State Sen. John Alario gained unanimous reelection
for Senate president from his colleagues earlier this week. Just as Prisoner #03128-095,
known back then as Gov. Edwin
Edwards, held the state’s top office for 16 years, Alario now threatens to
do the same in serving as top officer of the House of Representatives,
accomplished in non-consecutive terms during the last two terms of Prisoner #03128-095’s
reign, and now if completing his term would log two consecutively additionally
in the equivalent position in the Senate.
Interestingly, for this final
voyage on the hayride he will take the trip, for the first time, as a member of
a different political party than the governor. Alario switched from Democrat to
Republican prior to his reelection as senator in 2011, after which he would
take the Senate’s helm. In some ways it did not seem all that unusual as by
then his voting record more often reflected conservativism and reformism. His Louisiana Legislature Log voting record for
his last term in the House averaged 35; he registered an average of 61 his
first term in the Senate and then posted a 63 during his chamber presidency
(100 denotes all conservative/reform votes cast, with 0 meaning none).
Put another way, he scored 11
points below the chamber average but 4 points above his party’s average in it three
terms ago; he scored 9 points above the chamber average and 2 points above his
party’s average in it two terms ago; and last term he scored 9 points above the
chamber’s average and at his party’s average in it.
If legislative scholars advise
anything, they warn of the complexity that determines representatives’ voting
behavior. Constituency characteristics, acquiring power for the interests that
comprise the group with which you identify (commonly congruent with
partisanship), and ideological attitudes all mix to produce voting outcomes. Analyzing
Alario’s last dozen years produces a telling combination.
He chaired the House Appropriations
Committee in that last (his ninth) term in that body, the second-most powerful
position in the chamber, with Democrat former Gov. Kathleen
Blanco in the Governor’s Mansion and her ally former state Rep. Joe Salter
as Speaker, in a district with then
58 percent Democrat and white voter registration. He then jumped to the Senate
coinciding with Republican former Gov. Bobby
Jindal’s election, winning as Democrat a district with then
50 percent Democrat and 64 percent white. During that time he held no
leadership position but his 2010 switch to the GOP indicated some ambition to
change that status. For his and Jindal’s second term, when he took command of
the chamber, the district continued
about half Democrat but the proportion of whites slipped to 60 percent.
Both the proportion
of whites and Democrats have slid slightly since then.
Accordingly, this history on the
surface appears to make him the Geico
gecko of the Louisiana Legislature: a political chameleon who balances
expertly the wishes of his constituency with a desire to wield power, with his
own personal beliefs stuffed somewhere in there. The question in this new environment,
one he never has encountered as a leader, is which group’s interests does he
serve, the governor from the other party but whom he voted similarly to a dozen
years ago, or a chamber led by his party that put him in power and can remove
him?
With the House planting a solid
conservative/reformer into its top job, against the wishes of Edwards, the
governor naturally will try to wheedle Alario into his corner. If he wants any
of his populist agenda to have any chance to succeed, he must have Alario mimic
his policy preferences more often than not. If he has both chambers working
against him, at best he would provide a small moderating influence on a
right-of-center agenda that means he will have little of his agenda implemented,
although able to block much further movement to the right.
Perhaps not surprisingly, over the
past year Alario has delivered mixed signals. Last year, he championed
Jindal’s SAVE
proposal despite its disdain by many of his colleagues, which essentially
created a bookkeeping mechanism that appeared to offset other tax increases
while locking in dedicated funding to higher education, on the basis that the
Senate preferred it as a device to pass a budget then believed balanced. Yet he
opposed
a Jindal-backed measure that would have protected
individuals and businesses from government retaliation on the basis of views
about marriage in that he alleged this put the state in a “bad light.”
Yesterday, he did appoint six
Democrats to committee chairmanships and gave the party control of four
committees, which together slightly overweighs their numerical importance in
the chamber. State Sen. Eric LaFleur
heads up the budget-writing Finance Committee but
has a GOP majority to contend with, while state Sen. JP Morrell does have a Democrat
majority on the tax-considering Revenue and Fiscal Affairs
Committee. It’s not unusual historically for minority party members to lead
committees and/or constitute majorities on them, and as the governor comes from
the minority, in some ways a pragmatic admission of the legislating parameters
of the next four years. Undoubtedly, the fact that some immediate past chairmen
found themselves out of jobs came from Edwards’ intervention.
But perhaps the most salient
information regarding how much the Senate will bend to Edwards’ will derives
from the certainty of Alario’s term limitation at the end of 2019. After 48
years, surely he will retire, so he has no more constituents or policy-makers
to have to please. So what behavior we see from him over these next four years
might end up as the most accurate reading of his own views, which seems, given
the evidence at hand, as a regression to the mean. After his shellacking by
House Republicans that saw them install one of their own as speaker over his
own Democrat preference, Edwards can interpret this as a bit of good news.
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