Senator Orrin Hatch, like his former colleague Bob Bennett two years ago, faces an uphill battle to re-election. The ultra-conservative Tea Party Movement has been warming up again as elections draw closer and Hatch has been targeted as a potential upset. If Hatch is brought down it would mean another junior senator in congress for Utah. This particular situation has brought about questions involving competing principals. Is Orrin Hatch more accountable to the Republican Party or to the voters of Utah? The balance of these principals is going to be a deciding factor in whether or not he receives re-election.In John Carey’s book Legislative Voting and Accountability, he discusses some competing principals that politicians face while in office. In a simple model he talks about two that are very applicable to politicians in the United States, they are voters and party. Politicians are accountable to their party because party leaders have the ability to reward or punish them depending on their willingness to be cohesive to the party platform. They are also accountable to voters, if voters do not feel that they are being represented well by their legislator, they can choose to punish him by not giving him their vote[1].
Senator Hatch has recently found himself struggling to balance these two principals. When it comes to cohesiveness to the Republican Party, he has found himself near the top of the list. In the 112th Congress he is voting with the party 90 percent of the time, while the Republican Senate is averaging 86.2 percent[2]. This high party cohesiveness has been very common for Hatch throughout his career and has given him many benefits within the party. He has served as chairman in both the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, as well as the Committee on the Judiciary, and is currently serving as a ranking member in the Committee on Finance[3]. His cohesiveness to the party, however, has made some voters in Utah feel somewhat neglected.In 2010 Utah voters ousted long time senate member Bob Bennett because they felt that he had lost touch with the people of Utah. Bennett’s voting record has always been very close to Hatch’s, while Bennett’s replacement, Mike Lee, has only been voting with the party 76 percent of the time[4]. With Lee claiming to be claiming to be a true representative of Utah voters it brings some question to where Hatch lies in their minds. Ideologically many feel that he is not as conservative as he should be to represent the state of Utah. This graph[5] shows information taken from senate republican voting records and puts them on a conservative ideological scale of 0 to 1, 1 being more conservative. It also ranks states on a conservative scale. The dotted line in the middle is a representation of where senators should be according to the state they represent. As seen here Senators Bennett and Hatch are far below where they generally should be while representing Utah.
This has made conservatives in Utah nervous and has made it difficult for Hatch to receive a solid base for another nomination. Although he has thrived in the Republican Party due to his high cohesive levels, his choice to neglect some Utah conservative values has left him at odds with many Utah voters.
[1] Carey, J. (2009). Legislative voting and accountability. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment