This past week’s “special session” kept 150 statehouse politicians off the campaign trail, but a political scientist says it may have boosted their candidacies.Drake University political science professor Arthur Sanders says legislators running for higher office were more visible this past week on the “stage” of a “special session,” overshadowing the fact they had less time to campaign. He says it’s impossible to seperate doing their job from the self-promotion of trying to move up to a higher office. He says even if the limelight from the special session was all innocent, it still gives good publicity to the legislators. Sanders says one downside to holding office is it creates a voting record which opponents can exploit, and voters — for example — may blame the incumbents for the state’s financial crunch.
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