Sane Americans have my sympathy if you’re right.
I don’t know enough about senate procedures to understand the situation. In particular what it means for him and for both parties. Does it mean he would have to vote differently? Does a party have to accept him? If I were an independent senator, I’m not sure either one would want me since I’d be a pain in the ass for both. But I’m unelectable and that is neither here nor there.
Caucusing with a party means that you vote for them, essentially, in procedural votes. Primarily this means at the beginning of a session for a given term you will vote for your party’s candidate to be Senate Majority Leader and other Senate offices.
Once these leaders are in power, they will then work out committee assignments, customarily they are given out based on seniority and you move “up” in a committee over time as others move out until eventually you are the senior member of the committee for your party. Once that happens, you are the committee chair, who gets to control procedural moves within the committee.
Essentially all legislation starts in committee, so if you have no committee assignments you have extremely limited power or importance as a Senator. You essentially have no real power over legislation, other than your right to speak and address the full Senate to make arguments and such about it (and you get to vote of course.)
Committee assignments are the tangible benefit to caucusing with a party. Also of course, if you’re formally a member of the Democratic Party or the GOP, that party’s national organization supporting Senatorial candidates will have helped you get elected. If you were to assume your seat in the Senate and then not caucus with that party, they would boot you come next election. No support, and they’d probably support an opponent in the primary.
It should be noted that both parties get to give out committee assignments. The committees are also comprised of members of both parties. Typically at the beginning of a session, each committee will be divided roughly in half with the party that controls the Senate getting one more committee seat than the party in the minority. Thus, the majority party will win any straight party-line votes within the committee. But, committee votes do not have to be straight party line, and sometimes they aren’t.
So if King stayed with the Democrats, he most likely would keep all of his current committee assignments, he just wouldn’t be a part of the majority within the committee. This only truly matters when you’re the senior member for your side, as the different between being on the majority vs minority side is the difference between being a committee chair or not.
In general no Senator is required to vote with his party on legislation, and to some degree they are expected to be independent of the party’s dictates especially when they conflict with the best interests of their constituency. So if whichever party King caucuses with he’d be expected to vote for its leaders in the leadership elections and to vote with that party on certain types of procedural votes. But otherwise he’d be allowed to vote freely with minimal risk of punishment. The parties don’t typically punish a Senator for voting a certain way on legislation, although in extreme cases there might be political retribution at some point.
I don’t see the big deal. He can caucus with whomever he wants, if they’ll have him, and then he can vote however he wants.
Could the Republicans decline the honor?
Great explanation, thanks. Does re-caucusing “reset” seniority in any way? I’m assuming if party A wanted to ignore seniority, the independent would just stick with party B.
If truly independent, would a senator not be on any committees?
It’s up to the party you’re caucusing with. Jim Jeffords had been a Republican Senator since '89 from Vermont, but in 2001 decided to leave the Republican Party. In doing so he also decided to caucus with the Democrats.
His committee positioning was thus a subject of negotiations. Normally he’d probably have been treated similarly to how Angus King is treated now, an independent he’s given minor committee positions with the Democrats as he caucuses with them and Jeffords would have been considered a “new” Democrat Senator.
However, Jeffords held a trump card, as the Senate was split 50-50, and with Dick Cheney as Vice President, the GOP had control of the Senate due to his tie breaking ability.
What Jeffords got out of the deal was: A committee chairmanship, he gave up a committee he had chaired as a Republican in exchange for a chairmanship position of another committee. Additionally, he “bumped” Democrats wherever appropriate on the committees he was otherwise on, and was treated as though he had been a Democratic Senator since 1989.
Since he was single handedly giving the Senate to the Democrats they were in no position to play hard ball. Part of the agreement also gave him the ability to vote against the caucus on procedural votes with permission from the Whip, but it was made known that more often than not such permission would not be granted. It should be noted the GOP really fumbled the ball on Jeffords; while he was ideologically a left-leaning New England Republican, he was leery of jumping from the party under which he was elected. His decision was made up due to the GOP not fully implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, otherwise he probably would not have switched “mid-term” as he did.
Yup. Angus King himself said it–he would be effectively shut out of the committee system if he didn’t caucus with a party.
It should be noted that Angus King is no liberal. He’s a centrist. He can fit in with either party. He also owes no allegiance to either party. He can’t get away with this sort of thing over and over, of course.
As for the Paycheck Fairness Act, I’m not surprised that an independent thinker would oppose a bill doing the same thing the previous 10 anti-discrimination laws did. That is known as symbolic voting in an election year and King was right to avoid the appearance of being a consummate bullshitter.
A centrist cannot fit in with the current Republican party.
The basic reason that I think King shouldn’t do this is that the Senate is still the most exclusive (mostly) boys club in the world. Reputation matters. If he can’t even choose a side to caucus with and stick with it, he’s showing himself to be a bandwagoner, an opportunist, a fair weather friend.
Let’s face it, this guy is no Frank Underwood who holds the goods on most of Washington and can play them like a fiddle. Angus may think he’s being a kingmaker (no pun intended) by possibly deciding which party has the majority, but he isn’t playing big-league ball. It’s a pretty dumb strategy to throw this possible switch out into the public now, so that if Dems keep control he’s already alienated them, and already tipped his hand to Republicans that he has no scruples.
Consider this: let’s say King becomes the 51st vote for a Republican Senate come January 2015. Look forward to the 2016 elections, and the map heavily favors the Democrats to take control of the Senate again. Is King going to switch yet again as he gets ready to run for re-election?
Given that Maine voters have no issues with electing Republicans despite the state’s blueness, I don’t think King is going to need the Democrats to win reelection while caucusing with Susan Collins.
If anything, King has shown that unlike say, Bernie Sanders, he can actually faced BOTH parties in a general election and kick their asses. If Democrats ever actually challenged Sanders, he’d be done.
To me, the more important issue is his voting record. If King suddenly starts voting like a Republican, then he’s a sellout. But he hasn’t felt the need to vote uniformly Democrat now, so I doubt he’ll feel the need to conform to what Mitch McConnell wants either. Angus King is who he is and the Senate needs more true independents.
The debate on whether or not the ACA should have a public option was a debate within the Democratic Caucus, though. The Republican position was to vote against the ACA period. Lieberman may not have been the most liberal Democrat, and he’s always been a hawk, but he fits more into the Democratic tent than the Republican one.
Not to mention, if Lieberman doesn’t help pull the bill to the right, do Landrieu, McCaskill, Lincoln, and Nelson vote for it?