THIS TIME,
Pryor keeps low profile in negotiations.
WASHINGTON — As the Senate avoided grinding to a halt over a handful of President Barack Obama’s executive branch nominations Tuesday, Sen. Mark Pryor, who has touted his ability to work across party lines in such situations, kept a low profile, according to several congressional observers.
Seven years ago Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas who is up for re-election in 2014, was part of a group of senators who succeeded in steering the Senate clear of a similar logjam, that time over judicial nominations. Pryor and the other members of the bipartisan “Gang of 14,” crafted a deal that allowed for votes on the judges while preserving the right of the minority party to stage a stalling technique known as a filibuster.
This time, there was no gang. After an all-handson-deck session in the old Senate chamber that lasted until Monday night, senators emerged with a deal nearly complete. The next morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said a Republican, John McCain of Arizona, was the motivating force behind the agreement.
Republican senators agreed not to filibuster certain executive branch nominations, allowing them to proceed to a final vote without having to first clear a 60-vote procedural hurdle. In exchange, Democrats agreed not to use what has been called the “nuclear option” — a parliamentary method of changing the rules that, in effect, uses a simple majority vote to eliminate the 60-vote procedural requirement.
One reason Pryor wasn’t outspoken now is that control of the Senate has switched from Republicans to Democrats, said former Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent from Connecticut who served with Pryor on the Gang of 14. In 2006, Republican Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee was majority leader. Frustrated by Democrats’ blocking actions, Frist threatened a rule change unless Democrats stopped filibustering President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees.
To defuse the threat, Lieberman said, getting Democrats like Pryor on board was key.
“If you’re trying to work out an agreement with the majority leader, someone in the minority needs to be able to bend and propose a compromise,” Lieberman said. “Mark played a very constructive unifying role” in the Gang of 14 negotiations, Lieberman recalled.
“McCain is doing that now,” said Lieberman who spoke on McCain’s behalf at the Republican National Convention in 2008 when the Arizonan ran for White House.
In interviews since the 2006 standoff, Pryor has referred to his participation in the Gang of 14 to highlight his bona fides as a politician who can work with members of both parties and help broker bipartisan deals. His Senate office walls are decorated with photos and newspaper headlines celebrating the filibuster deal.
P ryo r couldn’t be reached for comment. His office didn’t return two phone calls and several emails throughout the day Tuesday seeking comment on the filibuster negotiations.
Sen. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, said he was glad the Senate’s minority party can still use the filibuster and require 60 votes for a bill to proceed to a final vote.
“It is important to respect the rights of the minority party,” he said.
Boozman said neither he nor Pryor spoke at Monday evening’s meeting.
Democracy for America, a liberal advocacy group that claims 3,400 members in Arkansas, urged members to call Pryor on Tuesday to press him to support eliminating the filibuster on executive branch nominations. Pryor has been “explicitly unclear about his support for filibuster reform,” said the group, which was founded by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a Democrat who ran for president in 2004.
Neil Sroka, the group’s spokesman, said Tuesday that the group had placed “dozens of calls” to Pryor to press the issue.
Steve Smith, a politics professor at Washington University St. Louis, credited Reid with pressuring senators like Pryor and fellow Southerner Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, from voicing dissent on the issue. Smith said Reid needed to ensure he had at least 50 other Democrats behind him to make his threat to end the filibuster real, and if enough Democrats like Pryor and Landrieu — who also is up for re-election in 2014 — had spoken up, Reid would have had to drop his threat to change the rules of the Senate.
“They’ve kept their mouths shut because they don’t mind giving Reid leverage,” he said.
Smith said self-styled moderates like Pryor and Landrieu tend to want to preserve the right of the minority party to filibuster.
One reason is that on votes where a supermajority of 60 votes is needed to overcome a filibuster, moderates of both parties tend to provide the swing votes needed to pass a bill.
“They don’t want to lose some of their voice in the Senate,” Smith said. “They’ve played up the fact they’re moderates and they want to retain that pivotal role,” he said.
In the 2006 filibuster standoff, a breakthrough was hinged on moderate Democrats, including Pryor, said Norm Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. This time, he said, with a majority of Democrats swearing fealty to Reid, it didn’t matter as much where moderates like Pryor stood.
“If you’re going to play a game of chicken on this stuff, you better have a pretty credible threat that you’d go all the way,” Ornstein said. “Reid had the votes.”