Have Louisiana’s legislators become significantly more conservative over the past decade, as one source muses. Or is it just strategy on the part of many of them that just make it seem so?
At the end of July, the Louisiana
Family Forum issued its 2014
Legislative Scorecard, prompting one observer to report the comparison made
by the organization’s head that in 2004, of the 144 legislators, only 26 voted
overall “pro-family and pro-life” (defined as voting at least 80 percent of the
time with the organization’s preferences), while according to the 2014 version the
number was 83. This prompted the assertion that there has been “further
reddening of Louisiana.”
Reviewing the scorecards
separated by a decade, and assuming the issues selected as represented by the
votes constitute a representative sample of those, then it appears that on this
universe of issues Louisiana legislators are voting considerably more
conservatively, as the LFF uniformly picks what observers would consider
conservative issue preferences to be scored high (thus higher scores mean more
conservatism in votes). But those votes chosen by and large represent only issues
of religious faith and personal conduct (which would be consistent with the
organization’s objectives in championing traditional views on those). For
example, in 2014, with its chosen slate of issues dealing with the right to
bear arms, protection of human life, government regulation of conduct, and facilitating
education delivery by faith-based organizations, the only vote on the scorecard
that had any economic component to it was on Medicaid expansion. The ones in 2004 also
showed just one tax issue among other dealing with the definition of marriage,
cloning, and others.
So when making statements about
what the scorecard shows, it really measures more than anything else ideology concerning
issues of faith and conduct, but not ideology comprehensively. Its selectivity
mirrors that of the scorecard put out by another state interest group, the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.
It has kept scorecards since 1999, and a comparison of 2004
to its most current 2013
offering reveals information about ideology as it relates to economic and
business issues (although a review of them shows it’s not always quite a pure
indicator of economic conservatism, as pro-crony capitalist positions that the
group on occasion has favored run counter to principled conservative beliefs
that government should not pick winners and losers in the marketplace, but no
such recommendations appeared for the two years studied). Last year, 56
legislators scored 75 or better, while nine years ago that number was 68.
Thus, the LABI numbers run
counter to the trend of those from LFF, if somewhat less powerfully – but they
do measure different aspects of policy. But perhaps the most comprehensive
scorecard is that of my Louisiana
Legislature Log, which attempts to score on a combined conservative/reform
to liberal/populist continuum (the two dimensions largely, but not entirely,
measure the same thing) using issue preferences from all policy areas (the
three scales also differ in other ways, such as in bill similarity between
chambers, amount of weighing in scoring, and fewer to more votes used, but as
comparisons being made here are within scales temporally, this should not pose
a methodological problem). On this scale the average score in 2004 (which had
the same weights for economic issues as noneconomic issues) was about 48, but
by 2014 (which was overweighed slightly towards noneconomic issues) it was 59.
(For all three scales, 100 is considered being most conservative, 0 being most
liberal.)
To some degree, this confirms
what the other two scales show in this kind of simplistic analysis (using all
the data points to smooth trends would be better, but probably would not
materially change the conclusions of the analysis solely of the end points). There
has been a marked shift towards social conservatism, but a drift towards
economic liberalism, that when combined showed a moderate conservative trend.
Yet it seems curious that, in a sense, the two area scales are moving in
opposing directions.
This may be explained by the
strategy of legislators taking more conservative noneconomic issue votes to
establish leeway allowing them greater numbers of liberal economic votes – a supposition
consistent with both the long term factor of the state’s political culture and the
short term factor of its recent partisan shifts. Specifically, Louisiana’s
history of populism continues to encourage economic liberalism, if diluted, while
its rapid move to a solid Republican legislative majority comes as much from
tactical image considerations as ideological aligning, and minority party
reactions are affected by this as well.
Undoubtedly, Louisiana
policy-makers have demonstrated conservatism on social issues consistently
throughout history, which often has overshadowed the economic liberalism inherent
to the populism that burst onto the scene in the post-Reconstruction period
(but which did not find its way into public policy until after World War I). The
maturation of the state’s economy and the demographic changes that wrought,
along with advances in education and communications, in the latter half of the
20th century began a steady erosion of populism as an influential
source of policy. However, the social conservatism has remained largely intact,
buttressed by continuing strong faith networks and institutions, the lower
degree of urbanization (and with most urban areas in the state predominantly
Catholic in religious affiliation), and recent low
levels of non-native residency.
This environment allows
politicians who harbor the populist sentiments that increasingly are falling
out of favor with the larger electorate some exculpatory room to maneuver by
assertion of pristine social conservatism credentials. Even as their electorates
become increasing unaligned with them on economic issues, their emphasizing
similar social views, where there is a greater public consensus than over
economic issues, can create a perception of much larger overall issue
congruence than in reality.
In part, this dynamic drove the
number of legislator switches from Democrat to Republican that occurred in the
early part of this decade. Several who did hardly changed economic views more in
common with populism than with limited-government conservatism, but no change
was needed in the views on social issues. And the tactical use was not limited
to Republicans, new or old. Democrats also have learned to emphasize social
issues in attempts by some to retain power and by others with safe seats to
raise their profiles potentially to make themselves more attractive to a larger
segment of the electorate, such as state Rep. Katrina Jackson
becoming a leading anti-abortion policy-maker this past year as the primary
force behind the state’s
insistence on safety for clients utilizing abortion clinics (if obviously
their activities remain as fatal as ever for the unborn), which may have the
impact of retracting the industry.
So, in the final analysis, the
apparent increasing conservatism of Louisiana legislators occurs more as a
function of political posturing. By casting more votes more often for
conservative social policy, for many this creates a particular perception for
voters that allows for them to operate in greater policy space away from
conservatism for votes on other kinds of issues, specifically in the area of
economics. Looking only at the social issue dimension overstates the ongoing gradual
ascendancy of conservatism that still leaves Louisiana, in terms of
partisanship and policy, as one of the less conservative of the southern,
plains, and mountain west states.
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