A color spectrum analysis of the redness of 23 red states

Last month, Pleiades Strategy published a report titled “2023 Statehouse Report: The Right-Wing Assault on Freedom to Invest Responsibly in Legislatures”. The report is based on a large research effort that tracked 165 anti-ESG bills introduced by Republican lawmakers in 37 states. Obviously, some of these were introduced in purple and even blue states, so they didn’t reach very far. The report has received wide press coverage E&E News, Guardian, reuters, And S&P Global,

Fortunately, there has been some progress in the state-level anti-ESG movement in 23 states. Unfortunately the progress of this movement was very uneven. The report has some summary statistics but Francis Sawyer, founder of Pleiades Strategy, kindly provided me with an update. They are tracking it live. Here’s a quick summary of the results as of July 27, 2023 (with my comments). oblique, You can find all the delicious details in this spreadsheet.

• At least 165 separate bills (including 9 resolutions) were introduced in 37 states. ,4.5 per state on average )

• 84 bills have lapsed in 23 states: (an alarming 50 percent mortality rate .)

In 18 states where the law was introduced, no law was passed. Republicans control 10 of these states. ,Looks like there was some infighting between the MAGA guys and the sane guys.)

3 bills were vetoed by the governor in Arizona. ,kari lake wouldn’t have done it , ,

42 Bills which were not passed will be implemented in the 2024 legislative session. ,hope springs eternal ,

• 22 Bills and 6 Resolutions approved by the State Governments: (28/165=17 percent)

• 11 active bills are pending. Committee hearing has not been held in five. ,positive thinking here, 40/165 = 24 percent)

My take on this is that after countless hours of legislative effort, all funded by the state taxpayers whom these bills would harm, the results have been modest. But perhaps I am being unfair by looking at it too narrowly. There is an aspect of sheer entertainment political theater in all of this that is good for placating the base (which, for the most part, has no idea what this is all about) and some shade at the asset managers and libs (libertarians, not libertarians) good to put).

Since Sawyer is much closer to the data than I am and essentially follows it on a real-time basis, I asked him what he thought about all this activity. He explained: “Our research shows that banking associations, chambers of commerce and financial officials generally align with the Republican agenda and call for high costs, legal fallacies and bad faith attacks in these proposals. It doesn’t get any easier. The culture war was not a victory. In fact, I don’t see a victory. Not for the supporters of these bills, who have seen most of them die or be substantially weakened. Nor for businesses, taxpayers, workers and retirees. Any win for those who will have to bear the brunt of the cost.

While the overall performance is interesting, it is more enlightening to break it down by state. Here are the numbers of state bills passed by at least one legislative chamber in 2021, 2022 and 2023 to date. But I’m a results-oriented kind of person so I wanted to better understand the varying degrees of success and here’s a count of the 23 red states:

0—Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, and Wyoming (which I wrote about)

1—Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Tennessee

2—Kentucky, North Dakota, Texas, and West Virginia

3—Arkansas, Florida, and Idaho

4—Utah

Obviously there are only a few winners but most are losers. Invoking the color spectrum, a simplified analysis would code these results as follows: 0=blue, 1=green, 2=yellow, 3=orange, and 4=red. According to this primitive method, there is actually only one red state in this group. But being a highly educated individual (two degrees from MIT and two from Harvard) I know that a more sophisticated approach must be used to evaluate how red a state really is.

To do this would require even more detailed data than is available in the above spreadsheet. Here I turned to Conor Gibson, opposition research consultant and co-author of the report, for help. Going into even greater detail than the spreadsheet provided, they created 10 factors for evaluating each state’s legislative activity, shown in the table below.

This list only includes bills that have passed through at least one legislative chamber by 2021–2023. Legislative resolutions are not included. The list focuses specifically on bills targeting ESG – bills that are focused on preventing boycotts against Israel or forcing investors to favor arms manufacturers are not included.

factor scoring table

I asked Connor how painful the practice was and what he’d learned from it, and he said, “Bob, after tracking this silly trend for six months, I’m ready to eat my face. Republican politicians blame it on that thing.” Blowing away at what they pretend to be the best in – that is money. It would be ridiculous if it weren’t for the colossal waste of time and money that could be spent solving real problems.

Then Connor and I made the table below.

Based on these scores, Connor and I drew inspiration from the color spectrum to create a Red Index assessment to evaluate the redness of each state.

The results aren’t pretty. Of these 23 states, only two can legitimately call themselves Really Red. The other eight orange states still have the potential to achieve red state status. Their MLAs and Governors need to work harder 😅. Of the nine yellow states, West Virginia and Arkansas have some hope of moving into orange, but Missouri and Idaho are at risk of slipping into the green group of states. Scores here are so low that they risk getting letters from attorneys general of red and orange states asking them to raise it or risk being kicked out of the Red State AG Letter Writing Club. There is virtually no hope for blue Georgia and Tennessee. They are below the Mason-Dixon line of embarrassment (BMDLE).

I’m sure these results are very disappointing for most of these 23 S0-so-called red states. But after being a professor for 44 years, I have learned that a fair grade must be given without fear or favor. I’ve also learned that most students are eager to improve. To do this they must be provided with honest but constructive feedback. In my next part, I’ll do this for all 23 states. Although it would be more appropriate to present this information privately and personally, I do not have the necessary contact details, so I will be forgiven for putting this in the public domain, hopefully it will be found and Will prove useful.