[Editor’s note: Seth Masket, a good friend from my days at the University of Denver, has a new book out. He also has this post, about California’s budget politics, for us. Thanks, Seth, for doing this.]
During a difficult economic year in which the state faced a severe budget shortfall, California’s Republican governor worked with Democratic leaders in the state legislature to craft a budget that contained a mixture of tax increases and service cuts. The Republican party stood together on the vote, with the exception of one holdout in the Senate.
Sound familiar? Actually, the year was 1967. Many of the story’s details are familiar because they recur from time to time in California. The real difference, though is the fate of the Republican state senator who refused to vote with his party. Instead of being driven out of politics, John Schmitz was renominated by the Republicans and reelected by his Orange County district the following year. Also, all the other Republicans in the state Senate voted for the budget. Schmitz refused go along with the tax increases that the rest of the Republicans in the senate, and Governor Ronald Reagan, found acceptable.
The situation in California is notably different today. The state legislature still requires a two-thirds vote in both houses to pass budgets, but that rubicon has proven steadily more difficult to cross. Virtually all Republicans will oppose any tax increase; any Republican willing to cross party lines and vote for a Democratic tax will find himself out of work before the next election. This happened after the 2003 budget stalemate; four Republican Assemblymen were dispatched to private life because of their votes in favor of Governor Gray Davis’ tax hike. Notably, none were dispatched in the next general election. None made it that far. Most faced difficult primary challenges from their own party and either lost or decided to retire.
The same thing happened earlier this year when Democratic legislative leaders worked with Gov. Schwarzenegger to produce a compromise package of service cuts and tax increases. The Democrats once again found a few Republicans to cross party lines, and once again those Republicans are being purged from the party. The state party has cut off funds for the six apostates, each of whom now faces a recall petition.
The treatment of these lawmakers sends an unmistakable signal to future lawmakers who would consider crossing party lines: the wrong vote will be your last.
One could blame any of California’s political peculiarities — the two-thirds budget rule, initiatives that have placed much of the budget off limits, term limits, etc. — for the budget stalemates, but the fact is that they wouldn’t occur if the parties were less disciplined. Note what has happened in the parties over the past sixty years. The figure below charts the mean DW-NOMINATE score, which is a measure of roll call liberalism/conservatism, for Democrats and Republicans in the state Assembly:
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The parties have moved farther apart, with the Republicans becoming more conservative and the Democrats steadily more liberal. Compromise, which is usually necessary when passing a budget by a two-thirds margin, becomes almost impossible in this environment.
Why are the parties moving apart? (Self-promotion coming.) This is something I explore in my new book. Part of it can be explained by national ideological trends. But part of it is a function of who is running the parties.
California’s political parties are run at the most local level by informal networks of activists, donors, and a few key officeholders. These people work together to pick candidates they like and provide those candidates with endorsements, money, and expertise that can put them over the top in the next primary election, and they deny other candidates these same resources. Because these actors are relatively ideologically extreme, so are the candidates they select. If a politician they put in office strays too far from the principles they hold dear, they can deprive that politician of her job by withholding funding, by running a more principled challenger in the next primary, or, in the most extreme cases, by organizing a recall.
This informal style of organizing parties is not unique to California but fits particularly well there because of state rules limiting the formal parties’ participation in politics. As the informal parties have grown more organized, largely since the 1960s, the legislative parties have moved further apart. While there are still plenty of moderate legislative districts in the state, there are almost no state legislators who could accurately be described as moderate; the penalty for moderation is too high.
Should Californians reject Proposition 1A on May 19th, we’ll no doubt see another round of budget negotiations in the legislature. These will be made difficult by the party operatives on the right (who will punish any Republican who votes for a tax increase) and the party operatives on the left (who will punish any Democrat who votes to eviscerate key social programs). Partisanship makes legislative progress much more challenging, particularly during times of divided government. This is the reason the state keeps coming up with short term methods of financing its deficits and kicking them down the field for a few more years rather than actually addressing its budget shortfalls — given the political climate, it has no other choice.
This is certainly not to suggest that parties are the cause of California’s problems. The state more or less tried bipartisanship in the early 20th century. The result? Corruption. But while strong parties can keep a tab on corruption, they carry their own burdens. They aren’t necessarily the problem, but they can make other problems worse.
30 comments
May 8, 2009 at 11:04 am
Vance
The fact that the mean scores of the parties are moving further apart doesn’t show, all by itself, that the parties are becoming more disciplined internally. In principle, the nearer means of the forties could have been achieved even with solidly partisan roll calls. But of course the divergence is suggestive, and, as you work out below, it may well induce more disciplined behavior.
So, how should we vote on the propositions on May 19th?
(Incidentally, typo in the title.)
May 8, 2009 at 11:13 am
Hortense
Vance, it’s a clever neologism – nobody budges on the budget.
May 8, 2009 at 11:38 am
bitchphd
I’m inclined to vote yes on everything on the grounds that I’m willing to believe Schwarzenegger when he says we need to do that in order to enable a functioning budget. But I don’t think they’ll all pass, and I expect things to get even more fucked up. It really is pretty scary.
Seth, given the problem you describe, major changes to the things that make this kind of partisanship so hobbling are unlikely, but what *is* your take on the role of things like Prop 13, 2/3rds voting, and the amendment process on CA budgeting? I really wish I better understood the various obstacles to running the state better than I do.
May 8, 2009 at 11:44 am
Ben Alpers
Incidentally, the DW-NOMINATE graphic isn’t showing up for me in either Firefox (which simply shows nothing) or Safari (which gives me a narrow rectangle with a blue square with a question mark in it).
If I control click on the question mark in Safari, I can get it to open in another window.
Anyone else having this problem?
May 8, 2009 at 11:51 am
Mo MacArbie
I’ll vote yes on 1A even though I hate it. Because I’m a budgist. And it probably won’t pass, so I can do so with a clear conscience.
Yes on 1D and 1E as well. They will “temporarily” shift budget priorities from the ballot box to the legeslature where it belongs, with a handy rich people surtax grandfathered in. I’m not as sanguine about the tobacco tax since they’ll be coming after alcohol when the smokers are all broke.
May 8, 2009 at 11:53 am
Vance
It’s a PNG, and I’ve seen some problems with those in older versions of Firefox — with this graphic, on an antique Linux box in my office, it’s invisible.
May 8, 2009 at 12:16 pm
bitchphd
shift budget priorities from the ballot box to the legeslature
God, when I start thinking things like this I feel like I might as well believe in unicorns. I love this state, but god sometimes I hate the people in it.
May 8, 2009 at 12:17 pm
andrew
The state more or less tried bipartisanship in the early 20th century. The result? Corruption.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to get at with this. Certainly there was corruption before the early 20th century in California. (Not to mention that there’s often been a bipartisan aspect to certain kinds of corruption.) Are you just trying to say that bipartisanship didn’t work out all that well before?
May 8, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Seth
What *is* your take on the role of things like Prop 13, 2/3rds voting, and the amendment process on CA budgeting?
Is that a normative question? You historians are fun! To me, the big problem is the two-thirds rule. You can actually have something like responsible party government without that. That is, state services cost money. The Democratic majority could raise taxes to pay for those services. If they raise taxes too much, they’ll lose majority status, and the Republicans would slash the services. The threat of that would theoretically constrain the Democrats. None of this can happen when it takes two-thirds of the chamber (which the majority party almost never has) to pass a budget.
Certainly there was corruption before the early 20th century in California. (Not to mention that there’s often been a bipartisan aspect to certain kinds of corruption.) Are you just trying to say that bipartisanship didn’t work out all that well before?
The California legislature had something close to nonpartisanship during the cross-filing era (1914-1959). Legislators did tend to be much more moderate during this period, and it was easier to pass budgets. But it was also easier for lobbyists to buy legislative votes across party lines. Industry representatives regularly handed out bags of cash to legislators, and one famous lobbyist (Artie Samish) used this power to hand-pick Assembly Speakers. One Speaker ended up going to prison on corruption charges.
May 8, 2009 at 3:06 pm
andrew
I didn’t realize things were that bad during the post-1914 era. However – and I know levels of corruption are notoriously hard to compare across times – my question is more whether corruption was worse in that period, rather than just of a different nature, than it was pre-1914. That is, whether bipartisanship led to corruption or just changed the form of corruption. It sounds like there might be a good case that it did get worse.
May 8, 2009 at 3:42 pm
saintneko
The fact that the debate is limited to two-parties is what causes schisms like this – there’s no party in power that I feel represents myself. And I’m not willing to work for the parties in power, because they don’t represent me.
I’m all for both temporarily raising taxes and cutting wasteful, government funded projects.
When the debate is limited to ‘bipartisanship’ instead of polypartisanship, we will ALWAYS be limited to extremes. If your artistic palette is limited to black and white, you have a hard time painting in color.
May 8, 2009 at 4:12 pm
grackle
“While there are still plenty of moderate legislative districts in the state, there are almost no state legislators who could accurately be described as moderate; the penalty for moderation is too high.”
Could you explain this statement? I can’t figure out any way to designate a district as moderate if its representation is not. Also, could you say something about how you view extremism? In what sense are all of the members of the assembly and senate extreme? Is that just saying that enforced party loyalty is controlled by a few actually extreme members or is it something broader?
Does term limits affect all of this in any way? My unstudied observation is that it seems as if two results of term limits are that (1) the legislative branch is overall less sophisticated and also has less comprehension of governance, even while it has had a mildly salutary effect of reducing the corrosive cronyism that used to endemic – e.g. Willie Brown, Don Perata -, and (2) those limits have served to weaken most reasons for cooperation between the parties. I’m sure it is more complicated than this, but do you see term limits as any part of this problem?
May 8, 2009 at 4:20 pm
bitchphd
Is that a normative question? You historians are fun!
Sorry, I am not a historian (and I don’t actually know what you mean by “normative”). I like your answer, though, and would add that without the two-thirds rule, the legislature could actually pass reasonable budgets, which would mean that the “corrupt incompetent government” meme, at least, would have a lot less traction. (Although I still think things like prop 13 and the whole initiative process here and the weird schizophrenia of the coastal cities vs. everywhere else would still make the state damn hard to govern.)
May 8, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Seth
I didn’t realize things were that bad during the post-1914 era. However – and I know levels of corruption are notoriously hard to compare across times – my question is more whether corruption was worse in that period, rather than just of a different nature, than it was pre-1914. That is, whether bipartisanship led to corruption or just changed the form of corruption. It sounds like there might be a good case that it did get worse.
Prior to the Progressive Era, California was basically a one-party state, and that one party was completely under the control of the Southern Pacific Railroad. It’s hard to say that they were breaking laws since there were so few laws to break. The 1930s-50s were more of a weakly partisan era in which industries bought their own bipartisan legislative coalitions with cash. They’re both forms of corruption, but it’s hard to say which one was worse.
May 8, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Seth
Grackle, there are a few ways to figure out the ideological predispositions of legislative districts. None are perfect, but one I like to use is the presidential vote. There are legislative districts that split just about 50-50 between Bush and Gore in 2000. But if they elected a Democrat to the state Assembly, that member votes just about as liberally as someone from a district that voted 80-20 for Gore. In some research I’ve done with Hans Noel (using a better measure of district ideology), we found that virtually all members are more ideologically extreme that their districts’ median voters.
The effect of term limits is tricky to discern. The logic you suggest for increased partisanship is sound, but the parties have been polarizing pretty consistently since before term limits. Betsy Sinclair has found some results consistent with what you’re suggesting.
May 8, 2009 at 5:34 pm
andrew
The Senate district represented by Tony Strickland (formerly represented by Tom McClintock) is an interesting case. The vote last fall was extremely close, but Strickland – who managed to get himself on the ballot as an “alternative energy” business man, which suggests he was trying to get some of the environmental vote usually associated with liberals – was in the press during the budget votes denouncing tax increases just as much as those in safe districts. His district has been trending more Democratic, so he could be facing problems for re-election in the general; apparently, he’d rather face that than fail in the primary.
The 1930s-50s were more of a weakly partisan era in which industries bought their own bipartisan legislative coalitions with cash. They’re both forms of corruption, but it’s hard to say which one was worse.
This makes me think of Lincoln Steffens’ conclusion that early 20th century reform might have been breaking up old forms of corruption, but it was not stopping – and in some ways was aiding – a trend of government becoming more and more representative of business interests.
May 8, 2009 at 5:39 pm
bitchphd
Urgh. I’m in Strickland’s district, and the “alternative energy” mailings we got from him were revolting. Lying bastard. (Hannah-Beth Jackson’s mailings started later and engaged S. directly; I’m convinced the only reason he won was b/c he started earlier and established an image in people’s minds, and by the time Jackson fought back, folks were either throwing away the tons of election mail or else dismissed it as dirty politics.)
But the thing is, who cares what he says in the press? I haven’t seen anything. If I hadn’t looked into him before the election, I’d have no reason to think that he was anything other than a green guy, and no reason to change my opinion, and I’m sure most voters in the district are pretty much the same.
May 8, 2009 at 5:56 pm
andrew
I wonder if his mailings were the same throughout the district. The Simi Valley and northern LA areas are very conservative; I’m sure there are people there who are more interested in hearing that he will not sign on to tax increases. But I only saw his name in the Sacramento Bee*; I don’t know what he says in the local papers.
*Whose coverage of the budget negotiations seemed to always use “controversial tax hike” as the primary description of the budget proposal, with service cuts and layoffs and furloughs being incidental features.
May 8, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Sam-I-am
I was wondering just the other day how I happened upon Seth’s blog, and why he doesn’t write for a group blog. His is the first I click on when I see updates in my reader. High rate of interesting and original.
May 8, 2009 at 6:53 pm
TF Smith
Dear Dr. Masket –
Can you give me some examples of sitting Democratic California legislators (Assembly, State Senate, Congress, or US Senate) who fit this description:
“Because these actors are relatively ideologically extreme, so are the candidates they select.”
Really? Who among the current crop of Democratic electeds in California are so “ideologically extreme” that they do not appropriately represent the electorate? As a follow up, which social programs need to be “eviscerated,” since that apparently is the litmus test…
Let’s hear some names, sir.
May 8, 2009 at 7:01 pm
TF Smith
Oh, as far as that graph goes – what counts as a “liberal” vote in 1943, vis a vis a “conservative” vote in 1999?
No on internment camps for Nisei vs. Yes on the Three Strikes law for felons?
And if the graph peters out in 1999, how does that relate to the legislative delegations of 2009? In 1999, the state had elected two Republican governors in a row; both men would probably be Democrats if they ran for office today. Does that mean California Democrats are “ideologically extreme” or that the state GOP is?
May 8, 2009 at 8:11 pm
grackle
Thanks, your answer makes sense. The Sinclair link seems to be to an abstract only, but it looks interesting. Indiana doesn’t want me to see the whole paper. Some things are just too precious to share I guess.
May 9, 2009 at 10:58 am
joel hanes
Prior to the Progressive Era, California was basically a one-party state, and that one party was completely under the control of the Southern Pacific Railroad.
And in this period (because the railroad corporations wished to secure the advantages of being persons before the law) the courts adopted the assumption that corporations were persons without really so deciding, and that assumption spread, again without any actual legal decision, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Corporate personhood : just another of California’s gifts to the nation, along with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Howard Jarvis, Paul Gann, Dana Rohrabacher, Duke Cunningham, John Doolittle, Richard Pombo …
May 9, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Seth
TF, just to get back to your question about names, I could give you a few. When Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) was an assemblywoman in 2003, she had one of the most liberal voting records in the chamber, even though her district only voted for Gore in 2000 55-45. She had basically the same voting record as Mark Leno, whose San Francisco district voted for Gore 84-16. Patty Berg had a similar voting record up on the northern coast, even though her district only went 56-44 for Gore. There are others. Lots of pretty graphs in the book!
This pattern occurs elsewhere, too. Minnesota and Wisconsin are overall relatively moderate states. They tend to elect the most liberal Democratic senators, though.
May 9, 2009 at 8:25 pm
grackle
I don’t see that this answers TF S’s question, or maybe its my question. I find myself sending up red flags when I read the phrase “ideologically extreme,” because it seems like a loaded term- with a negative judgment attached, rather than, say, just indicating that they are more liberal than the general populace is. Is this a matter of my not understanding the state of art of jargon in political science? Often, it seems to me, that the voters of California are extreme, wacky even, following some rich person’s pet obsession until it becomes law, the recent sentimental laws forbidding the sale of horse meat or pate, for example.
May 9, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Seth
I can’t really speak for all of political science here, but I’m not using the term “ideologically extreme” as a pejorative. Assuming there is an ideological center (not an uncontroversial assumption), elected officials tend to be somewhat distant from it. Republican officeholders tend to be more conservative than their districts; Democratic officeholders tend to be more liberal than theirs. Thus officeholders in general are more extreme. If there’s a better word, I’m all ears.
May 9, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Vance
Right — there’s an empirical ideological distribution, and we need a name for its fringes. Sure, at the same time, let’s acknowledge that these fringes don’t come close to the historical extremes of ideology (Mark Leno is no Gracchus Babeuf), but that’s neither here nor there.
May 10, 2009 at 7:55 am
donna
It’s time to just say no to the party of just say no, so I’ve voted against all the props.
Republicans have to quit obstructing government and learn to participate in it, or get out of it.
May 10, 2009 at 10:37 am
TF Smith
Jackson seems an odd choice as an “ideological extremist” – if I recall correctly, she is a former prosecutor married to a superior court judge, who was elected to the Assembly three times before taking on a Republican (the afore-mentioned Tony Strickland) in a gerry-mandered state senate district once she (and he) had both hit term limits – and Strickland’s claims to fame are being a legislative aide to another conservative Republican (who had held the same state senate seat for years), having a wife who got elected to his Assembly seat, and playing basketball at Whittier College.
As it was, voter registration in the 19th split 41 to 38 percent, GOP vs. Democratic, and Jackson came within less than 1,000 votes of taking the seat, I believe…so unless the Democrats could have resurrected Bob Lagomarsino as a Dem, I’m not sure who else had a better shot at the district…
Interestingly enough, Jackson’s sucessor in the Assembly is a former deputy district attorney – the 35th District, despite the Santa Barbara tag, is hardly Berkeley.
May 10, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Seth
There are some methodologists developing ways to compare legislators across different chambers and time periods. So, for example, you can put a state legislature and the U.S. House in the same ideological space if you have some members who have served in both chambers or if you have some common pieces of legislation.
It’s probably a stretch to try to compare elected officials today with anyone like Gracchus Babeuf, although I remain hopeful. It would also be helpful to compare the voting record of former Rep. Richard Cheney (R-WY) with that of Sen. Palpatine (Naboo), but the data are a bit skimpy.