Ok, only five states are strongly represented here: Mass., Miss., SC, CA, and OH. TR 23:14, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Were we considering breaking them up by state? I don't think that's necessary, even without that census data. Turtle Fan 23:16, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Any Senate committees that have legs here? Committee work in the Senate usually isn't as storied, though the Judiciary Committee gets to do hearings for Supreme Court appointments and the Foreign Relations Committee gets to kill treaties. Turtle Fan 23:26, June 10, 2010 (UTC)
- One more thing to look into I suppose. TR 00:20, June 11, 2010 (UTC)
- Looking through our list quickly, no one's really standing out as being connected to a particularly famous committee hearing that I can think of. Hiram Johnson was a leading figure among the Irreconcilables who killed US ratification of Versailles, but I don't remember whether he was on the Foreign Relations Committee. And Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr (who in the usual arrangement should have gone by Henry Cabot Lodge II) keeps taunting me by reminding me of Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr (or HCL I--or just HCL--Whatever.)
- The only one I can look at and say "Ah yes! Such-and-such committee" is Wade and the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. We've already got that one.
- What about Presidents Pro Tempore, and/or Majority/Minority Leaders? Thurmond was PPT and LBJ was Majority Leader. Checking the others should be quick enough. Turtle Fan 00:37, June 11, 2010 (UTC)
Presidents Pro Tempore: Benjamin Wade, Richard Brevard Russell, Jr., and Strom Thurmond. We also have the only Deputy President Pro Tempore in the history of the US Senate, Hubert Humphrey, and Andrew Johnson, who would have been eligible for the position if it existed at the time.
Majority Leaders: Robert Taft, Lyndon Johnson. (Actually they held their respective parties' leadership posts at the same time for a little while there.) Turtle Fan 00:48, June 11, 2010 (UTC)
For the record, the reason I added a dozen or so succession boxes to Senators and House of Reps is that I realized both cats should have had the OTL/ATL split some time ago. Since we'd done the governors by state split, I went ahead and did a count for this category. I haven't cross referenced with HoR Members, but I think the numbers will be nearly the same.
In any event, the results are interesting in their way. Not every state is represented, of course: 27 different states have at least one. There are two with five: Tennessee and Ohio. MA and SC each have 4, MS, TX, and CA have 3; LA, ME, PA, IN, IL, and NY each have two. The remainder are singletons, so I don't think subcatting by states makes any sense at this time. TR 22:23, September 18, 2011 (UTC)
- Another argument against subdivision is that every Representative and every Senator is the same. The office is defined by the US constitution; the people who hold it are not part of their respective state governments; and there is no unique spin that a state can put on its Congressional delegations. Sure you can vote in a buch of oddballs who wouldn't be electable anywhere else, but that doesn't affect the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of the office. In recent years a few states have gotten away with coming up with their own particular method of filling vacancies--in some states the governor can choose anyone he or she pleases, in some states it has to be a member of the party that won the seat the last time it came up in an election, and MA took it away from the governor altogether and put it in the hands of the legislature--but anything that changes the nature of the office is purely within the realm of the federal government. For instance, some years ago some states attempted to impose term limits by amending their constitutions. The Supreme Court told them to stick it.
- Once a person gets to Washington with a certificate of election, the state he or she represents has zero impact on his or her formal role. Therefore, I would argue that, even if we were able to subcategorize US Senators and US Reps, there would be no point to doing so. Turtle Fan 03:38, September 19, 2011 (UTC)