Co-Authored by Sam Bydlon, Salil Malkan, and Marty Santalucia

We often elect or appoint leaders that represent our values; an individual who we feel reflects our views and priorities. These people are tasked with guiding our values and maintaining the day to day business of our government; there is real power in possessing both of these responsibilities. When, however, these roles are filled by two different individuals, the power dynamics become a balancing act. This post will explore how that act plays out in the Pennsylvania State Senate.

In our last post, we used voting data from the 2015–2016 Pennsylvania State House to identify Democrats and Republicans who represent the ideological cross-roads of their party. These individuals, we argued, hold stances that best represent their parties in totality. For negotiators, this is helpful insight. Understanding these individuals translates to a better understanding of what other members might be comfortable supporting. What remained unclear was whether the identified members are ideological leaders, or if they just happen to hold views that put them in this central position. We wondered, if they were to change their positions, would they maintain their centrality within the caucus? If they did, this would be evidence of them being a “true” ideological leader. However, if their centrality diminished, they may have simply held views that temporarily put them in a central position.

Our previous analysis identified that central members were often recently elected and always “rank-and-file” (meaning that they don’t hold any internally elected positions within the caucus). Perhaps the most surprising result of our previous analysis was that none, not one, of the top-ranking members in either the House or the Senate were identified as central members of their caucus. Therefore, we are suggesting that the central members were identified because they held views which were representative of the larger legislative body at the time, not that they are true ideological leaders (yet).

Republican Rep. Stephen Bloom comments on our first post which identified Rep. Greg Rothman (@wgregrothman) as the ideological center of the House Republicans.

In the House, Democratic Leader Frank Dermody’s betweenness was only the 37th highest out of all 83 House Democrats. Speaker Mike Turzai’s betweenness was the 31st highest out of all 119 House Republicans. The landscape was similar in the Senate. Neither the Senate’s Democratic Leader, Senator Jay Costa nor President Pro Tempore, Senator Joe Scarnati (in Pennsylvania the President Pro Tempore is elected by the full Senate and is equivalent to the Speaker of the House) were identified as being amongst the most central members. Of all 19 Senate Democrats, Senator Costa’s betweenness was 5th highest and equal to 9 other Senators. President Pro Tempore Scarnati had the 5th highest betweenness out of 31 Senate Republicans. All of these leaders, however, are still tasked with moving their caucus toward legislative goals. Their challenge, and what we will explore here, is how they accomplish that objective from a suboptimal position within the network.

The Senate Democrats are the smallest caucus with 19 members, so let’s focus on this body for now to keep things simple. There are a handful of metrics within our network that we can use to identify the source of a leader’s influence. These metrics include: