Delaware Dem's Latest Posts
![Wednesday Daily Delawhere [4.24.13]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8262/8671845240_6dfd776308_z.jpg "Wednesday Daily Delawhere [4.24.13]")
Pregaming the Senate vote on Marriage Equality
Here were the Senate votes on SB 30, the Civil Union Bill, back in 2010.
The lone Senate Republican voting in favor of Civil Unions, Liane Sorenson, retired. She was essentially replaced by Republican Ernie Lopez as her district moved south in redistricting. Lopez has indicated that he will vote no, and he really has to to placate his rabid and enraged Tea Party base who are still smarting over his votes for Death Penalty Repeal and for Background checks. Bunting retired, and was replaced by Senator Hocker, who has to be a no vote. Katz was defeated by Lavelle. I am not sure how “gettable” Lavelle is. He was considered gettable during the Death Penalty repeal and Background check votes. He voted no on both. So I think it will be wishful thinking to put him as an unknown vote. I am considering him a no. Deluca was replaced by Townsend. Senator Townsend has made past statements supportive of marriage equality, and he is a sponsor of the bill, so I am considering him a yes.
All of the Senate no votes on Civil Unions are still in the Senate. I am going to assume that all those who voted no for Civil Unions will also vote no for gay marriage, and going on the less logical assumption that all yes votes for civil unions is also a yes vote for gay marriage. I will list as unknown those who who I think are up for grabs.
So according to this chart, Marriage Equality has 11 votes, just enough for a majority. The no votes have 9. And one vote, that of Cathy Cloutier, is up for grabs. I would highly encourage everyone supportive of marriage equality in Delaware contact every single “yes” vote on that chart in addition to Cathy Cloutier. If Marriage is to be won in the Senate, it will be at best a 12-9 vote or a 11-10 vote. So every single yes vote needs to be shored up and Cloutier needs to hear it. Click here for their contact info.
In terms of sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill in the Senate, Senators Blevins, Sokola, Henry, McDowell, Peterson, Poore, and Townsend all are sponsoring HB75. Thus, I would assume they are all solid yes votes. That leaves Bushweller, Hall Long, McBride, and Marshall as possibly shaky Dem yes votes. So they need to hear from us.
The Marriage Equality Vote in the House
Here it is in a nice chart form. Red for Republicans and Blue for Democrats. And yes, I colored Atkins red because in reality, he is a Republican. Has there been any partisan vote on a controversial issue this session where he has voted with the Democrats? No.
Four Democrats, Earl Jaques, Charles Potter, Bill Carson and Trey Paradee all voted no with the Republicans. Only one Republican voted yes: Mike Ramone. He represents an upstate New Castle County district. Paradee and Carson’s districts are downstate and more conservative, but not so conservative that they had to run scared and vote no just to stay in office since their Democratic colleagues in other Kent County districts voted yes. Likewise, Joe Miro and Debbie Hudson’s districts are upstate and in New Castle County, and they voted no even though they may suffer electoral consequences given their districts. As did Democrats Earl Jaques and Charles Potter, both of whom are in safe liberal Democratic districts, and if I have anything to say about it, both will suffer electoral consequences due to this vote. The point of all this: this was not a vote that was given to district constituencies. This was a vote of personal principle. Those voting no are of the mind that equality is for me and not for thee. That makes them ill suited for office.
Delaware Marriage Equality Debate Thread
The #DEHouse is in session now! They’ll break for caucus before the debate/vote on the marriage bill. Like we did with House Bill 35, I will try to post updates from the debate on the Gay Marriage Bill (SB 75) here.
Tuesday Open Thread [4.23.13]
Of course we all know that our Democratic congressional delegation has for a long time assumed that Delaware was a more conservative state, or at least its residents possessed a more conservative politics, and hence there was a need always for a Democratic candidate to always always moderate their message and move to the right (and this applies more so to Carper and Carney, and less so to Coons). And now we have statistical proof of this phenomena. David Broockman and Christopher Skovron looked at legislators’s perceptions of their constituents and compare to estimates of the the actual issue attitudes of people living in their districts.
There is a striking conservative bias in politicians’ perceptions, particularly among conservatives: conservative politicians systematically believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are by over 20 percentage points, while liberal politicians also typically overestimate their constituents’ conservatism by several percentage points. A follow-up survey demonstrates that politicians appear to learn nothing from democratic campaigns or elections that leads them to correct these shortcomings. […]
These findings suggest a substantial conservative bias in American political representation and bleak prospects for constituency control of politicians when voters’ collective preferences are less than unambiguous.
![Tuesday Daily Delawhere [4.23.13]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8264/8670743215_9f342b6762_z.jpg "Tuesday Daily Delawhere [4.23.13]")
Monday Open Thread [4.22.13]
![Monday Open Thread [4.22.13]](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/04/20/us/politics/fivethirtyeight-0420-miranda/fivethirtyeight-0420-miranda-blog480-v2.png "Monday Open Thread [4.22.13]")
Those results are actually somewhat heartening since they either involved terrorists who were not American citizens or whose citizenship was left unclear. I can see the argument that noncitizen terrorists do not have constitutional rights and are enemy combatants. But citizens? Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev is an American citizen. Yes, he is a terrorist too, but he is an American too. Just as Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer, but also an American citizen. Just as Eric Rudolph was a right wing bomber, but he was also an American citizen. So since he is an American citizen, he has constitutional rights. That means Tsarnaev has his 5th Amendment rights and 6th Amendment rights, which are, respectively….
![Monday Daily Delawhere [4.22.13]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8386/8670743207_8f370262dd_z.jpg "Monday Daily Delawhere [4.22.13]")
![Sunday Daily Delawhere [4.21.13]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8380/8650381716_dcb69d6fd7_z.jpg "Sunday Daily Delawhere [4.21.13]")
The Weekly Addresses
We have a special guest for the Governor’s Weekly Message this week… The Governor!
We also have a video of the Governor thanking legislators for their work on the Background Check bill. We also have the President’s weekly address below and the West Wing Week inside.
![Saturday Daily Delawhere [4.20.13]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8526/8649279823_c6ebedb817_z.jpg "Saturday Daily Delawhere [4.20.13]")
![Friday Daily Delawhere [4.19.13]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8390/8649279819_dd0a354cee_z.jpg "Friday Daily Delawhere [4.19.13]")
Delaware’s Unafraid
While all of the 13 Senators who voted for the Background Check Bill (HB 35) are unafraid in my book and deserve credit for their vote today, I want to give special recognition to three who took politically risky votes for different reasons. Without these three votes, the bill would have failed 11-10. Come inside to read why I think these three votes are relatively brave.
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