State super-minorities manage to influence debate

When the Rhode Island Senate voted in April to legalize same-sex marriage, it produced an unusual political dynamic: every Republican supported it.
All five of them.
“We wanted to make a statement as a Republican caucus in Rhode Island that our position came down to equality and fairness,” state Senate Minority Leader Dennis Algiere said in an interview at his sparsely decorated, part-time office in Providence, the state capital.
In a few states, those that are deeply Republican-red or Democratic-blue, the partisan hue is so one-sided that it’s creating super-minorities in some Senate chambers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In Rhode Island, the Republican quintet matches up against 32 Democrats and one independent. In the Wyoming Senate, four Democrats counter 26 Republicans. And in Hawaii, state Sen. Sam Slom, 71, has been nicknamed the “Lone Ranger” because he’s the only Republican in the 25-member chamber.
Slom serves as the minority leader, the minority floor leader, and is a member of all 16 standing committees and every ad-hoc and investigative panel. He’s taking his staff to see the latest “Lone Ranger” movie, out in July.
“I don’t mind being called Lone Ranger because he was a good guy,” he said in an interview.
Slom’s use of humor to adapt to his lonely partisan status offers a glimpse of how differently politics can operate outside of Washington, where Republicans control 54 percent of House seats and Democrats hold 54 percent of Senate seats.
Members of these tiny caucuses say they still can influence debate, are included in bipartisan legislative deliberations and can attract attention while being outnumbered. The upshot: state legislatures often aren’t the partisan combat zone that Congress has become, and their lawmakers find ways to work cooperatively on issues, an environment presidents can only envy.
“When we work bills, we tend to work them more from our perspective of expertise than from our party,” said Wyoming state Senate Minority Leader Chris Rothfuss, a Democrat who used to work at the U.S. State Department and has a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. “We all have to go home and live the life that we’ve created through the legislature.”
The super-minorities have mastered a few maneuvers to ensure they aren’t run roughshod over by their opponents, mostly by sticking together and creating strategic alliances with some majority-party lawmakers. And there are some upsides to their fate: they don’t face the same pressures as super-majorities that have the responsibility to govern, and securing a leadership position is a breeze. All five of the Rhode Island Republican state senators have titles. Algiere is the minority leader and his fellow 20-year veteran in the chamber, David Bates, is minority whip. Chris Ottiano and Dawson Hodgson, second-term members, are the deputy minority leaders, and Nicholas Kettle, also in his second term, is deputy minority whip.
“Usually the majority party in these situations has plenty of conflicts of its own,” Karl Kurtz, a political scientist with the National Conference of State Legislatures, said in an email. “In fact, many majority-party leaders have told us that they would prefer to lead a narrow majority than a wide one, because there is more necessity for the majority to stick together with a small margin of control.”
Algiere said that he’s forged working relationships with Democratic leaders who keep him apprised of legislation and invite him to meetings.
“I can sit back and I can say, ’I’m in the minority and I can’t get anything done’ and sit at my desk and cry, or I’m going to go out there and hustle,” Algiere said. “I do it in a gentleman’s way and work with the majority leadership and try to put across our point of view, our position.”
Kettle said he sees his role as a “watchdog” and “whistleblower.”
The gay marriage vote provided an opportunity for the Republicans to distinguish themselves in the state and send a broader political message. Though their votes weren’t determinative of the outcome, their unanimous support contrasted with the divided Democrats, who provided all 12 votes against the bill.
The Republicans also decided to do something that Democrats couldn’t: issue a statement touting their caucus as the first in the nation to unanimously support same-sex unions.
“We wanted to make that statement loud and clear,” said Algiere.
The vote on same-sex marriage in Rhode Island showed how partisan affiliation in the Senate means “less and less and less,” said Ottiano. “I don’t think anyone in our caucus is the most conservative in the Senate.”
In the Wyoming Senate, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by 26 to 4, Rothfuss said the chamber is “surprisingly functional” despite the lopsided margin against his party.
“We have a very good legislature and we have very good leadership in both parties in both chambers,” Rothfuss said. “Nobody’s there playing political games.” •

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