Today’s Question: Who does a U.S. senator represent?
Senators represent all the people of their state. Each state has two senators who are elected by citizens of their state.
But that was not originally the case, nor is it that simple, especially with so much money involved in winning a Senate campaign.
Senators were not always elected by voters. The 17th Amendment gave that power to the people in 1912 after decades of senators being selected by state legislators. The amendment was one of several – including the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th and 24th – spearheaded by progressives who shifted constitutional theory away from what the framers envisioned to one that better democratized American politics at the time, said Cornell Clayton, director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service.
At the time of the 17th Amendment, there was a lot of concern about corruption within state legislatures, Clayton said. After the Civil War, senatorial candidates were campaigning for state legislative candidates through “public canvass” in an attempt to get legislators who might elect them into the Senate into the legislature. The amendment was an attempt to hinder the corruption of state legislatures that were controlled by big-money interests like railroad and mining corporations.
“Progressives wanted to reform this primarily to remove some of the corruption of state legislatures in the control of the U.S. Senate, but also to deal with some of the dysfunction created by a closely divided electorate and closely held elections,” he said. “And that’s what the 17th Amendment represents. It’s about democratizing American politics.”
Senators have to weigh the interests of the people in their state and the best interests for the country, said Travis Ridout, professor at Washington State University’s School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs. The federal government has the ability to regulate gas prices, and state citizens would probably like that, but lowering prices might increase gas consumption and the ill consequences of climate change. These are the dilemmas senators can face.
Washington voters will soon decide whether to elect their first Democratic secretary of state in six decades or, instead, send a longtime county auditor to be the state’s first nonpartisan chief elections officer.
Republicans were shut out of the state’s top-two primary in August, which sent current Democratic Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and nonpartisan Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson to the general election.
Hobbs was appointed by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee last November to replace Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman once she took a key election security job in the Biden administration. While his appointment marked the first time a Democrat held the office since the mid-1960s, Hobbs has not yet faced voters, so November’s election will determine who serves the last two years of Wyman’s term.
“It’s obviously a sea change for the office given the fact that it’s been in Republican hands for so long,” said Cornell Clayton, director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy at Washington State University. Where voters will land this year, he said, “is just very hard to predict.”
Clayton said adding to the uncertainty was the write-in campaign of Republican Rep. Brad Klippert, whose name won’t appear on the ballot but who has been endorsed by the state Republican Party and could potentially pull enough votes to make a difference in a tight race between Hobbs and Anderson. Unlike Wyman, who lauded the state’s election system and security, Klippert is among those who have echoed election fraud conspiracies and wants to do away with the state’s mail voting system and require in-person voting.
Murray has also run a slew of negative ads against Smiley, saying the Republican’s anti-abortion stance could threaten women’s rights and also trying to tie her to extremist elements within the GOP.
Cornell Clayton, a political scientist at Washington State University and director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Service and Public Policy, said while people say they dislike it when campaigns go negative, such ads work.
Heidi Ganahl is the only Republican to advertise on television
As ballots head out to voters across the state this week, Coloradans can expect a continued flurry of campaign advertisements to hit their televisions, streaming services and internet browsers as candidates for statewide office push their messages.
It is an industry that involves tens of millions of dollars in Colorado. Colorado Newsline analyzed political television advertisement contracts filed with the Federal Communications Commission from the eight major party candidates for statewide offices across seven channels. The broadcast channels included are CBS4, 9NEWS, Denver 7, FOX31, KWGN, KRDO and KKTV.
That analysis did not include outside advertising spending, which accounts for many more millions of dollars spent by third-party groups supporting or opposing certain candidates.
Across the board, however, candidates widely try to advertise during local news in the morning and evening and during the shows immediately after.
“Traditionally, local TV news has been important because you get a lot of high-information people and people who are likely to turn out to vote. There’s a lot of undecided voters and persuadables,” Travis Ridout, a professor at Washington State University who also works with the Wesleyan Media Project, said.
Colorado Newsline
Each week, The Spokesman-Review examines one question from the Naturalization Test immigrants must pass to become United States citizens.
This week’s question: How long is a term for a U.S. senator?
Control of the Congress is up for grabs in November. Some political scientists are worried for the state of American democracy, which is showing intense polarization even in an institution – the U.S. Senate – designed to be more deliberative and open to compromise.
“I am worried that we have a significant faction within a political party today that continues to cast doubt on election outcomes,” said Cornell Clayton, a professor of government at Washington State University and the director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service. “Several candidates have already announced that they will not accept election results if they don’t win.”
In the current political climate, there is intense partisan polarization, and political views more often veer from the center and toward ideological extremes.
“The Senate used to be much more bipartisan, but in recent years partisan polarization has allowed for the Senate to be just as divisive as the House of Representatives,” Clayton said. “Partisan polarization will only lessen if one party gains a significant majority, consistently.”
Every two years, one-third of the Senate is open for re-election. In November, 34 of the 100 Senate seats are being contested.