Is Tammy Baldwin as far left as her GOP critics claim?
By Andrew Goldstein
One of the most common charges leveled against US Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) by her two Republican adversaries is that she’s on the far-left wing of her party.
Leah Vukmir’s campaign charges that Baldwin has “extreme liberal values.”
She’s “as far to the left as anybody,” Kevin Nicholson’s camp claims.
But is Baldwin’s voting record as far to the left as her opponents claim? How does Tammy Baldwin compare to other members of her party?
While it’s difficult to define exactly what constitutes “extreme,” Baldwin has a track record of being on the left wing of the Democratic party, with notable exceptions on certain business and trade matters, according to a review of voting records.
On the political spectrum
One well-regarded tool to calculate the relative liberal or conservative leanings of a politician is VoteView, originally developed by Carnegie-Mellon professors Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal.
VoteView, in April 2018, rated Baldwin as the fourth-most liberal member of the Senate and more liberal than 95 percent of the 115th Congress.
The ranking plots every roll call vote on a chart based on similarity in voting records to other senators. Those who appear more toward one edge of the spectrum or another tend to be those who vote that way even when the majority of their ideological brethren vote a different way.
Baldwin’s place on the ideological spectrum has stayed consistent across her time in the Senate; she was more liberal than 96 percent of the members of the 114th and 113th Congresses.
The only three senators to her left are predictably all Democrats: Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Baldwin rates as considerably more liberal than former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold, who was voted out of office in favor of Republican and current senator Ron Johnson in 2010. VoteView rated Feingold as more liberal than 63 percent of the 111th Congress, the last one of which he was a part.
The breakdown
Breaking down the VoteView ranking by issues shows that Baldwin is the fifth-most liberal member of the 100-person senate on economic issues.
On economic matters, Baldwin is just to the left of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who described himself as a Democratic Socialist while running for the Democratic Party’s nomination in the 2016 presidential election.
Baldwin is not quite so liberal when measured on social and racial issues. The data table behind the chart (which is available for download off the VoteView website) shows Baldwin 29th-most liberal on social issues.
Surprisingly, several Republicans, such as Texas senator Ted Cruz and Kentucky senator Rand Paul, are ranked as solidly more liberal than Baldwin is.
How can that be?
The social/racial scale of VoteView is considered not as useful for measuring conservatism or liberalism as is the economic dimension. Because social issues cut across party lines, it has become more difficult to use this dimension as a meaningful measure. The professors addressed this in a 2016 blog post.
Trump Score
Baldwin’s liberal leanings are reflected in another vote-based rating system.
FiveThirtyEight’s “TrumpScore” tracks how often each senator votes in accordance with president Donald Trump’s stated positions.
As of May 21, 2018, Baldwin had voted with Trump only 21.1 percent of the time, which ties her for 12th-lowest in the Senate with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD.), according to FiveThirtyEight.
For comparison’s sake, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was 20th lowest in the rankings, voting with Trump 23.6 percent of the time.
The TrumpScore ratings also measure “Trump Plus-Minus,” or the frequency with which a senator can be expected to vote in accordance with Trump given his margin of electoral victory or defeat in the senator’s home state.
Trump won Wisconsin by less than a percentage point, which FiveThirtyEight translated into a 54.9 percent rate of expected support for Baldwin.
As of May, that placed her “Trump Plus-Minus” at -33.8, the sixth-lowest mark in all the Senate.
This would appear to lend credence to Senator Vukmir’s claims that Baldwin’s policies are out of touch with Wisconsin voters.
But it’s not quite that simple. It is possible for Baldwin to hold views that are directly contrary to the president’s, but still supported by a majority of Wisconsin voters.
Not Predictable on All Issues
Some methods of ideological measurement push back on VoteView and TrumpScore’s characterization of Baldwin.
The Lugar Center, part of Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, gives elected officials “bipartisanship scores” based on bill sponsorship.
Senators or representatives can accrue positive ratings by either co-sponsoring bills introduced by members of the other party or introducing a bill that garners co-sponsorship from across the aisle. Superfluous bills — i.e. renaming a post office — are excluded from the measurement.
The Lugar Center rankings list Baldwin 75th in bipartisanship, and 30th out of 46 Democratic senators in the 114th Congress. While that’s certainly not near the top of the list, it’s also not the “extreme” stance that Vukmir and Nicholson describe. The rankings were checked in April 2018.
One recent example of Baldwin’s across-the-aisle appeal is SB 1153, or the Veterans Acquiring Community Care Expect Safe Services Act, which Kansas Republican Jerry Moran signed on to as a co-sponsor.
It allows the Veterans Administration to revoke eligibility to provide non-VA health services to any health care provider found to be in violation of medical guidelines. That bill passed the Senate last May and is awaiting a vote in the House.
As with any politician, Baldwin has certain issues that she has historically been willing to compromise on and others that are less open for discussion. To figure out which issues fall into which categories, it’s useful to look at ratings from special interest groups.
For instance, women’s rights and abortion is an issue on which Baldwin has consistently voted liberal. She has received 100 percent ratings from NARAL Pro-Choice America going back for over a decade and corresponding zero percent ratings from pro-life organizations such as the National Right to Life Committee, per VoteSmart.
Other organizations are not so consistent with their ratings of Baldwin, even those that are Republican-leaning in their positions.
The Chamber
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a pro-business lobbying group, gave Baldwin a 63 percent rating in 2016, the highest rating she’s earned since 1999. This came despite a lifetime score of 32 percent from the Chamber, the fourth-lowest mark among Senate democrats.
The chamber lists eight bills on which their ratings of each senator are based. Most of the time, a vote for de-regulation is counted as a “correct” vote.
Only six of the 46 other Democratic senators had a higher score than Baldwin’s. The only two Democrats with 100 percent scores are Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.
Despite Baldwin’s liberal leanings on economic matters, her interests and the chamber’s aligned when it came to regulatory clarity. Baldwin voted for SB 764, a chamber-supported bill that established national standards for GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) Food Labeling.
The chamber lauded SB 764 for preventing “chaos” that would have ensued if “myriad individual state regulations” were allowed.
Trade is another issue where Baldwin’s stated position and Trump’s align more than one might expect.
Baldwin joined 81 other senators to confirm Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s nominee for Trade Representative. In a May 11, 2017 press release announcing her support for Lighthizer, Baldwin called on him to negotiate with Canada to lower some of the trade barriers she said were hurting Wisconsin dairy farmers.
Baldwin also characterized the North American Free Trade Agreement as a “flawed trade deal” and said she supports renegotiation. NAFTA is a frequent target of President Trump’s rhetoric.
It is worth noting that although Baldwin has stepped up her anti-NAFTA rhetoric, this protectionist position did not begin with Trump’s rise to prominence.
For example, a blog post written by the Wisconsin branch of the AFL-CIO in 2010 identified Baldwin as a strong supporter of the TRADE Act, which would require that “existing trade pacts be reviewed and revised with product safety, environmental and labor standards in mind.” That bill died in committee in the House of Representatives before Baldwin would have gotten to vote on it.
In 2017, Baldwin made NAFTA a prime target. Her website shows 11 press releases on the subject last year as opposed to none in 2016.
Such diversions from mainstream Democratic politics are the exception and not the rule for Baldwin, who voted against most bills that were heavily favored by Republicans.
These include two of the biggest conservative legislative priorities in the Trump administration: the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was passed in December and the failed Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act in July of 2017.
