of the Civil War decided the issue.

“In 1868, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated “separate but equal” schools had no place in Iowa, 85 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.

“In 1873, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled against racial discrimination in public accommodations, 91 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.

“In 1869, Iowa became the first state in the union to admit women to the practice of law.

“In the case of recognizing loving relationships between two adults, the Iowa Supreme Court is once again taking a leadership position on civil rights.

“Today, we congratulate the thousands of Iowans who now can express their love for each other and have it recognized by our laws.”

I’m not the biggest fan of our legislative leadership in Iowa, but Murphy and Gronstal hit it out of the park on this one. Their statement sends a very strong message to the public as well as to wavering Democratic legislators. Statehouse Democrats met behind closed doors Monday to discuss this issue, and at least a few Democrats support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, but I doubt Murphy and Gronstal would have issued such a strong statement on Friday if they had any intention of letting a Proposition 8-style bill get to the floor of the Iowa House or Senate. Gronstal confirmed on April 6 that the Iowa Senate will not debate this issue this year (scroll to the bottom of this diary to read a very strong statement from him). I believe leadership will block any attempt to pass a constitutional amendment restricting marriage equality during the 2010 session.

Governor Chet Culver tends to avoid speaking out on controversial topics, and he dodged on Friday with a statement acknowledging strong feelings on both sides of this “complicated and emotional issue.” He said he would review the court decision with his legal counsel and with the attorney general of Iowa. I would have liked to see more supportive comments from Culver, but he is in an awkward spot. After saying in September 2007 that “it’s important we let the judicial process work itself out here,” the governor unwisely promised in January 2008 to “do whatever it takes to protect marriage between a man and a woman” if the Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. Republican politicians and bloggers in Iowa are already demanding that the governor keep his promise.

I am not worried that Culver will actively fight the Iowa Supreme Court ruling, though. Not when a large segment of the Democratic base and Democratic legislative leaders support marriage equality. In addition, Culver promised on Friday to consult with Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller before reacting to this ruling, and Miller (also a Democrat) issued a strong statement later the same day that began as follows:

The Court has issued a clear and well-reasoned opinion. I believe that the Supreme Court’s decision is right, based on Iowa Constitutional law principles regarding equal protection. It is noteworthy that the decision was unanimous.

I wrote on Friday that two separately elected Iowa legislatures would have to approve a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage before the measure would go to Iowa voters. If Gronstal and Murphy are able to block such an effort in 2010, Republicans would have to win back the legislature in 2010, pass the amendment in 2011 or 2012, hold the legislature in 2012, and pass the amendment in 2013 or 2014. By then I believe support for marriage equality will be widespread in Iowa.

However, I forgot about something MyDD user political22 pointed out. Every ten years, Iowans vote on whether to call a Constitutional Convention, and the next scheduled vote on this matter is in 2010. Secretary of State Mike Mauro discussed this scenario Monday with Radio Iowa:

Under the traditional method of amending the state’s constitution, 2012 is the earliest an amendment banning gay marriage could be placed on the ballot. But Secretary of State Michael Mauro says in 2010, Iowans can vote to convene a constitutional convention to consider amendments to the document.

“If it were to happen, it opens up many possibilities to make all kinds of amendments,” Mauro says. “It’s wide open.”

If a constitutional convention comes up with an amendment or amendments to place before Iowa voters, a special election could be scheduled in 2011 according to Mauro. Mauro, the state’s top election official, says a constitutional convention could not rewrite the entire state constitution and would be restricted to proposing amendments — but there’s no limit on the number of amendments which could be proposed.

I forgot about this option because Iowans have never come close to approving a Constitutional Convention any of the previous times they’ve voted on the measure (in 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000). I contacted Mauro today for further information, and here is the process as he described it to me.

The question about calling a Constitutional Convention will automatically be on the general election ballot in November 2010. A simple majority vote in favor is all that’s needed to approve the measure. If it passes, the legislature would have to come up with a process for selecting delegates to the Constitutional Convention, and the statute provides very little guidance on how this would be done. The governor plays no role in these decisions; it would be up to the Iowa legislature to approve rules on selecting constitutional delegates.

The Constitutional Convention would meet sometime during 2011, after which the legislature would have to set an election date for the public to vote on any amendments that come out of the convention. Most likely, the special election would be held in late 2011 or early 2012. The amendments would not be voted on as a package. Each amendment would appear separately on the special election ballot. They could deal with almost any issue, from reducing the number of Iowa counties (the constitution currently stipulates that we have 99 counties) to consolidating school districts to giving counties zoning authority over large hog lots to various worker protections favored by labor unions.

Iowa Republicans would be taking a huge risk by going all-out to approve a Constitutional Convention in 2010. They may feel the public is with them on gay marriage; a poll that was in the field last week showed that just 26 percent of Iowans support gay marriage, with another 28 percent supporting civil unions. Perhaps a campaign on amending the constitution would be a helpful backdrop for Republican candidates for governor and state legislature. On the other hand, focusing on the ballot initiative would keep divisive social issues front and center, and Republican candidates running on social issues didn’t fare well in the 2006 or 2008 Iowa legislative races. Also, that recent poll showed a huge generation gap, with nearly 60 percent of Iowans under age 30 supporting gay marriage, and three-quarters of Iowans under 30 supporting either gay marriage or civil unions. Republicans need to weigh whether a short-term benefit in 2010 is worth the long-term damage to the GOP’s image among younger voters who have been trending Democratic.

A Constitutional Convention would bring other risks for Republicans too, because it could consider a lot more than gay marriage. It will be an uphill battle for Republicans to regain control of the legislature in 2010. Democrats currently have a 56-44 majority in the Iowa House and a 32-18 majority in the Iowa Senate.

If voters approve a Constitutional Convention while keeping Democrats in charge of the legislature, Democrats would be able to draft the rules for selecting delegates to that convention. Who becomes a delegate will inevitably influence the kind of amendments the assembly would consider.

Certain interest groups may not be pleased by a campaign to approve a Constitutional Convention. Kay Henderson did some scenario spinning at Radio Iowa today and suggested that road-builders might be afraid of losing the constitutional provision that earmarks all gas tax revenues for the Iowa’s Road Use Tax Fund. I wouldn’t be surprised if agribusiness fought the idea of a constitutional convention too, because there’s a lot of support in both parties for “local control” over large hog confinements.

I assume someone will soon poll Iowans on whether they would vote to call a Constitutional Convention to overturn gay marriage. I’m particularly interested to know whether Iowans who say they are for civil unions, but not gay marriage, feel strongly enough about that to support amending the Iowa Constitution.

Setting aside the constitutional discussion for a moment, many political observers are wondering how the Iowa Supreme Court ruling will affect the 2010 races. This will be a hammer for Republicans to use against Democrats in marginal state legislative districts, even if some of those Democrats themselves oppose gay marriage. I am not too worried, because no Democratic incumbents lost in 2008 after they voted to add sexual orientation to Iowa’s civil rights law. The overall economy and deteriorating budget projections are much bigger threats to Democratic incumbents in 2010, in my opinion.

As I mentioned above, Governor Culver doesn’t have a lot of good options now. He has no choice but to backtrack on his promise to “do what it takes” to “protect” heterosexual marriage from gay unions. Pushing for a constitutional amendment would produce a strongly negative response from much of the Democratic base. On the other hand, there are also Democrats and independents who oppose gay marriage and will want to see the governor do something. I hope he will use the unanimity of the court ruling and the legal advice he receives from the attorney general as excuses to revise his previous opinion on marriage equality. Republicans will try to hurt Culver on this issue in 2010, but the passionate opponents of gay marriage were never going to vote for Culver anyway.

Paradoxically, Culver could benefit from this controversy if it helps a social conservative win the Republican gubernatorial nomination next year. I believe the governor will win or lose based on economic issues, and he would have a tougher campaign against State Auditor David Vaudt or even Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey than against a hard-core “values Republican” such as Bob Vander Plaats.

The best scenario for Democrats would be for Congressman Steve “10 worst” King to run against Culver. I don’t know anyone from either party who thinks King could win a statewide election. King told the Omaha World-Herald on Friday that he is more likely to run for governor in 2010 if Culver does not “step up” to try to overturn the Iowa Supreme Court ruling.

By the way, David Waldman (formerly known as Kagro X) used King’s reaction to the Varnum v Brien ruling to mock King’s lack of understanding of the whole “checks and balances” concept. We Iowans learned long ago never to expect logic or coherence from Steve King.

Ultimately, it’s far too early to guess the impact of gay marriage on the 2010 elections. There’s no consensus among Bleeding Heartland commenters about how much this hurts Democrats. While some Republicans are hoping the issue will save their party, others are angry about what they view as a weak response by Republican leaders on this issue. I am confident that public opinion will shift toward supporting marriage equality when people see the sky didn’t fall because some couples who were already living together made it official. Then again, Nate Silver thinks it will be 2013 before a majority of Iowans are ready to vote to support gay marriage.

For now, my advice to fellow Iowa Democrats is “Don’t worry, be happy” about the Varnum v Brien decision. Even if I’m wrong about the potency of gay marriage as an electoral weapon for Republicans, some things are worth losing elections over.

Final note: On April 6 I received this press release from the Iowa Senate Democrats. The bold part was bolded in the original.

Iowa Senate Majority Leader

Mike Gronstal rejects amendment to reverse marriage equality

DES MOINES:  Monday night, April 6, was the first time the Iowa Senate discussed the unanimous decision by the Iowa Supreme Court to allow same sex couples to marry. During the discussion, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal of Council Bluffs made clear he would not agree to suspend the rules to allow a vote on an amendment to reverse the court decision.  

Without the support of Senate Majority Leader Gronstal, efforts to amend the Iowa Constitution can not move forward in the Senate.

Below is the text of Senator Gronstal’s response to Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley of Chariton .  It is also available on YouTube at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

“One of my daughters was in the workplace one day, and her particular workplace at that moment in time, there were a whole bunch of conservative, older men.  And those guys were talking about gay marriage.  They were talking about discussions going on across the country.  

“Any my daughter Kate, after listening for about 20 minutes, said to them: ‘You guys don’t understand.  You’ve already lost.  My generation doesn’t care.’

“I think I learned something from my daughter that day, when she said that.  And I’ve talked with other people about it and that’s what I see, Senator McKinley.   I see a bunch of people that merely want to profess their love for each other, and want state law to recognize that.

“Is that so wrong? I don’t think that’s so wrong.  As a matter of fact, last Friday night, I hugged my wife.  You know I’ve been married for 37 years.  I hugged my wife.  I felt like our love was just a little more meaningful last Friday night because thousands of other Iowa citizens could hug each other and have the state recognize their love for each other.

“No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you.”

There are a variety of ways to rate congresspeople, and I will cover several, but I’ll spend most of my time on the method I think best.  It’s seriously geeky, but I give a nongeeky summary, and then I give links to the geeky parts.

Many organizations rank congresspeople.  In the Almanac of American Politics, they include ranks from mny.  Each of these organizations looks at votes on their particular issues, and sees how each congress person votes (for their position or against it).  I am not going to talk more about these individual organizations.  

I will discuss three ways of ranking or rating congresspeople, they are used by a) National Journal  b) Progressive Punch  and c) Keith Poole and his associates.  I think the last is the best.

National Journal ratings does the following for the House, and similar for the Senate:

House members are assigned separate scores for their roll-call votes on key economic, social and foreign-policy issues during 2008. The members are rated in each of the three issue categories on both liberal and conservative scales, with the scores on each scale given as percentiles. An economic score of 78 on the liberal scale, for example, means that the member was more liberal than 78 percent of his or her House colleagues on the key votes in that issue area during 2008. A blank in any cell in the table below means that the member missed more than half the rated votes in an issue area. Composite scores are an average of the six issue-based scores. Members with the same composite scores are tied in rank. (C) indicates a conservative score; (L) indicates a liberal score.

If you sort on “composite”, you’ll see one issue: There are a lot of ties.  The top 12 representatives are all tied.  In the senate there are fewer ties.  But how does Bernie Sanders rank as tied for 13th most liberal, and with almost the same rating as Clinton?

The details of how they rated the congresspeople are for subscribers only, but they do have this snippet:

A panel of National Journal editors and reporters initially compiled a list of 167 key congressional roll-call votes for 2008 — 79 votes for the Senate and 88 for the House — and classified them as relating to economic, …

So it seems like they averaged a bunch of votes.

Progressive Punch rates people on the percentage of correct votes, and it offers ranks based on all voeertes, crucial votes, and votes on particular issues.  It is kept up to date, which is a major plus.  This has some advantages and disadvantages.  According to their methods, the three most progressive senators are: Roland Burris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Edward Kaufman.  Huh?  Well, all 3 have 100% ratings.  Even for Senators that have been in for a while, there are anomalies: Is Sherrod Brown really as liberal as Bernie Sanders?  One problem is revealed when we see that Ted Kennedy has a very low rating for 2009-10: They don’t deal properly with missed votes.  If we look at “Crucial Votes” for “lifetime” Jack Reed is rated as the most progressive senator among those who have been in the Senate for at least one full session.  

The way they came up with scores is summarized here. Briefly, they first identified a few “hardcore progressives” in the Senate and the House.  The ‘overall’ ratings are based on votes in which a majority of those progressives voted against a majority of the Republicans.  The problem here is that all votes are weighted equally, and this isn’t right (see below).  

The crucial votes are a subset of those, specifically:

The votes used to calculate the scores in the “Crucial Votes ’09-’10” column are a subset of the overall votes that qualify according to the Progressive Punch algorithm described above. They show the impact that even a small number of Democrats have when they defect from the progressive position. These are votes where EITHER progressives lost OR where the progressive victory was narrow and could have been changed by a small group of Democrats voting differently.

 This is better, but it’s not as good as more sophisticated methods.

Why not? Well, the good people at Progressive Punch recognize the problem: Not all votes are equal, even among those that are ideological.  Some are easy wins, some are lost by a lot.  But they dichotomize this into “crucial” and “noncrucial” when there is really a continuum.

The site is great for looking into past votes of congresspeople, and it’s great that they keep it up to date, but there is one better method.

That is the method used by the people at voteview.  The software and methods are the best, but it’s not the most user friendly site in the world.  They describe two methods of rating congresspeople: NOMINATE and Optical Classification.  Both are based on using every vote and attempting to place legislators in a way that maximizes the ability to predict how they will vote.  Both work really well: Optimal classification works a bit better, but takes more computer time; NOMINATE (if I understand it correctly) allows placement of issues as well as politicians.  With a single number for each congressperson, you can predict, with 95% accuracy, how they will vote on any bill.

One question is whether a single dimension (liberal to conservative) is enough to accurately classify people.  For most periods in American history, it is.  In the 1960s, a second dimension (racial attitudes) added a lot to the accuracy, but, right now, one dimension does very well.  You can see how OC works in one dimension.  It predicts 95% of the vote correctly.  Note that the things that look like fancy script L (or the old sign for pound) are supposed to be less than or equal to signs.

I am not going to duplicate the example in that link, but I’ll try to explain it a bit more (you might want to open it in another window).  The diamonds are legislators, the spades are ‘cutting points’ for nine votes, each with a different number of “ayes” and “nays”.  The Ace of Spades is a vote with only one “aye”, the two of spades has two “ayes” and so on.  Now, we attempt (first iteration) to place legislators correctly per the votes.  That gives the diagram listed after 2.  Then we re-order the cutpoints, as shown in step 3, and repeat the process.  

(end geekiness)

How do these methods compare?  I am not going to compare all the senators and reps, simply because I can’t figure out an easy way to copy the data into a spreadsheet.  But let’s take 5 well-known Senators from the 110th Senate:  Feingold, Schumer, Bayh, Specter and Coburn.

             OC rank                PP lifetime    NJ 2008 comp.      

Feingold -     most liberal           20th           37th

Schumer -      16th most liberal      16th            7th

Bayh  -        51st most liberal      45th           51st

Specter -      56th most liberal      59th           53rd

Coburn -       101st most liberal     71st           92nd

(there are 102 ranks in OC because of senators getting replaced …e.g. WY has Enzi, Barasso and Thomas).  I couldn’t find Progressive Punch for the 110th, so I gave lifetime ratings.

Which do you think is most accurate?

State Minority Leader and longtime state representative Dubose Porter (D-Dublin) is throwing his hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Georgia.

From the Dublin Courier Herald :

I have wanted to run before but felt it was best to wait until all of my children were out of high school. My youngest, the twins, are now freshmen at UGA and it seems as if this session’s lack of leadership has coincided correctly with that goal. It is a huge responsibility, but we can’t continue on this path and emerge productively in this economic downturn without new leadership.

   I realize a Democrat will have a hard time in what is seen as a red state. For one to win, we must look past the primary and honestly ask who can win a general election. My work on the issues will carry me in Atlanta, but according to the pundits from far right to far left it will take a candidate with my core values to connect with those outside of Atlanta.

I have met to Dubose before and heard him speak in front of a group of fellow college students and I must say he is a compelling candidate with ties across the state through his leadership in the General Assembly however with Attorney General Thurbert Baker in the race it looks like this could be a tough primary. I trust Dubose, Thurbert Baker and also already announced candidate General David Poythress will try to keep the primary fight clean and hopefully whoever the GA Democrats nominate will be able to bring together a winning coalition for the November election.  

http://news.mywebpal.com/news_…

A Yale law school student proposes an idea called The OpenRedistricting Project that I suspect may be near and dear to the hearts of many SSP readers:  

The OpenRedistricting Project has two separate, but interdependent, components. The development of user-friendly, free redistricting software is a necessary step for bringing ordinary citizens into the process. Once that is completed, a social networking site dedicated to monitoring the 2010 redistricting cycle should be created. With these new platforms, the netroots will have a seat at the redistricting table.

The post goes on to explain the concept in much greater detail.  

Just the possibility of getting free redistriciting software makes me fully supportive of the idea.  But the potential to create public awareness and public pressure for better redistricting seems to have real promise for making a difference.  I’m not sure if there’s anything that can be done at the moment to move the ball forward on this idea, but just wanted to bring this to the attention of SSP readers.

With Ellen Tauscher set to join the State Department soon, it seems that her soon-to-be-vacant seat is drawing interest from a major player in California politics — Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, who is currently making a bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nod in 2010. From the Contra Costa Times:

[…] Lt. Gov. John Garamendi is looking at it – he lives on the edge of District 10 in Walnut Grove.

Garamendi called Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, a few days ago, although the congressman offered little encouragement. Miller reiterated his unflagging support for state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier of Concord.

Wait, isn’t Garamendi running for governor? Yeah, although reports of a faltering campaign circulated recently after one of his top campaign staffers quit.

In a statement late Friday, here is what Garamendi said: “A number of people suggested I consider this seat. Of course, I will check it out. As a former undersecretary of the interior, there is a lot of exciting work going on in Washington. Much is possible with Barack Obama.

“But I am focused on California and my campaign for governor.”

Sounds more like he’s focused on finding a ripcord.