Political party ideology is central to El Paso’s political scene with the Democratic Party being the lead ideological party in El Paso’s elections. The ongoing March 5 Primary, like past primaries, will likely result in who in El Paso will hold national and state legislative seats for next legislative sessions. Republicans are unlikely to prevail in the November election as the Democrats hold a stranglehold on the city’s electorate.
It has been opined that to win an election in El Paso the candidate must have an Hispanic surname and a strong Democratic Party ballot history. Some of the candidates in the March 5 Primary have accused their opponents of not having a strong enough Democratic Party affiliation to be elected to office. It has also been opined that some of El Paso’s legislators are “Democrat in name only.”
When Norma Chávez lost her seat to Naomi Gonzalez in 2010, Chávez accused Gonzalez of being a DINO, or “Democrat in name only.” The Hispanic vote has been argued as being the vote to lead a Democratic Party revolt in Texas politics for several years. That has not happened. In addition to Hispanics not voting in bloc because of differences in ideology, Hispanics along the border are generally more conservative than most Democrats in the state. With Hispanics expected to become the majority in Texas next year, both political parties are looking to understand how Hispanics will vote in upcoming elections.
Beto O’Rourke, in his race against Greg Abbott, was supposed to be the lynchpin for the Democrats taking control of the Texas legislature this year. O’Rourke did not upset the Republican control of Texas and it is unlikely that the Democrats will take over Texas politics in this election cycle.
With the constant name-calling of El Paso’s candidates over whether their opponents have strong enough Democratic Party credentials to represent El Pasoans as national and state legislators, the open question remains whether El Paso’s political candidates that are elected to office are “Democrats in name only” or do they represent the party’s ideology with their voting patterns?
Are El Paso’s Democrats, Democrats while running for office or do their votes in office reflect their Democratic Party credentials?
Roll-call, or votes cast as legislators, are often scaled to arrive at an estimate of a legislator’s ideological alignment through the votes they cast. Scorecards are created be special interest groups to score the ideologies of office holders.
A 2006 study of the impact of party and ideology on legislators’ votes by University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth’s Shannon Jenkins found that “political parties play a large role in influencing vote decisions, but legislators will sometimes ignore the demands of party to vote according to their own beliefs.”
The Institute for Legislative Analysis, a self-described “public policy research and data hub” released a roll-call analysis for the Texas legislators yesterday. The “score card” analyzes the roll-call votes of legislators and scores them on whether they support “limited government principals.”
Although the principal of “limited government” carries sufficient methodological faults that limits whether a legislator’s vote is governed by personal ideology or by party politics, it, nonetheless, allows us a glimpse of El Paso’s legislators through their votes once in office.
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However, before looking at the “score card” created by the Institute for Legislative Analysis (ILA) it is important to understand the inherent bias of the ILA. The ILA was established by former members of the American Conservative Union (ACU). The ACU organizes the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). After the ACU began facing allegations of sexual misconduct against a former Trump Administration official, Mercedes Schlapp, and financial irregularities within the ACU, some former members launched the ILA.
The ILA, which is right-of-center, released its first scorecard in 2022.
Where El Paso’s Legislators Rank
The ILA uses selected roll-call votes to score how a legislator “views the role of government.” Legislator’s scores closer to zero suggests that the legislator “believes government should have a large role in society and the lives of individuals.” A high score suggests that the legislator believes that the “government should be limited in its size and scope and only perform a small set of duties aligned with the U.S. Constitution.”
A recent and ongoing example of limited government philosophy in El Paso is the years-long controversy over the downtown sports arena. Although the controversy over the Chihuahua’s ballpark and the proposed downtown sports arena has been framed as an issue of gentrification, ultimately the underlining controversy is over the role of government, through the city’s taxpayers, in building entertainment venues with public funds. Thus, the controversies center on the role of government in the city.
Unsurprisingly, the ILA rated El Paso’s congresswoman, Veronica Escobar (TX-16) as voting against limited government in the 79 votes the ILA analyzed for her. With an ILA score of 1.27%, Escobar ranked in tenth place along with 25 other legislators in congress who support more government. Among those ranked with Escobar included Ilhan Omar (MN-5), Alexsandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) and Pramila Jayapal (WA-7). All are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus where Jayapal is the current Chair and Omar is the Deputy Chair.
According to the ILA, Escobar voted only once, out of the 79 votes analyzed for limited government. According to the ILA, Escobar voted for speeding up the environmental regulatory permitting process for semiconductor facilities (S 3451, House 2022) to help solve “the semiconductor shortage” by bringing semiconductor facilities online faster.
El Paso’s Texas Senator, César Blanco (District 29), was ranked 119th with a score of 23.08% by the ILA. Out of the 104 roll-call votes analyzed by the ILA, Blanco voted 28 times (27%) for limiting the government’s authority over constituents.
At the House of Representatives, El Paso is represented by four primary legislators and a fourth legislator that represents a far-east sliver of El Paso. Mary González (District 75), Lina Ortega (District 77), who is not running for re-election, Joe Moody (District 78) and Claudia Ordaz (District 79) are El Paso’s primary legislators at the Texas House. Eddie Morales (District 74) represents an east portion of El Paso County. González, Morales, Moody and Ordaz are running unopposed in the March 5 Democratic Party Primary.
According to the ILA’s roll-call analysis, Evelina Ortega scored 13.85% in the 110 votes scored by the ILA putting her in 174th place among the 181 Texas House legislators scored by the ILA. Mary González placed at 151 with a score of 17.28% out of the 108 votes scored for her by the ILA. Joe Moody was scored 23.23% by the ILA putting him in 118th place with the 110 votes the ILA analyzed. The last two El Paso Texas House legislators, Eddie Morales and Claudia Ordaz placed 111th and 110th in the ILA rankings respectively. The ILA analyzed 112 Morales votes scoring him 26.50% and 105 votes for Ordaz scoring her at 26.74%.
The more liberal of the El Paso legislators at the Texas House appears to be Ortega, at least based on the ILA analysis. The more conservative of the El Paso House legislators are Ordaz and Morales followed by Moody and González. El Paso’s state legislators all scored in the bottom half of the legislators ranked by the ILA, making El Paso’s delegation more liberal than their counterparts.
Although economic considerations or party politics may influence a legislator’s vote, the ILC ranking allows us a glimpse of El Paso’s legislator’s political leanings through ILC’s roll-call vote analysis.
The Democratic Party platform is largely silent on the role of government over constituents instead focusing on “building stronger, fairer economy,” “achieving universal” healthcare and “combating the climate crisis and pursuing environmental justice,” through government oversight without explicitly stating government must grow to meet the party’s platform goals.
The history of the Democratic Party’s rise to national prominence goes back to the 1930’s New Deal that put Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House and gave the Democrats control of congress. The Democrats then appealed to blue-collar and low-income workers along with largely recent Catholic and Jewish immigrants who helped to provide the Democrat’s political strength to win national elections in the 1930’s. The Democratic Party has since favored strong government to combat economic disparity and benefit disadvantaged demographics along racial lines while the Republicans, supported by business and middle-class income earners, generally favor less government.
The ILA’s report opines that the Democrat Party controls the Texas House and that the Republicans controls the State Senate, although the Texas House and Senate are both controlled by the Republican Party when the legislator’s party is counted.
The polarization of party politics has been an ongoing controversy since Donald J. Trump was elected in 2016. The Pew Research Center has documented that “on average, Democrats and Republicans are further apart ideologically today (2022) than at any time in the past 50 years.” Pew Research, however, found that the Republicans “have moved further to the right than Democrats have to the left.”
For their part, El Paso’s legislators lean towards the left on legislative votes and mostly represent the Democratic Party’s unsaid platform that greater government is the way to solving the problems faced by the country.