Congress.org and Knowlegis compile congressional power rankings of elected officials. The rankings are based upon 15 characteristics of power. These characteristics were measured and weighted to determine the relative power demonstrated by Members of Congress. Those characteristics may be grouped into three broad categories.

1) Position: How much power could the legislator wield through his/her position in the Congress by virtue of tenure, committee assignments or leadership position? This Power Category included weightings for all committees, subcommittees, and leadership positions, taking into consideration majority or minority party status of the member.

2) Influence: How much power did the legislator demonstrate to influence the congressional agenda or outcome of votes through the media, congressional caucuses or money contributed to other Members of Congress by his or her campaign committees or leadership PACs?

3) Legislative Activity: How much power did the legislator demonstrate through the passage of legislation or shaping legislation through amendments? The team eliminated from that data items which did not substantially change the bill or existing law. These included amendments dealing with technical changes or bills of a ceremonial or commemorative nature such as naming of post offices or other public buildings, or non-binding resolutions that expressed the "sense of the Congress."

The results for the Arizona delegation:

Sen. John McCain, Senate Rank #3
Sen. Jon Kyl, Senate Rank #17

Rep. Jim Kolbe, House Rank #30
Rep. Rick Renzi, House Rank #84
Rep. Jeff Flake, House Rank #140
Rep. J.D. Hayworth, House Rank #142
Rep. Trent Franks, House Rank #220
Rep. Fred Pastor,  House Rank #229
Rep. John Shadegg, House Rank #243
Rep. Raul Grijalva, House Rank #279

There is a certain irony in the fact that, while there is hardly anything so important in politics than budgets, there is hardly anything more boring. Politicians rely on this fact to ensure that constituents succumb to the soporific effect of endless columns of numbers and jargon before figuring out exactly where their money is … Read more

The master of strategy Sun Tzu wrote, "know thy enemy." In order to overcome an adversary, you must first understand him. This is a lesson that the Republicans have forgotten in their effort to conduct a "war on terrorism," but one which Democrats should heed in seeking to overthrow the current dominance of the GOP … Read more

Republicans are strongly implying that Secretary of State Jan Brewer is responsible for the large increase in voter registration in 2004, despite her support of Prop 200 and generally acting like Arizona’s own Katherine Harris. What is responsible for the surge in voter registration is not Brewer’s non-existent leadership, but the contentious and close-run 2004 … Read more

I wasn’t going to give the cowards behind two recent anonymous hit mailers the satisfaction of spreading their disease for them, but since other local bloggers have already broached the subject, I decided to put in my two cents. I’m not going to itemize or debunk the charges, Ted has done that quite sufficiently at … Read more

I hosted a MoveOn agenda party yesterday, and one of the very popular ideas was to have a national system of public campaign finance similar to Arizona’s own Clean Elections (which just got a new directer in Eric Ehst, a long-time grassroots political organizer and consultant who is definitely on the people’s side). What most … Read more

I don’t mean to denegrate Gore, or to imply any unethical behavior on his part by a comparison with Richard Nixon. Instead, I intend to illustrate through Nixon’s career an eminently reasonable trajectory in Gore’s political career. There are several parallels between the careers of Nixon and Gore. Both were elected to Congress at a … Read more

Please attend a MoveOn.org sponsored Positive Agenda party this Thursday, May 25th @ 6pm. The time is coming to kick GOP butt in ’06 and ’08, and it certainly appears to be up to the grassroots to set a positive agenda to move the Democratic Party forward. Come on down to the Shanty in downtown … Read more