Latest spat between Republicans in the Washington State Senate proves Rodney Tom’s “majority coalition” is a fiction

In the wake of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate’s speedy vote in favor of an improved ver­sion of the DREAM Act, sev­er­al of the more uncom­pro­mis­ing mem­bers of the Repub­li­can Cau­cus have decid­ed to declare their inde­pen­dence from Rod­ney Tom’s so-called “Major­i­ty Coali­tion Cau­cus” by hav­ing their names scrubbed from the MCC’s web­site, the Seat­tle Times’ Bri­an Rosen­thal is report­ing.

Janea Holmquist New­bry, Pam Roach, Don Ben­ton, and one oth­er Repub­li­can sen­a­tor are evi­dent­ly still mad about last week’s sur­prise vote, in which a bipar­ti­san major­i­ty of the Sen­ate vot­ed to approve leg­is­la­tion that would allow the state to pro­vide finan­cial aid to new young Amer­i­cans who want to go to col­lege here but lack cit­i­zen­ship because they were brought into the coun­try illegally.

“I will not par­tic­i­pate in the Major­i­ty Coali­tion Cau­cus when they pro­mote things that are in oppo­si­tion to stan­dard Repub­li­can ideas,” Don Ben­ton told Rosenthal.

The obnox­ious Ben­ton went on to slam Tom as “the worst major­i­ty leader in twen­ty years” accord­ing to a tweet post­ed by Rosen­thal.

We find Ben­ton’s fum­ing amus­ing, con­sid­er­ing that he has pre­vi­ous­ly tak­en cred­it for Rod­ney Tom and Tim Shel­don’s pow­er grab. In late 2012 Ben­ton released a state­ment say­ing how proud he was that his nar­row vic­to­ry over Demo­c­rat Tim Prob­st made the coup pos­si­ble. (Vot­ers had elect­ed a Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty to gov­ern both the House and the Sen­ate just a few weeks prior).

For her part, Roach told Rosen­thal that she and oth­er hard­line Repub­li­cans plan to reassert con­trol by bring­ing forth an amend­ment to cau­cus rules requir­ing that any sig­nif­i­cant bill get a roll call vote with­in the cau­cus before being sent to the floor. Sup­pos­ed­ly, that pro­pos­al came up for con­sid­er­a­tion this afternoon.

This pub­lic infight­ing val­i­dates what we have been say­ing about Tom’s pow­er grab since day one. There is no “major­i­ty coali­tion cau­cus” because there is no coali­tion and no major­i­ty. There is, rather, a very uneasy pow­er-shar­ing agree­ment, which has pro­duced dis­as­trous results, espe­cial­ly for the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State.

It’s clear that Repub­li­cans like Pam Roach and Don Ben­ton do not con­sid­er Rod­ney Tom to be their leader. They’ve become quite accus­tomed to get­ting their way since late 2012, when Tom and Shel­don sold out their Demo­c­ra­t­ic col­leagues and agreed to become enablers of Repub­li­can extremism.

Last week was one of the few excep­tions to that. We have rarely seen sub­ur­ban Repub­li­cans break ranks and join Democ­rats to pass sen­si­ble legislation.

Roach, Ben­ton, Holmquist New­bry, et al. undoubt­ed­ly view the pow­er shar­ing agree­ment with Tom and Shel­don as a tem­po­rary alliance of convenience.

If Repub­li­cans had just one more seat in the Sen­ate, they would actu­al­ly have out­right con­trol over the cham­ber and would­n’t need to put up with Tom or Shel­don, who is pres­i­dent pro tem­pore under the pow­er shar­ing agree­ment. They could name their own major­i­ty leader and rel­e­gate the pair to the back bench.

Con­verse­ly, Democ­rats need only two seats to regain the major­i­ty in 2014 and put Repub­li­cans back in the minority.

Tom’s seat is con­sid­ered one of the most like­ly to flip, since the 48th LD is among the most Demo­c­ra­t­ic of Wash­ing­ton’s sub­ur­ban dis­tricts. Democ­rats are field­ing for­mer Kirk­land City Coun­cilmem­ber Joan McBride in that race.

In the near­by 45th, the par­ty is back­ing Navy vet­er­an and Ama­zon prod­uct man­ag­er Matt Isen­how­er to take on Andy Hill. In the 28th, mean­while, Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tami Green is chal­leng­ing fresh­man Repub­li­can Steve O’Ban.