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Leading Off:
• Ideology: If you've spent any time tinkering with DW-Nominate scores—the remarkably thorough but user-unfriendly system that's pretty much the gold standard for scoring elected officials' voting records—you may be aware that in addition to the "first dimension," which describes representatives on a traditional liberal-to-conservative continuum, there's also a mysterious "second dimension." This second dimension rarely gets discussed, mostly because it's been decades since it seemed to highlight any meaningful ideological divisions. The last time it did so, in the 1960s, it picked up on intra-party differences on civil rights; long before then, it also identified cleavages on slavery and more obscure issues like bimetallism.
However, in recent years, the VoteView blog has discussed how this dimension has made a bit of a comeback, showcasing a growing elite-establishment/populist-outsider split within each party. This gulf has shown up most notably in votes that involved debates over privacy versus security, such as the FISA amendments. It also occasionally appears in other scope-of-government arguments; for example, one of the first times we saw this dynamic was the first 2008 vote on on the TARP bailout, where both parties were closely divided and votes on both sides were distributed throughout the ideological spectrum.
Wednesday's vote on the Amash amendment to restrict the NSA's data collection activities was another key example, and maybe the starkest we've seen yet. Indeed, VoteView sees exactly the same insider/outsider phenomenon that we identified. Their graph of the vote is below, with "ayes" in red, and notice how much they cluster below the cutline—which in this case is almost horizontal. (It's typically vertical, indicating a left-right divide, as with this vote on delaying implementation of the individual mandate.) In other words, most of the red votes came from representatives in both parties who already have developed a more anti-establishment track record (as measured by a lower second-dimension score):
(David Jarman)
Gubernatorial:
• KS-Gov: Sam Brownback has not exactly been the most popular of governors. In fact, he wasn't even very popular before he was elected governor, but he had the good fortune to be a Republican running a dark red state in 2010, so he cruised to a big victory. Brownback would probably have to screw up a lot more to put this seat in play next year, but local Democrats are talking up three possible contenders who all have some measure of prominence: state House Minority Leader Paul Davis, businesswoman and former Board of Regents member Jill Docking, of Wichita, and former state Agriculture Secretary Joshua Svaty. Svaty and Davis haven't commented publicly, while Docking, who lost an open seat Senate race to Brownback 54-43 in 1996, hasn't ruled out the possibility.
• ME-Gov: The National Education Association is out with the most optimistic poll of the nascent Maine gubernatorial race to date, courtesy of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. Democratic Rep. Mike Michaud, who is still in the exploratory phase, leads GOP Gov. Paul LePage 40-31, with independent attorney Eliot Cutler at 26. To give you a sense of just how unpopular LePage is, and how much Cutler undercuts Democrats, Michaud crushes the incumbent by a mind-boggling 61-34 (!) in a two-way head-to-head
In three-way matchups, other polls have tended to show Michaud neck-and-neck with LePage, so these numbers may be on the rosy side. And his GQR survey also has very few undecideds, meaning leaners were probably pushed quite hard. LePage, however, has been making local headlines for only bad reasons these past many months, so it's very possible his already lousy standing with voters has only grown lousier.
House:
• MN-03: Former TV news anchor Don Shelby has responded to reports that he's considering a run for Congress, and, well, I wouldn't let your hopes get too high. Now, Shelby isn't ruling it out, but I'm going to quote him in full, since his remarks are definitely a bit quirky:
"I'm flattered I would be approached, but truth is, I'm not much of a partisan and my politics, for what they are, are a little goofy. I would be a terrible congressman. I would rat out every special interest hack and poser. Still a reporter. Therefore, I would be relegated to some form of quarantine."
Nevertheless, Shelby acknowledged that Paulsen's swing district could be in play. "Third can be won by a Democrat. It voted for Kerry, and Obama twice. But, that would make me a Democrat, if I ran. They are pushing hard, the Washington crowd. They think this is winnable, and I'm a guy who might do it. But, that would mean that I had written my last news story. I may just keep trying to bring ideologies together on science as a journalist."
It sounds like Shelby could be engaging in some Brian Schweitzer-esque positioning, to reinforce just how much of an establishment critic he is. Then again, that kind of banter didn't actually wind up portending a Schweitzer bid for federal office.
Other Races:
• SD Mayor: San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, under ceaseless pressure to resign—including from DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz—over allegations that he sexually harassed a number of different women, is not quitting. Instead, he says he'll enter a behavioral therapy clinic full-time for two weeks, starting next month.
Grab Bag:
• Campaign Finance: This sure sounds like one hell of a research tool. The Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections, or DIME, from Prof. Adam Bonica at Stanford. Here's how he describes it:
Constructing the database required a large-scale effort to compile, clean, and process data on contribution records, candidate characteristics, and election outcomes from various sources. The resulting database contains over 100 million political contributions made by individuals and organizations to local, state, and federal elections spanning a period from 1979 to 2012. A corresponding database of candidates and committees provides additional information on state and federal elections.