Robert David Sullivan 2

The State House as cash cow

The state of Arizona, now running a $3 billion budget deficit, is planning to sell up to 32 government properties for quick cash -- possibly including its House and Senate office buildings. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

... the sales could put between $350 million and $700 million into state coffers this year – but it’s a quick fix. The state would pay between $60 million and $70 million to lease back many of the properties, meaning the transactions will cost taxpayers more in the long run.

Is this an idea whose time has come to Massachusetts? Perhaps Gov. Patrick could raise some revenue and rid himself of a political rival, convenience store magnate Christy Mihos, by selling him the State House. The Legislature could then hold late-night sessions with easy access to Slurpees and microwaved burritos. 

Candidates with more money won in Mass. last year -- with a dozen exceptions

Legislative elections nearly always go to the candidate with more money, and the candidate with more money is almost always an incumbent. That's the upshot of the 71-page report released today by the state's Office of Campaign & Political Finance.

According to the report, legislative candidates spent $12.46 million last year, which was an increase of $64,295 from two years before -- even though the number of candidates on primary and general election ballots across the state dropped from 339 to 311. (This was the lowest number since 1990, when the office started keeping records. CommonWealth has reported on the paucity of candidates here and here.) The OCPF calculated that 98 percent of the incumbent legislators seeking re-election last year are back in office.

In the Senate, winning candidates spent an average of $88,827; losing candidates spent an average of $43,897. On the House side, winners spent an average of $40,233; losers spent an average of $19,029.

Twelve members of the 200-member Legislature, listed below, can say they won office despite being outspent by their opponents. Half are women, even though women make up only about one-quarter of the state Legislature overall.

Sen. Susan Fargo (D-Lincoln)*
Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz (D-Boston)
Rep. Bradford Hill (R-Ipswich)*
Rep. Robert Hargraves (R-Groton)*
Rep. Thomas Conroy (D-Wayland)*
Rep. Carolyn Dykema (D-Holliston)
Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante (D-Gloucester)
Rep. Brian Ashe (D-Longmeadow)
Rep. James Arciero (D-Westford)
Rep. Kate Hogan (D-Stow)
Rep. Danielle Gregoire (D-Marlborough)
Rep. Michael Brady (D-Brockton)
*Incumbent

Lessons from the New York Senate

With a third consecutive House speaker under indictment and a membership that seems more committed to preserving "hack holidays" than enacting reform, the Massachusetts Legislature isn't held in very high esteem these days -- though part of its problem may be that its members have so much self-esteem they don't grasp the concept of accountability to the electorate. But the shenanigans in New York's state Senate, as reported in the New York Times, offer two lessons to us in Massachusetts.

First, we don't necessarily have the most embarrassing Legislature in the nation:

Two dissident Democrats, who had been secretly strategizing with Republicans for weeks, bucked their party’s leaders and joined with 30 Republican senators to form what they said would be a bipartisan power-sharing deal.... Democratic leaders were caught off guard as the Republicans and the two Democratic dissidents, Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx and Hiram Monserrate of Queens, moved to topple them, and at one point became so flustered that they turned out the lights in the Senate chamber to try to prevent Republicans from installing new leaders.

Second, a vigorous two-party system doesn't necessarily produce cleaner and more transparent politics than we have in one-party Massachusetts. Here is how the Times describes the two profiles in courage who are responsible for the switch in party control:

George Keverian, reformist Speaker and multimedia pioneer, dies

According to a statement from House Speaker Robert DeLeo's office, former Speaker George Keverian died this morning.

John McDonough, who served in the House under Keverian (photo by Craig MacCormack), wrote an appreciation of the Everett lawmaker in CommonWealth magazine in 2002, called "The Speaker Who Believed in Democracy." McDonough noted that Keverian won his first election, to Everett's equivalent to a city council, in a manner that makes you wonder what he could have done with Facebook and Twitter:

Keverian took photos of every house in the ward, then pasted each on a separate flier next to a picture of his own house. The flier read: "This is a picture of your home. This is my home. We are neighbors." The trick got him noticed not just by voters who placed him first but by the Associated Press, which sent the story across the nation. Years later, Keverian would still be asked by constituents, "Why did you send a picture of my house to everyone in the ward?"

But McDonough writes mostly about Keverian's legacy in the state House of Representatives:

Blue Mass Group: One-party state may not be so bad

Would a genuine two-party state in Massachusetts lead to the something like the fiscal mess now plaguing California, in which Republican legislators have defied Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger and the Democratic majority by blocking any legislation with a tax increase? 

Over at Blue Mass Group, Bob thinks this is worth worrying about, and he indicates some skepticism over a recent CommonWealth magazine article on uncontested elections in Massachusetts:

This is what dysfunctional government looks like. If anyone needed a reminder that what Massachusetts needs is a more aggressive progressive wing of the Democratic Party with more contested primaries, and not more Republicans, to invigorate state politics, this is a sobering one.  

It's not surprising that a Blue Mass Group commentator wouldn't like the idea of more Republicans in the Massachusetts Legislature, and California doesn't offer an exact comparison. In that state, budgets and tax increases require a two-thirds majority for passage (a point missing from many wire service stories about the crisis). A Republican caucus consisting of one-third of the state legislature simply wouldn't have the same power in Massachusetts as it does in California. That is, unless the GOP consistently convinced enough conservative Democrats to take its side, which is not so much an obstructive tactic as it is a skilled one.

Beacon Hill scandals and the one-party state

In the wake of Sal DiMasi's departure from Beacon Hill, CommonWealth magazine associate editor Alison Lobron weighs in on the Bay State's one-party political culture in today's Boston Globe:

After Massachusetts waved goodbye to its third consecutive ethically challenged speaker of the House last week, the spotlight is now on his successor. Will Robert DeLeo be next in line? Is there something in the water at the State House - say, a parasite that infects speakers with a bad mix of myopia and arrogance?

Read the rest here. And read Lobron's story "Ending the One-Party State" in the current issue of CommonWealth.

New Mexico legislators fight for the right to doze through sessions

The New Mexico state legislature is reluctant to air its business on the Internet, and one lawmaker is refreshingly (or depressingly) frank about the reason. From the New Mexico Independent:

Among the critics of the proposal was Rep. Ray Begaye, D-Shiprock, who said during the committee meeting that he worried about lawmakers’ privacy and of potentially embarrassing moments being captured on camera.

“If I am sleeping and I am being recorded, that can be used as political gain,” Begaye said.

How unfair!

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Massachusetts is one of 45 states with live webcasting of its legislatures, but we're in the minority in not providing webcasts of committee hearings or live television coverage of legislative sessions. And unlike some "good government" states, including Minnesota, the Massachusetts Legislature does not provide archived webcasts of floor proceedings.

Democrats pull a "Finneran" in Tennessee House

Last week Sal DiMasi sailed to another term as Speaker of the Massachusetts House, but there was a far more interesting leadership vote in Nashville yesterday. Republicans outnumber Democrats 50-49 in the Tennessee House, but the Democrats hijacked the vote for Speaker in that chamber, voting unanimously for a moderate Republican (who naturally voted for himself) and thus blocking the GOP's more conservative choice. The Nashville Post reported on the maneuvering in a story with the subhead "Rep. Kent Willams met with boos after pulling off shocking win."

It wasn't quite as dramatic, but cross-party voting caused the election of at least one Speaker in Massachusetts: Tom Finneran, who upset fellow Democrat Richard Voke in 1996 thanks to the votes of Republicans in the House. The Boston Globe's Adrian Walker provided a history lesson in a 1998 story:

Finneran ascended to the speaker's chair two years ago in an unconventional manner. Locked in a battle with former House Majority Leader Richard A. Voke to succeed Charles F. Flaherty as speaker, Finneran, a lifelong Democrat, courted Republican legislators and, with their support, won election by a vote of 91-67.

He has been consolidating his control since, emerging as the most powerful speaker since John Thompson, the Iron Duke, ran Beacon Hill in the 1960s.

Creedon leaves Senate, laments shrinkage of House

At times, Friday's session of the Massachusetts Senate seemed like a revival of the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts, as members offered tributes to four departing members: Edward Augustus of Worcester, Pam Resor of Acton, Robert Creedon of Brockton, and Robert Antonioni of Leominster. As reported by the State House News Service (subscription required), Creedon got most of the good-natured barbs.

Sen. Richard Moore (D-Uxbridge) poked fun at Creedon as a "rascal" who "is reported to have said, 'Why do we need to do something for posterity? What has posterity ever done for us?'" And Sen. Michael Morrissey (D-Quincy) described Creedon as a "throwback" whose philosophy was: "Why speak when you can nod? Why nod when you can wink? Why say anything if you've already got it in the budget?"

After such tributes to his skills as a political insider, it was a bit ironic that when Creedon spoke himself, he lamented the decline of State House coverage in the local media and said that when he first served in the Legislature (as a state representative in 1969), "We had more openness than we have now."

He also said that "the worst vote I ever made" was to reduce the size of the House of Representatives from 240 to 160 members (a change that took effect after voters approved a constitutional amendment in 1970). "It reduced a very democratic body into a larger version of the Senate," he said.

Creedon gave up his Senate seat this year after five terms in order to run for Plymouth County Clerk of Courts; he was unopposed in both the primary and general election.

Massachusetts ranks dead last in contested elections

Massachusetts, once known for its raucous politics, now ranks last in the nation in the percentage of voters with a choice as to who represents them in the State House. (Click here for data.) There are both Democratic and Republican candidates in only 27 28 of 160 state representative districts this year. (With contests in five seven of 40 Senate seats, we also have the lowest contested rate among the 15 states where the entire upper chamber is up for election.) NOTE: Two Republican candidates for Senate and one Democratic candidate for the House were added to the secretary of state's candidate list since the September primary. The new list includes candidates who won nomination through write-in or sticker campaigns. Even with the higher numbers, Massachusetts ranks last in competitiveness in both the Senate and House.

The 17 percent contested rate in the House is not only below the 21 percent in runner-up Georgia, it’s down from the 26 percent that the Bay State logged two years ago — and far below the 51 percent in 2004, when then-Gov. Mitt Romney made an unsuccessful attempt to increase the number of Republicans in the Legislature.

What determines whether a state has contested elections? As the map above shows (click it to enlarge), term limits don’t seem to be a deciding factor, since they haven’t brought about contested races in Arkansas and haven’t been necessary for a 100 percent contested rate in Minnesota. States in which one party controls the House by only a handful of votes (such as Michigan and Montana) generally have more spirited elections, but Pennsylvania has a mostly empty ballot even though its House is now split 102-101 in favor of the Democrats, and Utah has a nearly full slate despite the GOP’s 55-20 advantage there. (With a 7-to-1 advantage for the Democrats, the Massachusetts House is the most lopsided in the nation.)

Voter interest in one election may attract more candidates in the next: Minnesota and South Dakota were the only states in which more than 60 percent of the eligible population voted in 2006, and they have the highest contested rates for 2008. Arkansas and Georgia, meanwhile, had comparatively poor turnouts in 2006 and have few candidates this year. Unfortunately, Massachusetts is a glaring exception to this rule, as its high turnout in 2006 (55 percent vs. the national average of 48 percent) evidently didn’t encourage that many people to run for office this time around.

Below: John Cleese votes in Massachusetts.

Cleese: It's not much of a election, is it?

Palin: Finest in the country!

Cleese: (annoyed) Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.

Palin: Well, it's so clean, sir!

Cleese: It's certainly uncontaminated by candidates....