A Cascade of Inequality
Unequal representation in the Senate doesn’t end on election day
This story is the first part of “What’s the Harm?,” itself part of a larger article, “The Great Bait-and-Switch: U.S. Senate Malapportionment in Historical Perspective”
This story owes a great deal to chapters 3–5 of the book “Sizing up the Senate.” For the full effect, buy a copy here.
Intro: Bits of Meat and Bread
Let’s return to our strange feast metaphor for a moment.
Imagine you are seated at one of the larger tables. Your table receives its share of hot food, and it is duly divided up. You receive a plate with a chunk of cooked ground beef, a bit of toasted bread, and perhaps a scrap of lettuce or other vegetable.
Because each table at this feast receives the same amount of hot food regardless of the number of people seated there, you know that the guests at smaller tables are to getting to eat much more hot food than you are.
What you might not know is that they’re eating hamburgers.
So it is with the U.S. Senate. Voters in Texas probably understand that their vote in a Senate race matters a lot less than the vote of someone in Delaware.
However, inequality doesn’t end with election day. Residents of larger states have senators that are less accessible, less helpful with personal problems, and, in general, less powerful in the Senate. In contrast, small-state senators, who comprise the vast majority of the Senate, are more vulnerable to influence by special interests.
A problem for large states is a problem for Americans
It is tempting to dismiss “large state” problems as problems for Californians and Texans, and possibly residents of New York and Florida. However, by almost any definition, the majority of Americans live in large states.
According to 2016 Census estimates, 51.1% of the U.S. population (in the 50 states and DC) reside in the nine largest states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina. This means that 82 of 100 senators represent less than half of the U.S.
71.4% of Americans live in a state comprising more than one-fiftieth of the population, which is to say they are under-represented in the Senate.
Finally, a mere 16.2% of the population, residing in the 25 smallest states, control half the seats in the Senate.
A place at the table
Living in a large state not only means less influence over who sits in the U.S. Senate, it also means having senators that are less accessible and less responsive, and who, as a result, provide worse service.
One of the best illustrations of this difference is, literally, a table. When political scientists Frances Lee and Bruce Oppenheimer interviewed senators, staff, and lobbyists in the 1990s to learn about differences in representation, several of them cited the “Matsunaga table,” where the late Senator Spark Matsunaga held daily luncheons with his constituents in the Senate dining room (1999, 67). According to Lee and Oppenheimer, “Matsunaga was still able to cultivate his constituents in much the same way he had as a House member.”
At the time, Hawaii comprised about 1/250 of the U.S. population, as it does today.
In contrast, having personally attended a constituent breakfast in D.C. with Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, I was able to see and hear the Senator, but not ask a question (not enough time) or talk to her face-to-face.
Another illustration of the sort of personal contact only residents of small states receive is an anecdote about the late Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia. When Sen. Byrd was disabled in the hospital, he spent the evening calling constituents to celebrate wedding anniversaries and other personal milestones (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 61)
Larger states also tend to be more politically diverse, meaning that these states’ two senators are not only shared among more people, but more types of political constituencies. Lee and Oppenheimer share a story of a staff member who transferred from the office of a small-state senator to a large-state one, and found it much more challenging (“there’s an organized constituency against you on almost everything”) whereas in his previous job, almost half the mail received was about dairy (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 69).
Surprisingly, even money allocated to senators for staff and office accounts is not fully proportional to state population, meaning that large-state senators have less staff per constituent (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 87). For example, at the time of writing, Ted Cruz, senator from Texas has the same number of district offices as Susan Collins, senator from Maine, despite Texas having more than 20 times more people, spread over a land area more than seven times as large.
As a result of all these factors, residents of large states are in general much less happy with the senatorial representation they receive than residents of small states, amounting to an average job approval rating 20 percent lower in California than in the seven states with a single House district.
Who you gonna call?
Members of Congress not only vote on legislation, they also help individual constituents when they have a problem involving the federal government.
If you lived in a state with a single House district, and you had a problem, would you contact your member of the House, or one of your senators?
Senators have more clout, being 1/100 of a branch of the legislature rather than 1/435. And in your small state they are about as accessible as your House member, since they represent the exact same constituency. All things being equal, you’d probably prefer to take your problem to a senator. In fact, that’s exactly what Lee and Oppenheimer found (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 63).
However if you lived in a larger state, you’d face a different choice. Your senators still have more power than your House member, but that only helps if you can get their attention. So you might give up and go with your House member anyway. In fact, that’s exactly what residents of larger states do: starting with states with at as few as four House districts, constituents are more likely to take a personal problem to their House member than to a senator.
“A very powerful senator”
As a resident of a large state (California), one way I’ve heard Californians try to wave away the fact that nearly 40 million of us have to share just two senators with something to the effect of:
“Yes, but Dianne Feinstein is a very powerful senator.”
In fact, in general, the opposite is true. Representing a large state is a much more demanding job than representing a small one, and as a result, large-state senators have less time to participate in floor debates or committee work, or take leadership positions. As a result, not only do residents of a large state have to share their senators with more other people, they generally have senators that are less powerful than their counterparts from smaller states.
In addition to serving more constituents, one of the main demands on a large-state senator’s time is fundraising. In 1994, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California was quoted as saying “my people want me to be on the phone [fund-raising] all the time.” (Harwood, 1994, citied by Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 114).
Another former senator compared Sen. Barbara Boxer, also of California, to “a squirrel on an exercise wheel in a cage” (Lee, 1999, 115) because of her constant need to leave the Senate floor so she could be on the phone fundraising.
Whereas senators from small and medium-sized states can raise nearly 80% of the campaign funds they need in the last two years of their six-year term, this drops to less than 60% for senators from the three largest states (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 111).
What this means is in general, it is senators from small states that have the extra time to devote to committee work (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 75) or take a leadership position in the Senate.
The last Senate Majority Leader to come from a large state was Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas, who held that position until 1961. Since then, the Senate has gone from a part-time job to a full-time one and campaign costs have risen significantly (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 152). As a result, the largest state any Senate Majority leader has come from since then is Tennessee, a state with about 2% of the population.
The current Senate Minority leader, Chuck Schumer, does come from a large state, New York. However, at the time of writing he has held that position for less than a year. Before him, the last Senate Minority Leader from a state larger than Tennessee was Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, whose term ended in 1977. If Senator Schumer were to become Majority leader, that would be the first time in more than 50 years that a senator from one of the ten largest states has held that position.
Pity the poor lobbyist
Who would you think is more vulnerable to influence by special interests: the overworked large-state senator constantly on the phone fundraising, or the down-home small-state senator who has time to personally congratulate constituents on their wedding anniversaries?
Counterintuitively, it is the small-state senators we need to worry about. Large-state senators are insulated by two factors. First, they are simply too busy to be as accessible to lobbyists as small-state senators. Second, they must raise a much greater proportion of their campaign funds from their own constituents than they do from special-interest PACs.
In their interviews, Lee and Oppenheimer found that lobbyists have a much harder time with large-state senators. As one real-estate lobbyist explained in frustration:
Everybody in this town dreads dealing with those big state senators. They have a hundred different pressures on them. It’s hard getting them to focus on your issue… (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 76–77)
One barrier lobbyists face is large-state senators’ lack of free time. In comparing large-state Senator Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania) and small-state Senator Bob Bennett (Utah), he noted: “Yesterday there was a lull in the Senate’s consideration of the tax bill. [Only] Bennett had time to BS with me in the hall.” (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 75) As another lobbyist put it, “Senators in the large states are so busy. There are so many CEOs” (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 79).
If a large-state senator is not able to cultivate a personal relationship, lobbyists can also have a constituent who does have a personal relationship with the senator call. Lobbyists call these people “grasstops” (a play on “grassroots”).
However, in large states, such people are in short supply. The same real estate lobbyist quoted above bemoaned the fact that none of the members of his association knew Pete Wilson (California) or Dennis Moynihan (New York). (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 76). Even if a lobbyist can find someone influential, senators from large states are more likely to duck their call (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 78).
A lobbyist can also try to get a senator’s attention by donating to their campaign. However, as large-state senators raise more funds, it takes larger donations just to get noticed. In comparing Senators Al D’Amato (New York) and Max Baucus (Montana), one lobbyist noted:
If I go to a D’Amato fundraiser and give $1,000, I’m just one line on a four-hundred-line printout… you’re like an ant crawling on the body politic. (Lee and Oppenheimer, 1999, 76)
Whereas with small-state senators, a lobbyist may not need to donate money at all, as their PAC may have already done it. Lee and Oppenheimer note that senators have the option of raising campaign funds from “customers” (their constituents) or “investors” (special interests) (1999, 84).
However, PACs generally aren’t willing to spend more money on a large-state senator than a small one. As one senator explained it:
There’s a simple reason for the fact that PACs give the same amount to all senators—all senators have the same number of votes.
But small-state senators don’t need as much money to get elected, meaning they raise a much greater proportion of campaign money from PACs. In analyzing the 1992–1996 election cycle, Lee and Oppenheimer found senators from the smallest states raised more than half of their campaign funds from PACs, whereas for the largest state, it was less than one-seventh (1999, 107). Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight echoed this finding in an analysis of campaign donations between 2003 and 2009, noting that of the senators that took the greatest proportion of their campaign funds from PACs, the top 20 all came from states with below-median populations.
Think about what this means for the country as a whole. Thanks to the filibuster, it only takes 41 of 100 senators to block legislation. (And remember, half of senators represent less than one-sixth of the population.) Senators from larger states are less dependent on PAC money, but special interests don’t need any of their votes to block or water down legislation they find objectionable. As Silver put it:
This goes a long way toward explaining… why the Senate tends to be more protective than the House of corporate interests — be they in the form of bank bailouts, tax breaks, or whatever else… We don’t need vague notions about the “cultural” differences between the two chambers to explain this — they have mostly to do with where the money is flowing in from.
In the end, residents of small states benefit from the personal touch only small-state senators have the time to give. But the real winners are special interests. Just as in our feast analogy, when it comes to representation in the Senate, most Americans are left with table scraps.
Next part, “Piglets at the Trough,” coming soon!
