Do beef and coal spell doom for Montana Senators' support of cap-and-trade?

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 10:29:06 AM MST

Even so, that means only one-in-four of the coal state Democrats voted no. I'd like to see those results drilled down to coal-dependent districts, but still, that's quite a bit less parochial defection than one might imagine. Indeed, hailing from a coal state wasn't nearly as strong a predictor of a given representative's vote than whether his district voted for Barack Obama. While one in four Democrats in coal states voted against cap-and-trade, three in five Democrats in districts that McCain carried voted against the bill. Similarly, seven of the eight Republicans who voted for the bill hailed from districts that Obama carried.

Another way of putting this is that the evidence suggests that this vote was less about parochial interests than partisanship and ideology. Plenty of Democrats from coal states made the judgment that they could defend this legislation to their constituents.

Kevin Drum begs to differ:

What's more interesting is that a quarter of the coal state Dems voted against the bill even though it had already been massively watered down to reflect coal state interests. In its current state, Waxman-Markey has very little effect on coal state interests for at least the next decade, and possibly for more like 20 years. But even so, lots of coal state Dems voted against it despite the fact that passage is a major goal of the party leadership, it's a major goal of the president, and it's the right thing to do. I'd call that pretty damn parochial.

But it may not be pressure from the coal industry that decides this thing in the Senate; instead, according to a New York Times report, it may be agricultural interests that does it in. And consider this insight from public policy professor, Barry Rabe:

[Agriculture] organizations wield greater clout in the Senate, because members there must be protective of an entire state, rather than a small congressional district, he said. With a huge swath of the country containing farmland, the complaints raise the possibility that a group will gain the ear of a sympathetic member of Congress with the power to filibuster, he said.

Sens. Baucus and Tester were singled out as especially vulnerable to the beef industry on the topic.

I'd also assume that energy lobbies would enjoy the same advantages over their states' Senators, and that coal-state defection would be at a higher rate than 1-in-4. And given that Montana is both a coal and agricultural state...I'd say we're not going to see support from Jon and Max on a cap-and-trade bill...unless we let them know anything else would be unacceptable.