Media/Politics
By Terry JonesA real roll call
Keeping up with how national legislators are voting is not all that easy. Even if the media occasionally report a roll call, they do not provide a more comprehensive perspective. Interest group ratings are obviously slanted toward the particular organization's agenda.
For this reason, the National Journal's annual congressional ratings are so valuable, but it is disappointing that they receive no attention in the local media. The Journal's scores cover a broad range of key votes selected by experienced Washington observers. Careful and sophisticated statistical techniques are then applied to form three specific indices (economic, social and foreign) and a weighted composite score. The results are then arrayed relatively, revealing where each legislator ranks on the conservative-liberal spectrum.
The 2003 scores are in the February 28, 2004 issue of the Journal. In the U.S. Senate, Missouri's Kit Bond is the 16th most conservative, and Jim Talent the 31st most conservative. Both have the same scores on the social dimension, but Bond's votes are to the right of Talent's on economic and foreign policy.
In the House of Representatives, Richard Gephardt's presidential campaigning meant that he did not have sufficient votes to qualify for the index. Republican Todd Akin (2nd District) was the 93rd most conservative, and William Lacy Clay (1st District) was the 38th most liberal. Akin's votes were strongly conservative on social issues but became more centrist on economic and foreign matters. Clay's performance ---
In the 1972 presidential election, about one out of every two Americans ages 18 to 30 voted. Since then, the participation rate among young adults has dropped steadily so that, by the 2000 contest, fewer than one in three cast ballots. Put another way, persons over 50 are twice as likely to vote as those under 30. These statistics are the principal reason candidate messages stress senior issues, like prescription drugs, and omit young adult concerns, like student financial aid. As the political cliché has it, one goes hunting where the ducks are.
Will that change in 2004? Will 9/11, Iraq and job losses stimulate more involvement among the younger crowd? Maybe yes, according to a Feb. 25-29 national survey conducted for Harvard University's Vanishing Voter Project. Forty-nine percent of those 18 to 30 report following an election news story during the previous 24 hours, up from 36 percent at a comparable time in 2000. Meanwhile, the attentiveness rate for those over 30 only rose three percentage points, from 48 percent to 51 percent.
Changing the age mix in the electorate would create a different dynamic in the political campaigns. If the February interest among young adults persists to the fall, look for some television ads that look more like Bud Light commercials than Viagra ads.
---
There's a fun new website in the who gives what to which candidate genre. It's www.fundrace.org. Although not as comprehensive as my favorite (www.opensecrets.org), it uses geographic information systems software to add a third dimension to check out patterns for this year's presidential race.
Want to know the top addresses for donations to Democratic and Republican candidates? For the Democrats, the top two are 1 North Brentwood Boulevard, where the contributors include Rubin Brown Goldstein partners, and 1441 Hampton Avenue, where Slay Industries' folks have led the way. For the GOP, the leading pair are 999 Executive Parkway, where several members of the Hauck clan have contributed $2,000 each to the Bush effort, and 611 Olive, headquarters for May Department Store's officials.
Want to check what's happening in your neighborhood? Insert your address, and presto, you receive the contribution information about everybody living nearby. It's a dandy tool for uncovering that closet Democrat in Town and Country or the disguised Republican in University City.
---
The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), passed in 2002 and more commonly named McCain-Feingold after its Senate sponsors, makes the 2004 elections a ball game played with different rules. What's uncertain-but what should be a continuing story-is how campaigns will adjust.
Jo Mannies' March 15 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article does a superb job capturing one of the major tools being used to circumvent one feature of the new law: the ban on virtually unlimited soft money contributions to political parties which, prior to BCRA, could then be used for television spots promoting their candidate or criticizing the opposition. In their stead are "527 groups," entities which can raise and spend unlimited sums and, at the same time, maintain more anonymity about who is providing the cash than can candidates or parties. The 527 entities, however, cannot coordinate their commercials with the actual campaigns.
To date, the 527 gambit is being used primarily by Democratic sympathizers, such as America Coming Together, MoveOn, and The Media Fund. As the Bush-Cheney campaigns launched their television ads in the St. Louis market in March, Mannies reports that the 527 groups simultaneously went on the air with even larger buys. The article supported those who have been arguing that, no matter what legislation is passed, those wishing to influence campaigns will find some way to circumvent the intent. By letting readers know who's paying for what ads, Mannies and the Post are helping voters decipher what are becoming increasingly complex campaigns.