Two things about the 2nd Congressional District race have been bugging me. (Actually, more than two but these stick out.)
Vote for Pelosi as speaker
Yes, Glenn Nye is going to vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker, just as Scott Rigell is going to vote for John Boehner. The vote of Ken Golden, if elected, will go to Ron Paul, who has the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of being speaker, regardless of which party is in control. Golden’s pledge of support is instructive: his vote won’t matter. The same is true of Nye’s vote if the Republicans are in the majority or Rigell’s vote if the Democrats are in the majority. So the question becomes: why is this an issue? Does anyone think that a representative is going to vote against his party for someone else to be speaker?
Nye votes 83% of the time with his party
The Washington Post maintains a database that shows how often a member votes with the majority of his party. On average, House members vote 90.6% with their party and Senate members vote 88.2%. But there is one statistic that I’ve been unable to locate: how often everybody votes the same way. A lot of Congressional votes, believe it or not, have most, if not all, of the members voting the same way. Take HR 3940, for example. There were only five votes against this resolution, yet the vote will count for all the rest of the members as being one of those in which they voted with party. I suspect the number of votes where nearly everyone agrees is fairly high – as much as 70%. (Ron Paul, for example, votes 76.7% with the Republican Party. And the lowest party voting record goes to Democrat Walt Minnick, who votes 70.8% with the party.) So wouldn’t it make sense to provide that kind of calculation so that voters can discern whether someone is a party puppet?
At the very least, put it in perspective. Locally, Rob Wittman, 1st CD rep, votes 93.4% with his party, Bobby Scott, 3rd CD rep, votes 98.0% with his party, and Randy Forbes, 4th CD rep, votes 94.7% with his party. I may not like it, but 82.5% party line voting by Nye is fairly low.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
According to the Washington Post members of the 110 congress on average voted 89.4% with there own party. Thelma Drake voted with her party 96.4%.
This should not surprize us that an elected offical will vote with their own part the majority of the time, after all members of the same party express and support many of the same ideas.
Glen Nye has vote with his party when he thought it was in the best interest of his country and his home district. he voted against the party when he felt they did not.
Voting for Pelosi will only matter if the vote is close. It does give me some pause.
However, I agree with most of your points, because with the exceptions of voting to retain Charlie Rangel in his powerful position early on and one vote for a stimulas package, he voted the way I wanted him to on all the big issues.
That’s why I question why Nye dropped from the Tea Party Convention. I guess he’d hope Golden would pick up Tea Party votes from Rigell and that he(Nye) wouldn’t have to suffer from his core and be labeled a Tea Partier. Or worse, judging by the vile crap I’ve seen on the blogosphere.
Still, how powerful would it be for Nye to stand before them and say “Hey, I voted how you hoped I would. Try to spin it by saying Speaker Pelosi gave me a wink because she had the votes. The fact remains I have taken considerable damage from my base & risk some of them staying home because I voted in agreement with you. When it comes down to it, I voted against Health care Reform, against Cap & Trade, and almost every stimulus. Either you are a person of principle as a member of the Tea Party, or you are poser…a fake…bereft of conviction and merely shouting praise for the “Empty suits” on your team. I call upon each one of you to recognize that I have represented you better than most Republicans would. Stand beside this Democrat and give me your vote on Nov. 2nd!”
Well, as long as that little speech didn’t get reported to his fellow Democrats, I think he would have made out, ok. Lol.
Nye was one of the last Dems to cast a vote on healthcare– and this was only after it was apparent the Democrats had the votes.
The bigger issue with the speaker issue is that Nye is 1/435 and pretty much powerless it is the big chairs and the leadership that wield all the power. I think that this is an important issue and this is a top race to determine who will be the Speaker and thus what legislation will go through.
And this is the third thing that I wanted to address: the idea that Nye only cast his vote after Dems had enough votes to pass the bill. (And the corollary: Nye got a pass from Pelosi to vote against the bill.)
Where is the proof of this? As many times as I’ve seen it repeated, I’ve never seen any evidence that this is anything other than a made-up talking point to try to make light of his healthcare vote.
Show me the proof.
And if Nye is powerless – as 1/435 – won’t Rigell be?
Vivian,
I’ll give you one out of two. 88% of the time actually means just the opposite of what Rigell is suggesting. Glenn is a BADINO (Barely a Dem in Name Only). If I was a betting man I would bet Mr. Nye is on the short list of Reps who will be asked to switch parties if the GOP takes over.
I worked the polls with him for over two hours and he really is a great guy – but he is a BADINO!
I don’t agree with you on the vote for Pelosi. Of course he will vote for Pelosi and that’s exactly what the GOP is saying. Pelosi has stepped in it too many times. Her speech on the Hill right after the 1st attempt at passing the stimulus bill resulted in I think the largest fall in the DOW’s history.
Her comment that “We have to pass it (health care bill) to find out what’s in it,” still makes me cringe. I honestly don’t think voters are that upset with Glenn or Obama.
But it’s clear the GOP wants a seat at the table and as long as Pelosi is speaker they will continue to be outside while bills are being drafted with no hope of contributing.
The cry of “Don’t let the GOP have the keys again because they will drive the car into the ditch,” resonates, but Pelosi has gone too far and the backlash this fall may force her retirement.