The Delaware Liberal General Assembly Progressive Rankings
Matt Bittle of the Delaware State News recently did a story on the “Mostly True Blue State of Delaware,” that partly focused on the the legislative ideological rankings of the various party legislators, as judged by the Delaware Chapter of the American Democratic Association (ADA) and the American Conservative Union (ACU). The ADA picked 10 pieces of legislation which they deemed important pieces of progressive legislation. All of them are included in my list of legislation below. The ACU also picked several pieces of the same legislation, though their favored position was opposition.
In reading that Matt Bittle story, I felt inspired to compile our own Delaware Liberal Rankings of all of our lawmakers in Dover. From John Kowalko to Timothy Dukes. From Bryan Townsend to Colin Bonini.
I have primarily used the Delaware ADA’s list of priority progressive legislation from the past two legislative sessions (148th and 147th, covering the years 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016) in order to judge each lawmaker’s actions regarding such legislation. Here is a list of the priority progressive legislation:
148th:
★ Senate Bill 39: Increase the Minimum Wage
★ Senate Bill 40: Repeal the Death Penalty
★ Senate Bill 59: Allow Driving Privilege Cards for Undocumented Immigrants
★ Senate Bill 83: Expand Definition of Domestic Violence to Include Dating Partnerships and Reduce Abusers’ Access to Guns
★ Senate Bill 111: Implement Same Day Voter Registration
★ Senate Bill 134: Strengthen Homelessness Discrimination Protections
★ House Bill 5: E-Cig Indoor Ban
★ House Bill 39: Decriminalize Marijuana
★ House Bill 42: Subject University of Delaware and Delaware State University to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
★ House Bill 50: Permit Opt Out of Certain Standardized Tests
★ House Bill 56: Wilmington Charter School Moratorium
★ House Bill 105: No Excuse Absentee Voting
★ House Bill 181: Add Tax Brackets for Those Earning $125,000 and $250,00 a Year
147th:
★ Senate Bill 6: Increase the Minimum Wage
★ Senate Bill 19: Repeal the Death Penalty
★ Senate Bill 33: Require Justification to Increase Rent of Manufactured Homes Above Inflation
★ Senate Bill 48: Create an Independent Redistricting Commission Subject to Public Meeting Laws
★ Senate Bill 97: Expand Non-Discrimination and Hate Crimes Laws to Include Gender Identity & Expression
★ House Bill 10: Restore Voting Rights to Delawareans Convicted of a Felony Who Have Completed Their Sentence
★ House Bill 20: Enable the Legislature to enact no-excuse absentee voting
★ House Bill 35: Expand the Background Check requirement to include firearms
not purchased from licensed dealers
★ House Bill 58: Ban large capacity magazines
★ House Bill 75: Extend civil marriage to same-sex couples
★ House Bill 105: Same Day Voter Registration
★ House Bill 167: Ban the Box / Fair Public Employee Criminal Record Screening
Standards
★ House Bill 371: Decriminalize Marijuana
Here is how we determine each lawmaker’s score on the progressive legislation. If they are the primary sponsor of a bill, they get 5 points. If they are an additional sponsor, they get 4 points. If they are a co-sponsor, they get 3 points. If they vote yes on a piece of legislation, they get 2 points. If they are absent or not voting during the vote, they get -1 points. And if they vote no, they get -2 points. The reason sponsorships are heavily rewarded because we want progressive legislators to be leaders in the Assembly and in their caucus, and we want them sponsoring and moving progressive legislation. And so if you do that, we want to reward that.
A couple of notes:
★ Kim Williams’ vote on SB 40 (Repeal Death Penalty) was a no vote, but that was a procedural vote so that the bill could be brought back later this session. Therefore, we are counting that vote as a yes vote for ranking purposes.
★ If a bill bounces back and forth between the House and Senate, only the final votes in each chamber will be counted.
★ A veto override vote will count, however. This applies to HB 50, the Opt Out Bill. The progressive vote was to pass the bill. And the progressive vote in the override vote was to override the veto.
★ If you vote no on a progressive bill just because you don’t think it is progressive enough, or because an amendment you wanted passed did not pass, it does not matter. A no vote on progressive priority legislation is a no vote, and it will be counted even if you are in favor of the policy. Voting against progressive policy because it is not progressive enough is not a progressive action. It is a purist action, and it hurts the cause, and thus it will be counted as any other no vote that hurts the cause. If you oppose this thinking, too bad. Don’t be a purist. Be a progressive that advances progressive policy, even if that advancement is incremental.
★ Some may complain about being docked a point for absences and “not voting.” The point here is to punish legislators who duck tough votes by not voting or being absent during a vote. And yes, having a conflict between a vote and another appointment is not a legitimate reason to skip the vote. There are those who are sincerely absent due to legitimate reasons, such as illness, as with Reps. Peterman and Bennett. But we cannot offer that excuse with no consequences because they everyone will say they are absent due to illness. Hey, life is sometimes unfair, what can I say.
Alright, enough of all that. In both the 147th and 148th sessions of the General Assembly, there were seven progressive bills that received votes from each chamber, meaning that a bare minimum score a progressive could get in each session is 14 (2 points for every yes vote, so 2*7=14). The higher your score, the more progressive you are. The lower, the more conservative.
So, a couple of thoughts:
★ The Progressive stars of the General Assembly are John Kowalko, Paul Baumbach, Margaret Rose Henry, Bryan Townsend and Helene Keeley. David Sokola and Karen Peterson were stars in the 147th, but they have fallen off in 148th. Perhaps when we revisit these rankings at the end of the session in July, they will have rejoined the others.
★ The vast majority of the Democratic Caucus have respective progressive numbers, which I consider to be scores between 15 and 45. As you can see, that is where 31 of the 62 members of the General Assembly are. Exactly half.
★ Another 7 members are in what I call the “Meh Zone,” or between 0 and 14. Here is where you find your moderate Republicans like Cathy Cloutier, Joe Miro and Mike Ramone and conservative Democrats like Ennis and Carson.
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Great analysis, DD. I’m interested in the progressive gap in the Wilmington delegation. It’s pretty big. And it definitely isn’t especially representative of the city, either.
The other thing that i’m thinking about is the list of progressive legislation. I support most of it, but after seeing the list in its entirety I wonder how to sync up there things i’m for with more progressive governance. Like raises for state workers or some better transparency or an end to disadvantaging 3rd parties.
Great point, Cass. I chose the specific legislation for two reasons: 1) it was the priority progressive legislation that both the DE ADA and the PDD championed and endorsed, thus it is consensus progressive legislation and 2) the legislation was not passed unanimously, and instead produced a clear differentiation between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, which is important when you want to do rankings. There were other pieces of legislation that can be considered progressive, like the whistleblower legislation and for pregnant workers, but those passed unanimously.
Adding HB50 to this is very interesting. It was sponsored by Kowalko and Lawson, two of the most polar extremes on certain issues. But some of the no votes were also done by those who are at extremes of each other. Just out of curiosity, would the results change by much if HB50 were, ahem, opted out? The Senate never got a chance to vote on an override, and if history repeated itself with the regular vote, Henry’s vote would have been a no. I would love to see what this would look like if HB334 (Smarter Balanced Assessment), SB51 (DPAS-II) and HB165 (charter reform bill) from the 147th were added in.
HB 50 was a rare case where progressives and far right anti-government conservatives agreed on an issue. It was a progressive priority, so it is right to include it. I will crunch the numbers to see if anything really changes that much.
Uhhhhh… HB50 was not a progressive peice of legislation. It was an anti government, anti-common core, F the Government bill that happened to be supported by progressives who are so far left that they have ended up on the right and dont even realize it. And thats fine. But thats not progressive. Conservative organizations list HB50 as a conservative bill as well. Every Republican presidential candidate is running on the exact same premise of F Common Core and F the Test. Donald Trump would be this bill’s sponsor if he were in the state congress. The National PTA just called the Delaware PTA a bunch of wack jobs for pushing HB50. What alternate world are we living in?
Bane,
It is rare to see so many wrong, inaccurate, misrepresentations from one apparently and obviously uninformed (or perhaps agenda driven) commenter. HB 50 is not an anti-government nor anti-common core bill. Basic reading comprehension skills are all that would be required to see that it reinforces a parental right already existing to make decisions with their children on what is best for their child without suffering repercussions or punitive circumstances. It also grants those parents/children who have opted out of the Smarter Balanced Assessments to have meaningful educational opportunities during those testing times. It also protects districts and schools from the use of non-participation data to unfairly and dishonestly reflect on schools or districts actual assessments of progress. It does not reflect anywhere and in anyway on Common Core or even call for repeal of the Smarter Balanced Assessment. It is “PROGRESSIVE” to secure parental rights when they are in conflict with government and corporate agendas and mandates. It is absolutely “PROGRESSIVE” to allow a legal path for parents to challenge meaningless, unproven and harmful mandates that may not benefit and might certainly harm their children’s educational opportunities. By your flawed logic “home-schooling” as a choice option is “F” the government and anti-government. Should the “government” wrest that option back from the people? Should “private” schools and “religious” schools be forced to require these assessments and if not are they ant-government? It is ridiculous to purport that “Progressiveness” coinciding with “Conservatism” in an area mutually beneficial to the people somehow renders that intersection as “wrong” policy unsupportable by either side. Finally I must presume that your insensitive and hateful descriptive use of “wack jobs” was conceived while you were at the mirror shaving this morning and you inadvertently misapplied it out of context.
Representative John Kowalko
A lot of words there sir. I will attempt a shorter response.
1. Home schooling is essentially saying F the government, I will teach my own kids. So, yes I would say that.
2. Yes, I will be skeptical of anything that Dave Lawson supports. If Dave Lawson told me it was sunny outside, the progressive in me would bring an umbrella. Hard for me to believe that a guy who is so often wrong, would be so right here.
3. No matter how you lawyerize your statement about what HB50 actually did, the message behind it was the exact same as Donald Trumps, F common core, anti Obama rhetoric. This was symbolic. You can act as though the symbolism isnt important, but it matters.
4. No, I was not looking in the mirror when I said, Wackjob. In case you were curious.
John had to sign his real name because “Unstable Isotope” was already taken.
Sorry Nuttingham didn’t catch your real name, but no matter I don’t understand what you were trying to imply. Maybe a remedial writing/sarcasm course would be in order. Don’t be too embarrassed by your own shortcomings any effort to help yourself will bring its own reward.
John Kowalko
Great advice. Just signed up for a class on Norse mythology to learn more about trolls.
Public education is a system not a cafeteria. When you choose public education you choose the system. Your children must be vaccinated, you can’t opt out. Your children get tested. They learn out climate change and they get to play school sports if they want.
You don’t get walk the lunch line and pick a little of this and little of that. Parents should have control of their children’s education and they get to pick a public education with all it’s warts, home schooling without sports, vaccination, climate change and testing, or somewhere in between at a private school.
If your children are special, perhaps they need to be in a special school. There are alternatives. If you want to opt out of testing then you already have that right by be able to opt out of the public education system.
Public education has become a cafeteria – complete with a poor minority line and an affluent white/Asian line, and never the two shall meet. Choice has been the biggest mess.
Pandora,
If choice has become the biggest problem in public education, how can it be progressive to continue the choice movement with standardized testing?
These are contradictory messages. This is not progressive. Never has been. Progressivism should seek to either fix problems in government by addition or subtraction in an effort to strengthen the governments ability to do good. Tea Partiers are the ones who support things that seek to weaken the governement based on a self fulfilling prophecy that government is evil and doesn’t work. Measures that promote Opt Out (directly, indirectly, or symbolically) seek to weaken the government under the auspices of protecting some imaginary individual right. Its what they do with guns, its what they did with criminal justice, etc. Its what they duped Democrats with on OptOpt.
John – You are an extreme Tax & Spend Liberal. I’m hopeful you will do Newark a favor and retire.
Now here’s some good old sounding RACISM.
“Public education has become a cafeteria – complete with a poor minority line and an affluent white/Asian line, and never the two shall meet. Choice has been the biggest mess.”
No
John Kowalko