Congressional potpurri
There are so many interesting things to read: Here are a few items that caught my eye.
Rep. William Timmons, conservative reformer of Congress, wins his primary
This is very welcome news. Rep. Timmons (R, SC) defeated State Rep. Adam Morgan by a vote of approximately 51 to 48 percent. For those of us who care about congressional reform, this is very wlecome news. Since he arrived in the House of Representatives in 2018, Timmons has been a leader on both the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress and the succeeding Subcommittee on Modernization. He understands that the chamber needs reworked and upgraded to better serve voters and has partnered across the aisle to get things done.
Note: J.D. Rackey of the Bipartisan Policy Center recently shared this tracker that shows what reforms have been completed and which ones are still being worked on.
I would also note that the Timmons race illustrates the problem with partisan primaries. Timmons is very conservative and yet he was attacked as being too liberal, a charge that gets great uptake among the small minority of voters who show up to vote in primaries. As Axios reports, “A handful of of conservative hardliners opted to endorse Morgan, a cofounder of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus. These included House Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good (R-Va.), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).”
What to do about the filibuster?
Mark Strand’s Substack shares some thoughts about the state of play. On the one hand, it seems unadvisable to abolish the filibuster entirely—that will just give narrow partisan majorities all the more incentive to ram policy down the other party’s throat. On the other hand, it seems indefensible that a majority leader needs to find 60 votes for everything, which encourages senators to tie up the chamber simpy because they can. Strand and his coauthor Tim Lang suggest “forcing Senators to hold the floor continuously and talk until they are hoarse, eliminating the filibuster on the motion to proceed would be another way to reform the practice.” Let the debate begin!
Would it violate the Constitution for Trump to Pick Senator Marco Rubio or Rep. Byron Donalds for vice-president?
You’ve probably seen the chatter on the Internet: trump is form Florida. So is Rubio and Ronalds. Trump can’t pick either of them because it would violate Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.
Professor Charlie Hunt writes:
In fact, the restriction outlined in the Constitution is not actually on the candidate, but on the electors who comprise the Electoral College. What the clause actually says is that an elector is not allowed to cast both of their votes (one for president, one for vice president) for two people who are both from the elector’s home state. In layman’s terms, this means that Electoral College members from Florida could not cast their votes for both Trump and Rubio if they won the state. Meanwhile, electors from Idaho, Texas, or anywhere else would be perfectly at liberty to vote for both Trump and Rubio in the Electoral College if the Trump ticket won their states….
…Article 2, Section 1 only requires that both candidates not be an “inhabitant” of the same state as the electors. This is a term that’s faced a few different court challenges in Congress over the decades, but which generally has been interpreted pretty loosely. More often than not, candidates and elected officials are able to simply find another address over which they have some level of ownership (or relationship with the owners) to designate as their “official residence,” even if they physically reside in a different home or state on a regular basis.
Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville is a good example of this that I’ve actually written about before. Long story short, Tuberville has faced ongoing criticism for representing Alabama in the Senate, even though — by all accounts — he lives pretty much full time in (where else) Florida.
A congressional history portal launches
The Carl Albert Center has partnered with other institutions to launch the American Congress Digital Archives Portal. It presently has around 6,000 documents that range from transcripts of legislator interviews with media, correspondence between legislators, papers relating to policy and oversight, and more. Have a look!
Who is quitting Congress?
Robert Draper of the New York Times observes,
As a matter of sheer numbers, the exodus is not history-making. What is striking are the names on the list. There are rising stars, seasoned legislators and committee chairs. But not a single bomb-thrower.
It is worth pondering why workhorses are departing and show horses are not, and what can be done to flip that trend.