Dan Slater In Colorado Attorney General Race

Dan Slater is best known in the political world as a blogger writing from the perspective of a state level Democratic Party vice chairman. As of October 1, 2009, when he officially commences his campaign, he will be running for the post of Colorado attorney general. Slater's Wikipedia biography notes, in the part relevant to his legal background, that:

[He] attended the University of Oklahoma, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1994. He earned his law degree from Washington College of Law at American University. . . .

Slater resides in Cañon City, Colorado, where he is an attorney in private practice, specializing in personal injury, employment, and small business law. He was named "Young Lawyer of the Year" in 2004 by the Colorado Trial Lawyer's Association and has served on the Board of Governors of the Colorado Bar Association and the Judicial Performance Commission for Colorado's 11th Judicial District.

Adams County District Attorney Don Quick, and Aurora State Senator Morgan Carroll (also a blogger and a vocal voice for the left in the Colorado General Assembly on a number of issues), were both widely rumors to have considered running for the post, but chose not to run.

He will be running against Republican incumbent John Suthers. Suthers was appointed to replace moderate Democrat Ken Salazar when he was elected to the U.S. Senate (Ken Salazar has subsequently become the Secretary of the Interior in the Obama Administration, and Governor Ritter replaced him with Michael Bennet, who now faces a primary challenge from former Speaker of the State House of Representatives Andrew Romanoff).

Slater is the underdog in this race. If I were putting odds on the Colorado Pol's Big Line, I'd probably start him at 14-1 odds, compared to 4-1 odds for Suthers (whose job security drops a little simply by having someone who will actually commit to being a serious challenger in the race), subject to amendment as the campaigns shape up and fundraising numbers develop.

Suthers has a strong resume, mostly in the area of criminal prosecutions, and all of the advantage that come with incumbency. He will have six years of experience as the Colorado Attorney General job when he completes his current term. He was appointed by George W. Bush to serve as United States District Attorney for the District of Colorado for four years, spent twelve years as a district attorney in the district that includes Colorado Springs (eight in the top elected position, and some of the rest leading the white collar crime division and a chief deputy), spent two years as executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections under Governor Bill Owens, and spent nine years in between his positions as a prosecutor as a litigation partner in a Colorado Springs law firm, part of that time as head of its litigation section.

Suthers is the biggest dog on the Republican bench and the most powerful elected Republican elected official in the state (the two Republican members of Congress are currently politically impotent as junior members of the U.S. House of Representatives minority during a Democratic Presidential administration). Perhaps the biggest question on the Republican side of the political world in Colorado is why he didn't run for Governor or Senator, races he is believed to have considered seriously.

Slater is a younger, but experienced small law firm trial lawyer with political experience (although he has not previously held elected office). He is running at a time when the general trend of the state towards the Democratic party is stalled by the historical trend of voters to reduce their support for the party of the incumbent President, and a Governor and U.S. Senate incumbent who both lack strong support from their political base. The enthusiasm for the top of the ticket drives base voter turnout and grass roots campaign intensity, and in 2010, base voter turnout for the Democratic party may be anemic.

Slater has to run on the strength of his ideas (as someone who "truly fights for ALL of the people of Colorado, and who isn't afraid to go out and root out those who would prey on our most vulnerable citizens") and his personal story as someone from outside the metro Denver echo chamber who has built up his career serving as a defender of the little guy.

The Nature of the Job

The state attorney general's office is traditionally a job that involves serving both as the lead player in bringing consumer protection litigation (civil and criminal), engages in civil litigation on behalf of state government (often enforcing debts owed to the state and regulatory violations), and acts as the corporate counsel for the State of Colorado, with a large role in interpreting state laws and regulations in official opinions that bind state employees and a persuasive when applied to others.

The cases the office is charged with prosecuting criminally and civilly look more like a trial lawyer's portfolio than they do like a typical district attorney's docket and often overlaps in subject matter with cases brought by private lawyers as class actions or on behalf of consumers, employees and small investors. While district attorneys primarily prosecute run of the mill state crimes, and U.S. Attorneys in the federal system do essentially the same thing at the federal level, the job of Colorado Attorney General does not exclusively or even primarily concern criminal prosecutions, although the office does do have twelve lawyers who handle select criminal prosecutions in the criminal division (many in areas like environmental violations, election fraud, securities fraud and insurance fraud).

Like most senior government officials, the Colorado Attorney General is more of senior government executive than someone who actually does the legal work of the state personally. Almost all the trial work is actually done by others with supervision from the top. The job of the Colorado Attorney General is to referee policy disputes within state government and his own office, to hire good people to carry out the actual work, to set priorities, and to keep those he appoints acting in an accountable fashion. Slater's experience in senior positions in the Fremont County and Colorado Democratic parties is probably at least as relevant to this work as his direct legal experience.

How Strong Will Governor Ritter's Support Be?

At this point, Dan Slater is the only person known to be planning on mounting a serious campaign to be the Democratic Party nominee for Colorado Attorney General. Timing of the nomination process and fundraising cycle in Colorado leaves only about three or four months from now in which it is possible to launch a serious campaign for statewide office. Those who enter the race early aren't shoe ins, but the later you start to run for office, the more impressive a candidate you have to be to have a viable chance of winning the nomination and the general election that follows.

Traditionally, the Governor wholehearted endorses and supports fellow members of the state party ticket. But, even an endorsement for Dan Slater that should be automatic is anything but in Colorado this year.

Will this happen this time?

Governor Ritter has made a point of staking out his credentials as a moderate, and Republican John Suthers was endorsed by his blue dog Democratic predecessor, Ken Salazar. Governor Ritter is from Suthers' generation, rather than Slater's, and shares a background with Suthers in criminal prosecutions.

Governor Ritter has to decide between his loyalty to his party, with a strong and early endorsement of Dan Slater, and his seemingly natural inclination to stake out a stance as a moderate, perhaps by refusing to endorse anyone in the race on the grounds that he has to maintain a working relationship with John Suthers until the election is over and possibly for another four years after that.

If Ritter chooses the independent course, however, he puts himself at grave risk of drawing a primary challenge (perhaps Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper could be drafted to run for the Democratic Party gubernatorial nomination), and being defeated in a Democratic primary, turning the general election into an open race.

American Political Parties Undisciplined

Few House members seeking re-election next year will be as vigorously targeted for defeat by the opposing party as freshman Reps. Walt Minnick of Idaho and Anh “Joseph” Cao of Louisiana.

Minnick is a Democrat who represents a rural and strongly conservative district that gave Barack Obama just 36 percent of the vote in the 2008 presidential election. Cao is a Republican from a heavily black district in and around New Orleans that gave just one in four of its votes to GOP presidential nominee John McCain . . . .

On the 255 roll call votes that pitted most House Democrats against most Republicans — which CQ brands as “party unity” votes — Minnick backed the consensus Democratic position just 40 percent of the time. Cao agreed with the position held by most fellow Republicans 63 percent of the time.

The study shows that Democrats overall are highly unified, with a median party unity score of 98 percent. But party unity scores below the Democratic norm are common among junior members, such as Minnick, who face difficult challenges stemming from their districts’ usual partisan orientation.

Of the 20 lowest-scoring Democrats in the party unity study, 16 are serving either their first or second terms, and . . . [16] represent districts that voted for McCain over Obama for president in 2008. . . .

[F]reshman Alabama Rep. Bobby Bright is the next Democrat least likely to vote with his party’s majority, with a party unity score of 52 percent. Bright is a former Montgomery mayor who won an open-seat race in 2008 with just more than 50 percent of the vote in a district that gave McCain 63 percent for president. . . .

Other Democrats with the low party unity scores include Travis W. Childers of Mississippi (61 percent); Harry E. Mitchell of Arizona (63 percent); Heath Shuler of North Carolina (68 percent); Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona (75 percent); and Glenn Nye of Virginia (75 percent). All five Democrats defeated or otherwise succeeded a Republican when they were first elected in either 2006 or 2008. . . .

Betsy Markey of Colorado, who represents a sprawling part of eastern and northern Colorado that has a mild Republican lean, has a 92 percent score — much higher than Minnick or Bright, but still lower than the Democratic median. . . .

New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa , elected last year to represent the state’s conservative-leaning Southern Tier, has a 91 percent score. Tom Reed, the Republican mayor of Corning, on Wednesday announced a 2010 challenge to Massa. . . .

Of the 20 lowest-scoring Republicans, only Cao and fellow freshman New Jersey Rep. Leonard Lance are serving either their first or second terms.

Because of his district’s strongly Democratic-leaning demographics, Cao is the most vulnerable House member in either party. . . .

Several contrarian Republicans are thinking about seeking statewide office: Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois (76 percent), who is weighing a run for senator or governor; Michael N. Castle of Delaware (75 percent), who’s thinking about running for the Senate; and Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania (72 percent), who’s considering a bid for governor. . . .

An independent-minded voting record has enabled Republican Dave Reichert , who represents Seattle suburbs, to narrowly win three elections in a district that is trending Democratic. Reichert’s 66 percent party unity score is the fifth-lowest among House Republicans. He’s expected to face a competitive race again in 2010.

Lance (74 percent), one of the eight Republicans who voted for the climate change bill, is one of three Republican freshmen from districts that Obama won in 2008. The others are Cao, the leading House GOP dissenter, and Erik Paulsen of Minnesota, who has a 91 percent unity score that aligns him much more closely with his party peers.

From CQ Politics (hat tip to Colorado Pols; raw data here).

Colorado

The Colorado delegation pans out as follows:

Only 39 of the 178 House Republicans are as loyal to their party in party unity votes as the median House Democrat (i.e. 98%). The median Republican U.S. Senator is 95% loyal to his party. The median Democratic U.S. Senator is 92% loyal.

Name District Presidential support Party unity
Diana Degette CO1 99 97
Jared Polis CO2 87 98
John Salazar CO3 88 95
Betsy Markey CO4 88 92
Doug Lamborn CO5 15 99
Mike Coffman CO6 38 96
Ed Perlmutter CO7 96 96
Mark Udall CO 97 94
Michael Bennet CO 97 91

John Salazar, despite having an independent reputation as a Blue Dog, is more loyal to the President and to the Democratic party in his voting than I would have expected.

Getting Majorities

Democratic party power in Congress is strong, but not absolute. While Democrats have large majorities in both houses of Congress, many moderates in Congress from both parties, in response to the concerns of their constituencies, often do not vote the party line.

Democrats have 257 out of 435 seats in the House of Representative (218 is a majority and there are no filibusters in the House). Thus, Democrats in the House can lose 39 votes from their own ranks, without gaining any, and still pass legislation. Ranked by party loyalty, the Democrat needed to cast the 218th vote on a measure votes with the party on party unity votes about 90% of the time. Democrats do not have the two-thirds majority in the House necessary to expel members from the House, override a veto, or propose constitutional amendments without bipartisan support.

In the U.S. Senate, Democrats have 60 out of 100 seats including two independents who caucus with the Democrats, one is socialist Bernie Sanders and the other conservative leaning independent Joe Lieberman (51 seats is a majority and 60 voters are needed to break a filibuster). But, both Olympia Snowe (44% loyalty) and Susan Collins (49% loyalty), the Republican Senators from Maine, both vote with the Democrats more often than they do with the Republicans on party unity votes and support the President more often than some members of the Colorado Democratic Party delegation.

Democrats in the Senate need all hands on deck to pass legislation facing a filibuster (and marginal Democrat Arlen Specter votes with the Democrats just 49% of the time), but can lose 9 votes on a bill that is not filibustered. Ranked by party loyalty, the Democrat needed to cast the 51st vote on a measure votes with the party on party unity votes about 86% of the time. Democrats do have the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to pass impeachments, expel members from the Senate, override a veto, propose constitutional amendments, adopt treaties or change Senate rules without bipartisan support.

A Democratic Party President means that few vetoes are expected that need to be overridden.

Republicans, of course, need bipartisan support to do anything.

The Circle of Ideology

It is customary, based upon the seating preferences of deputies the French revolutionary parliament, to call liberals "left wing" and to call conservatives "right wing." Most of the time, this is a quite useful description of real life political behavior.

Despite the protestations of organizations like the operators of the Political Compass website, that strive to distinguish between social liberals and conservatives as one dimension of political ideology, and economic liberals and conservatives as another dimension of political ideology, most real life politicians end up in the liberal-liberal quadrant, or the conservative-conservative quadrant. There are subtle distinctions to be made in the middle in a multi-dimensional way, but they are outliers.

Left and right wing ideologies are, of course, matters of degree. Some people are more liberal than others, and some people are more conservative than others. Some people in the middle are just plain muddled and incoherent ideologically, and those people are mostly politically inactive or at least reluctant participants in politics.

I'm certainly not the first to note, however, that if one goes far enough to the right, and one goes far enough to the left, that there is a certain convergence, suggesting that left and right wing are relative directions not on an ideological line, but on an ideological circle in which the extremes meet.

The new to me, at least, Not My Tribe group blog which comes up as a Colorado based blog in the Lefty Blogs feed is very far to the left of my own ideology to the point at which it is starting to enter the extremes meet zone. I'm something of the Brennan liberal roughly in the ideological middle of non-Blue Dog elected Democrats in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. So far as I can tell, Not My Tribe hovers around the ideological boundary distinguishing Democratic Socialists from bona fide Communists.

For example, a recent comment at the blog, which seemed to me to be in accord with the spirit of the blog, argued that the Free Tibet movement was an corporatist Anglo-American plot to secure a puppet who could cut off the water supply of the rest of China. Call me old fashioned, but I'm not too impressed myself with sovereignty obtained in recent times through mere force of conquest.

The New Democratic Party Coalition

Once upon a time, when I was a young man just starting to pay attention to Congressional politics, we had a de facto three party system in the United States. There were Northern Democrats, Southern Democrats and Republicans. Southern Democrats parted ways with the Northern counterparts and joined Republicans on issues of national defense, civil rights and civil liberties.

This is no longer true. We still have a three party system, but, as this Daily Kos post illustrates, the three parties are now, regular Democrats, Blue Dog Democrats, and Republicans.

The Blue Dogs proudly call themselves conservative Democrats and there are 44 of them in the House out of 231 Democrats (there are 202 Republicans and 2 vacancies). Thus, there are 187 regular Democrats, 44 Blue Dogs and 202 Republicans, plus 2 vacancies. There isn't a formal Blue Dog caucus in the Senate (which has 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans, liberal independent Bernie Sanders, and moderate independent Joe Lieberman), but the number of Senators who vote like Blue Dogs is similarly a small part of the entire Democratic Party caucus.

Realignment has turned a lot of Southern Democratic seats into Republican seats, and replaced all but a handful of Rockefeller Republicans with Democrats. It has also left a more clear line between Blue Dogs and the rest of the Republican party (Markos at Kos has repeatly observed accurately that the voting record of non-Blue Dog members of the supposedly moderate Democratic Leadership Council look a lot like non-DLC Democrats). The Blue Dogs are fewer in number than either the DLC or the Southern Democrats who held the moderate reins before them. The Blue Dogs are also not nearly as distinctively Southern in character, although many are from the South. But, they still hold the swing votes on a variety of issues.