Tag Archives: political stasis

Our sclerotic Senate

In my most recent rant about the State Senate, our most dysfunctional and ego-driven deliberative body, I tossed out a back-of-the-envelope figgerin’ of the Senate’s electoral stasis:

A quick overview of our 30 senators shows at least 26 who are virtual locks for re-election as long as they want to run. And one of the other four is Norm McAllister, who would have been number 27 if only he could have kept it in his pants.

That, I should note, is a generous calculation. You could just as easily argue that if all the sitting Senators ran for re-election in 2016, McAllister is the only one who’d be seriously vulnerable. Almost all the districts lean heavily to the left or to the right. That’s a bad thing, and helps create a Senate that’s full of overinflated egos and smothered in a sense of entitlement.

In case you think I’m overstating the political reality of the Senate, I thought I’d run down the list. In alphabetical order by county:

Addison. Democrats Claire Ayer and Chris Bray romped to re-election in 2014, with no Republicans even bothering to try.

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