Brian’s Utah Weblog

I’ve processed all the roll call votes from the 2008 Utah legislature’s General Session and there are some interesting results to report.

Let’s take a look at the question of who is the Scalia and Thomas of the legislature. Who is it that votes most like another legislator (not including missed votes)? The answer is that Senators Curt Bramble (R-Provo) and Dan Eastman (R-Bountiful) voted together 98.9% of the time. That’s an astounding 614 out of the 621 roll call votes both attended in 2008.

And they sit right next to each other.

Even when they aren’t copying each other’s work, they still give Utah’s teachers plenty of trouble. Bramble was Senate sponsor of the late unlamented voucher proposal and Eastman supported it.

The closest Democrats were Representatives Carol Spackman Moss (D-SLC) and Phil Riesen (D-SLC) with a 98.7% rate of agreement. And, yes, they sit together, too.

Note that 1008 of the 1437 roll calls on bills in 2008 have been unanimous and another 83 had a lone dissenter, so even the oddest of odd couples have been in agreement most of the time. The legislators like to pad their schedule with the chance to vote individually in favor of puppies and Christmas and the like.

The Democrat and Republican closest in their voting were Rep. Bud Bowman (R-Cedar City) and Rep. Karen Morgan (D-SLC) who agreed 95.82%. In the Senate the closest were Senator Mike Dmitrich (D-Price) and Senator Kevin Van Tassell (R-Vernal) who voted together 95.02% of the time.

The most likely to disagree were Rep. Mike Morley (R-Spanish Fork) and brand new Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck (D-SLC). They voted together only 77.09%. Since 69% of House votes were unanimous or had one lone dissenter, that’s not much agreement. The farthest apart Senators were Senator Margaret Dayton (R-Provo) and Senator Scott McCoy (D-SLC) who agreed 82.5% of the time. Astoundingly, 81.3% of Senate votes were unanimous or had but one dissenter.

The closest pairs:

1. Bramble and Eastman, 98.89%
2. Bramble and Sen. Carlene Walker (R-SLC), 98.81%
3. Walker and Sen. Wayne Niederhauser (R-Sandy), 98.71%
4. Moss and Riesen, 98.67%
5. Eastman and Walker, 98.65%

This is a continuation of the post on partisan House roll calls in 2005 (q.v.). More of these are coming, up through this year.

The legislators on the 76 partisan votes of 2007 Utah House,

This weekend we Salt Lake County Democrats got together at the library (Democrats like books) and elected our new legislative district chairs.  It was a nice chance to see people from your neighborhood and across the valley.  Each hour on the hour one set of districts’ leaders left and another arrived.  In the middle there were a few minutes to talk with people from other parts of the county.

In two weeks, it will be even better.  The Salt Lake County Democratic Convention will convene on Saturday, the 12th of April 2008 at Jordan High School (go Beetdiggers!) at 9880 S 98 E.  Jordan High is across Sego Lily Drive from the Sandy TRAX stop.

Everyone is welcome.  Yes, everyone.  Not just delegates.  Show up at 8:00 AM for issue caucuses and talk about issues and candidates with informed, active citizens all morning.  It’ll be great.

In national news, Texas they held their county conventions yesterday.  It’s a part of the Texas two-step, a multi-level process where party leadership and national delegates are selected according to multiple interlocking systems.  As the Texas process goes on, the state party apparently doesn’t even try to keep track of whom delegates are pledged to and no one knows exactly how the results came out.

Molly Ivins would have loved to be here to explain all this to us.