 Todd DormanTodd Dorman is a columnist for The Gazette. His blog has been bringing smiles to readers' faces since November 2007. |
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Divided government, just the way we like it
Our Statehouse remains divided, post-election. And that’s not unusual.
In only six of the past 30 years has one party controlled both the Iowa Legislature and the governor’s office at the same time. Republicans did it during the last two years of Gov. Terry Branstad’s first long stretch as governor, in 1997 and 1998. Democrats took over the joint from 2007 through 2010.
Otherwise, we’ve had governors of one party and legislatures of another, or split. In January, Branstad will be governor, Republicans will control the House by a diminished 53-47 margin and Democrats will narrowly control the Senate, likely 26-24, depending on a recount and a special election.
Obviously, local legislative races often are decided by local factors. But our overall purple state preference for division in recent decades is striking. Perhaps we Iowans like to watch politicians fight. Or we have a soft spot for gridlock.
Actually, I think many of us have a thing for moderation, checks and balances. We may not like all the drama and friction we get, but we appreciate the compromises they yield. Agreements that tend to last.
We make it hard on Statehouse types. But look on the bright side, lawmakers. You’re not in Congress. Instead of staring into an abyss from a fiscal cliff, you’re looking up at a mountain of surplus cash. And last week’s election verdict, leaving the state balance of power largely unchanged, indicates that we don’t want you to do anything rash.
Republicans can’t use a potentially fleeting surplus to gorge on massive, permanent tax cuts of questionable value. Democrats can’t binge on big new spending initiatives of questionable necessity. They’ll all have to focus on what they have the best chance of accomplishing together. The are several major issues on tap, although property tax reductions and school reform would seem to be the best bets. Many candidates in both parties ran on both.
Republicans saw little reason to strike big deals in those areas in 2012, convinced that they’d run the whole show in 2013. The voters had other ideas. Now, any grand bargains will be bipartisan bargains, signed by a governor who is looking for a legacy, making a re-election case (six terms?!), or both. Everybody benefits from success and will be harmed by failure.
This will be a big test for Branstad. The super-sized surplus gives him and the Legislature a rare, historic opportunity on property taxes. He’s also got a decent shot at putting some school reforms in place that, over time, could make a positive difference if they’re fully funded for the long haul.
Dealing with skeptical Democrats will be difficult. Convincing his own Republicans to accept uncomfortable concessions will be tougher. I still think, in the end, he may be better off with a split Legislature than one run entirely by Republicans with an agenda considerably different than his. We’ll find out.
It promises to be contentious. And apparently that’s the way we like it.
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We have a divided Statehouse. Obviously. But your explanation — “many of us have a thing for moderation, checks and balances” — doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
You’re saying that the divided Statehouse was deliberate. But, speaking from Planet Earth where the sky is blue and the grass is green, the collaborative effort and backroom cooperation this would require is hard to imagine. This means election rigging on a scale that would be difficult if not impossible to pull off. This would require politicians, who are incapable cooperating in public, to do so behind closed doors and never speak of it.
Voters can’t pull this kind of thing off. We live in different districts. If we vote in local and off year elections, we take them seriously. The very idea that masses of Iowa voters would be cutting deals with each other cross district lines, even across the state, and nobody knows this is happening is ludicrous.
How about a simpler explanation. Iowa is divided into House districts that are either entirely rural or entirely urban. Iowans who live in rural areas tend to be more conservative and therefore vote Republican. People who live in urban areas tend to be more liberal and therefore vote Democratic. Iowa Senate districts tend to be a bit more diverse, but the same principle holds.
Our divided Statehouse is entirely due to local political interests. That our governor is Branstad is, I would argue, entirely due to political insanity
When I say “many of us,” I’m talking about Iowans who have no qualms about voting in ways that might seem confusing or contradictory to die-hard partisans. There are certainly voters who picked Branstad in 2010 and then voted for Democratic legislative candidates last week, and who may have voted for Obama. There are probably Obama backers who voted GOP in legislative races. Gov. Tom Vilsack won twice and couldn’t dent GOP majorities. Republicans took the House in 1992 when Clinton won his first term, and took the Senate in 1996 while he and Tom Harkin won re-election. In 1994, with Branstad winning and a Republican wave washing out a lot of Dems, Democrats held the Iowa Senate. The night that Branstad was elected in 1982, Democrats grabbed both chambers. Four years ago, while Obama cruised in Iowa, Democrats nearly lost the Iowa House. All of these mixed verdicts occurred on planet earth, as far as I know.
“Many of us” no party types who are willing to vote for both parties do so with the expectation that they work together.
Rural/urban is clearly a big factor, but to say it’s the only factor is overly simplistic. One of the biggest state Senate wins for Democrats last week was Mary Jo Wilhelm’s narrow win over Merlin Bartz in a largely rural district. Tom Vilsack won a lot of rural counties.
I was remiss in not mentioning the role that our nonpartisan redistricting process plays in keeping the Legislature competitive.
I’ve been hearing your general narrative of we have a divided government because the American People want it that way for as long as I can remember.
It doesn’t wash. People vote for what they think is in their best interest and for people they feel can best represent those interests To put it crudely, people vote for stuff. They do not use their votes to play master games of chess.
And I know the “urban/rural split” is simplistic, but it’s been the basic split in this country since the very beginning. You can see it in the compromises, most glaringly those having to do with slavery, that went into our Constitution.
We have a divided Congress and a divided Statehouse because the different regions of our country and our state have different interests. And the flip flops from one election to another are due to fluctuations in voter turn-out.
The turn-out, nationwide, in 2010 was whiter and older and higher income than the turn-outs in 2008 and 2012. In other words, the turn out in 2010 was comprised of a higher percentage of Republican base voters than the turn-out in 2008 and 2012, which was a higher percentage Democratic.. The Obama campaign banked on this and won. The Romney campaign thought they could convert Democrats to their Republican message and lost.
I think the instructive campaign with regard to this question would be Scott Brown v Martha Coakley; Scott Brown v Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts.
What we’re looking at is a hundred eighty degree turn around within a period of two and a half years. Are we looking at a lot of Democrats crossing party lines to vote for a Tea Party backed Republican in an overwhelmingly liberal Democratic state, or are we looking at low voter turn-out in a special mid-winter election where the Democrat was considered a slam dunk.
Well there is something correct, (as far as it went)
“To put it crudely, people vote for stuff.” The complete statement is, ‘people vote for ‘other’ peoples stuff.
That is the error of our ways. Those that are not paying for govt are about 1/2 the population and they are voting themselves access to other peoples money. A phenomenon that was warned against at the inception of the nation.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
To expand on that thought:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/465.Alexis_de_Tocqueville
Nothing lasts any longer than the purpose for which it was conceived. We started out to create a union with a purpose and now have good for me and to hell with you political view. We traded liberty for license. General welfare for corporate welfare and justice for all to justice for the wealthy. If and when we start to think of us instead of personal greed will we see the bottom end of the economic ladder improve. when people start to ask why do some people have to live in poverty then the votes will unify.