I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
According to a recent academic study, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., is one of the Senators with a true claim at being a “maverick.” This came on the heels of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., telling Newsweek that he never considered himself a maverick.
Ben Lauderdale, a doctoral student in the Department of Politics at Princeton, told The Monkey Cage via e-mail, “These ‘mavericks’ are voting less on the basis of the political dimension that predicts all legislators’ behavior and more on particularistic factors unique to themselves.”
In other words, they aren’t voting a certain way because of their party affiliation, necessarily, but because of something else.
The study, which is apparently no longer available online, shows that Bingaman is the sixth-most “maverick” politician in the Senate. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., is first on the list.
It should surprise no one that Reps. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, top the list in the House.
McCain, for what it is worth, did not make the Senate’s top-ten; while he was “mavericky” earlier in the decade, that has fallen off before his presidential candidacy in 2008 and his current tough Republican primary for Arizona Senate.
