When the news began about accusations against John Swallow his first response was to dismiss the allegations based on the tainted source from which they sprang and then duck his head and send out lots of emails about what “he” was doing for the state. When the volume and variety of allegations increased Mr. Swallow adopted a new standard answer which sounds reasonable on the surface but is likewise meant to distract from the issue arising from the multitude of allegations. His standard andwer is that he has done nothing illegal and therefore he will not resign. Holly Richardson does a great job of explaining the standard which governs the impeachment process and that standard is “high crimes and misdemeanors” not “committing illegal acts.” In doing so she illuminated the way that Mr. Swallow is using his standard answer to deflate the very appropriate calls for impeachment by playing on a general misunderstanding of what constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Let me start by making this very clear. We tend to think of high crimes being obviously criminal like murder but the fact is that obviously criminal acts such as that are felonies and felons are not even allowed to vote, let alone hold office. Lesser criminal acts are classified as misdemeanors so having ruled those out we can understand that “high crimes” are acts which may not even be actionable in the criminal system. As Holly points out, they are issues such as “breaches of ethical conduct, misuse of power, and neglect of duty.”
Category: State
I really appreciated Paul Mero’s take on efforts to change our caucus and convention system. Unlike Mr. Mero, I’m not well enough connected to be invited to take part in private meetings regarding how to change Utah’s caucus and convention system. On that particular issue that is the largest of our differences.
Like Mr. Mero I have been annoyed at the misinformation that I have seen spread by and among delegates with extreme positions on a number of issues – HB 166 among them. Like Mr. Mero, I have tried to pay attention to the efforts to change the caucus/convention system but I have not found those proposed changes to warrant any particular support from me. The core of where my views align with those expressed by Mr. Mero are summed up in the following quote:
Yes, I’m sure some delegates have stated that they don’t want increased participation in the political process. But, to be fair, most of those voices are more concerned about how blissfully ignorant most Utahns are about the world around them than those voices are about consuming political power. So, yes, these delegates do believe they are better informed and for good reason – most of them are! Not all of them have the right answers, for sure. But it’s a bit disingenuous of my friend to chastise any serious citizen for wanting her candidate to be elected or her policy to become law – for heaven’s sake, that’s exactly what everyone wants!…
If reformers want their candidates elected to office, they should make a case that appeals to the most responsible citizens who take time to engage in a democratic process that has served this state since its founding.
If a call for for Attorney General John Swallow to resign is based on a presumption of his guilt then Mr. Swallow is right that that we should wait until the investigations into the various allegations against him are completed. I think it is time to make the argument for why he should resign despite the assumption that he is innocent. By choosing not to resign the Attorney General is proving beyond any doubt that he is less interested in what’s good for the people of Utah than he is in his own benefit. If felt it was time to make this argument publicly after hearing Mr. Swallow on the radio talking about how he and the others in the Attorney General’s office are getting up and going to work every day despite all the allegations against him. I absolutely believe that to be true but it illustrates why John Swallow has no business in public office – he is clearly not interested in what is best for the people he is supposed to be serving.
John Swallow essentially admits this in this article from the Deseret News.
“I’m a little handicapped right now because of the situation I’m in. I get that. People say, ‘That’s not fair. You ought to leave.’ I can’t control the situation I’m in, and if I felt I did something that wrong, I would leave,” Swallow said. “But I’m not about to walk out of this office because people make allegations that aren’t true.”
As evidenced in that statement, Mr. Swallow is making his decisions based on his personal interests. The only reason that he would resign is if he were convicted of illegal activity. Mr. Swallow contends that he has done nothing illegal and I make no pretense that I know otherwise. The way I see it there are two reasons for him to step down even if he is innocent. Either of them should be sufficient cause for a true statesman to step down from office – at least temporarily.
- There are a number of statements that Mr. Swallow is known to have made – such as in his now infamous campaign telephone call – that he defends as being legal and yet clearly display judgement not worthy of a good public servant. Having shown such blatant poor judgement, a statesman would step aside and take the time to reestablish the credibility of his judgement before trying to take on a high-profile public office.
- No matter how hard he and his deputies work, the sheer volume of complaints against Mr. Swallow – and especially the fact that those complaints have resulting in multiple ongoing investigations by various official organizations – siphons off much of the time, energy, and efficacy of his office such that the people of Utah are not getting the kind of representation they deserve out of the Attorney General’s office. Again, a statesman would step aside – regardless of whether he did anything wrong – when the allegations against him were distracting and diluting his ability to serve effectively.
If Mr. Swallow were making his decisions based on the interests of the people of Utah his statement would have looked a lot more like this:
“I’m a little handicapped right now because of the situation I’m in. I get that. I and my deputies get up every day and work hard for the people of Utah but I recognize that the allegations made against me limit the effectiveness of all our work. The people of Utah and those working in the Attorney General’s office deserve an unencumbered chief legal officer therefore I have decided to step down as Attorney General.
“I sincerely hope that after the investigations are complete and my innocence has been established I will have another opportunity to serve the people of this great state.”
The real reason why he is not resigning is that whether he is innocent or guilty John Swallow will not materially benefit from resigning. If he were interested in the good of the people he was elected to serve he would resign because it is abundantly clear that regardless of his innocence or guilt the people of Utah would be better off with a new Attorney General.
When I wrote a better to the editor in support of Dan Liljenquist during the GOP primary earlier this year one of the comments that was made in response to my letter was that once Hatch won the primary all the Liljenquist supporters who were so opposed to Hatch would turn around and support Hatch in the general election. I knew then that was not true – some of those supporting Liljenquist were supporting him because they could not support Hatch and follow their conscience at the same time.
Once Hatch won the primary I found myself needing to examine the democratic candidate for Senate to see if I could cast my vote for him. I have been learning what I could about Scott Howell over the last few months and while there were some things that I liked in what I saw I was not certain that I could cast my vote for him.
After looking, listening, and learning what I could I reached out to Scott to ask a few final questions to determine if I could cast my vote for him or whether I would be forced to vote “none of the above.” The goal of my questions was to try getting a picture of his political view independent of party affiliation. To that end, I found my answer in his response to my question of who he would support for Senate Majority Leader. The first words out of his mouth were, “Harry Reid has to go.”
In and of itself that line would not earn my vote (although I completely agree with it) but as we talked, I saw in Scott a man who understands that we need to change the leadership in our government to make the changes that our nation needs. To put it the way Mitt Romney would, we need to fire the management that got us into this mess.
In contrast, I have no doubt that if I asked that question of Orrin Hatch he would look at me as if I had asked if water was wet and then tell me that Mitch McConnell would be his choice for Senate Majority Leader – how could Hatch possibly argue that seniority is critical and argue for new leadership? Hatch has been busy telling Utah that it is our time to lead. That is just a reference to his claims that he will be the next chair of the Senate Finance Committee. Today Nate Silver puts the odds of the GOP retaking the Senate at 13% which means that Hatch has about a 7% chance of chairing the finance committee.
Mr. Howell’s recognition of the need for new leadership coupled with the virtual guaranteed that Senator Hatch will be unable to deliver on the centerpiece of his campaign made this choice easier than I expected it to be. Right now the best choice Utah has for US Senate is Scott Howell. I still think the best candidate we had for the position this year was Dan Liljenquist but we still have an option to upgrade from our current senator with someone who knows that its time for a change.
As for the future, the fact is that I trust the promise Scott made to me that he will serve no more than two terms more than I trust Orrin’s promise that this is absolutely positively his last term (unless he still has a pulse in 2018) and I think the odds of getting a good candidate other than Scott are better with an incumbent Democrat than with an incumbent Republican (that’s true even if Orrin does keep his promise not to run again).
Join me in voting for Scott Howell for Senate because it is Utah’s time to lead and the best way to lead is still to send someone new who has not been a longtime part of the problem.
It is a political reality that in Utah if you wish to become Governor, Senator, or representative of House District 1 you must pledge allegiance to Hill Air Force Base (HAFB). (If you want to be a representative of districts 2, 3, or 4 it doesn’t hurt to pledge allegiance to HAFB either.)
This point was made clear again yesterday as the topic emerged for the democratic candidate for Governor and both his comments regarding HAFB and the comments of other political figures in the state were aired. This tweet by my state senator started a conversation that got me thinking about our sacred cows:
“If there is another #BRAC, #Utah needs seasoned Congressmen like Rob Bishop and Orrin Hatch to protect #HAFB–not a freshman Governor #utpol” –Todd Weiler
There is a general agreement that our government needs a course correction but there are a variety of visions about what changes need to be made and who is best suited to make those changes. Our senate race in Utah is a race between a vision of changing direction or keeping our current seniority and its attendant benefits. This is where we need to consider what is truly best for the country. The value of seniority is that it lends increased status and bargaining power to dole out favors to other lawmakers in exchange for votes on key legislation or to dole out favors to constituents regardless of whether those favors are a good idea for more than those getting the handout. This is precisely what is wrong with Washington. The compromise that comes with votes traded for favors is what brings us $16 Trillion of debt. This comes because of omnibus bills where favors have been traded so that these massive bills contain pet clauses either funding projects or carving out exceptions in revenue streams for favored groups. There is a better approach to compromise.
Rather than doling out favors and producing massive bills stuffed with perks that curry specific votes but are not generally desirable it is possible to compromise by removing provisions that do not garner sufficient support and producing smaller, more limited bills that accomplish less, cost much less, and only encompasses those aims which have been agreed upon by the legislators.
Dan Liljenquist is running for US Senate in Utah. He likes to say that “reality is not negotiable” and yet, while tackling some of the most challenging problems our state faced, he was able to secure almost unanimous (and in many cases completely unanimous) support for his important bills. Dan knows how to work with people and secure support on both sides of the aisle without doling out favors to other legislators.
I have had the opportunity as a constituent of Dan’s to sit in town hall meetings as Dan has patiently addressed the concerns of citizens related to the reforms he was proposing to save the state from fiscal ruin. I have seen Dan patiently address the concerns expressed about his reforms without talking down to people or resorting to demagoguery on the issues.
This stands in stark contrast to Orrin Hatch who has a penchant for trying to fund pet projects as well as talking down to people.
Dan is the man we need in Washington, D.C right now. We would be better off as a state and as a nation if we sent Orrin out to focus on his music career.
I was a little surprised at the news that Sarah Palin had endorsed Orrin Hatch. It’s not that I had expected her to endorse Dan Liljenquist, just that I would not have expected her to see an entrenched, entitled incumbent as the type of person who could fix what’s wrong in Washington. As I thought about it however I realized that there were a few things that might show her endorsement to be a very hollow one to begin with. First and foremost being that she probably knows absolutely nothing about Dan Liljenquist. In other words her endorsement of “Mr. Balanced Budget” is probably as meaningful as Mitt Romney’s endorsement which came back before Senator Hatch even had a challenger. Here are a few key things to consider about this endorsement and what it shows about this race.
Palin endorsed Hatch because he asked for her endorsement (see here). I strongly suspect that Dan Liljenquist never did. What is really happening with this race is that the reality behind it is quite different than the way it is being painted. Hatch and the GOP establishment players are painting this and every other challenge to an incumbent as a tea-party extremist challenge to the status quo. I will not make any attempt to argue how true that is for the various races around the country but let me illustrate the differences between how this race is framed versus what is actually happening.
Investors Business Daily has a pro-Hatch propaganda piece up that deserves a few tweaks.
First, the headline says that republicans must gain control of Congress for the economy to recover. Do we really need to remind everyone that Republicans had almost uninterrupted control of Congress from 1995 to 2007. Had Republicans retained control of Congress beyond 2007 does anyone really believe the economy would not still have gone into the great recession?
Second, IBD claims that re-electing Orrin Hatch is crucial if Republicans regain control because “Orrin Hatch will be the first genuine free-market conservative to {become chairman of the Senate Finance Committee}.” Yes, the same Orrin Hatch who cosponsored PIPA until it was politically untenable and wanted to blow up the computers of anyone with pirated software while his own website was powered by an unlicensed copy of software is now “a genuine free-market conservative.” The author, Ernest Christian, claims that all the prior chairmen of the committee whom he had worked with were either liberals or moderates. I’ll take him at his word on that but his description of moderates as “too often … unwilling to make a clear-cut choice between the free-market principles of conservatives and the big-government desires of liberals” is perfectly descriptive of Hatch. The fact that Mr. Christian has been working with every SFC chair since 1970 shows what is really going on here – it’s one old political dog going to bat for another.
For those who want to see the economy truly recover there is only one answer – we need a new generation of conservatives in Washington and we need enough of them there to change the way the rest of the Republicans act in office. As soon as we say “new generation” you know that Orrin Hatch will never fit that bill – he’s as entrenched an incumbent as you’ll ever find.
Adam Brown had an interesting post about possible causes for low voter turnout in Utah. Adam suggests three possible causes for low voter turnout but essentially dismisses the relative youth of our state as being a cause not supported by the data (and he knows data analysis). That leaves us with two possibilities (according to his post):
Second, maybe it’s because general elections have become much less competitive over the years. … If people believe that their votes are less likely to sway the outcome (either way), then they might not bother to show up.
Third, maybe it’s because Utah strengthened its caucus-convention system in the 1990s, making it harder to force a primary and easier to win in convention.
I won’t pretend to have any insights into which of those two options might be a driving factor. What I thought was interesting was that in suggesting potential solutions to the three possible causes he listed non-partisan runoffs as a potential way to address each of the two plausible causes of the problem.
This was interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First, back when I was doing a lot more political writing than I have been recently, the issue of increasing participation in the political process was one that I was vocal about addressing. I suggested that increasing levels of citizen participation would be akin to our nation experiencing a new birth of freedom. Second, because in lamenting the voter turnout in 2008 – where we actually had fewer people voting than in 2004 despite a larger population of eligible voters – I suggested an idea that was very much like non-partisan runoffs (a term I had not heard before today). My suggestion was that in voting districts where one party received more than 60% of the votes that party would be required to field two candidates on the ballot. That idea really would work best in a runoff system where the top two candidates, regardless of party (assuming neither got over 50% initially), then had a runoff (I would suggest the Saturday after the election). In areas where the dominant party managed to get both of their candidates in the top two it would be the equivalent of an open primary between those two candidates (after the party delegates had weighed in on which two candidates should carry the banner at their conventions).
A chart from an earlier post by Adam shows that prior to me becoming old enough to vote, Utah always had at least 60% participation or more in presidential election years and 40% participation or more in non-presidential election years. Since that time we have never hit either of those benchmarks and our participation has gone from above average to below average (measured against the rest of the nation). That leaves me with two questions:
- Is this a generational issue?
- Did people starting about my age and younger lower our participation levels by not stepping up to the plate when they came of age?
- What effect would an idea like non-partisan runoffs have?
- What would it take to implement such a systemic change?
- How could we make such a system work in conjunction with the rest of the nation where federal elections are concerned?
I would love to hear what others think about those questions because if I really thought it would make a difference and that it was possible to make such a change I would start finding ways to get the issue on our legislative agenda (not this year of course – that would be impossible).
I have been watching the redistricting process with interest although I have not been able to be as vocal in the discussions as I might have wished. This late in the process we can see the forces at work and the concerns being raised. On top of that, I have been asked how I think the lines should be drawn (not what my map would look like so much as how I would go about drawing it). It time now to no longer be silent. Before the final vote on the maps is completed by the special legislative session I need to speak up – and so should everyone else who has not already been heard in this process.
I have been pleased with the process at times and disappointed with the results at other times. I am going to talk about what has happened in the redistricting process so far, good and bad, and also answer the question of what I think is the appropriate process for completing this decennial task.