Republican state politicians and the death penalty

[they don't love you like i love you]

One odd thing I've noticed is that Republican politicians on the low levels tend to be far less supportive of the death penalty than Republicans in general, or even the public in general. For example the Pawlenty-backed bill to reinstate the death penalty in Minnesota failed a Senate committee vote 8-2, and the committee had 6 Democrats and 4 Republicans, meaning that 50% of the Republicans on it voted against it. It also stalled for awhile because a prominent Republican State Senator was opposed. In Illinois the bill to repeal it got a not very high but hardly insignificant number of Republican votes, same with the repeals in New Mexico and New Jersey I believe. In the heavily Republican Kansas Senate, a repeal bill failed by one vote. A proposal to reinstate it in North Dakota went nowhere despite GOP dominance of both chambers. Why is this?

I have a theory that many see it as pointless, since the death penalty barely exists in some states that still spend millions of dollars defending their statutes and maintaining their death rows. New York reinstated the death penalty only to never use it, have a court strike down the statute, not have the statute ever replaced and the state silently close down the death row and not bother with it again and effectively thus push millions of dollars instating it into a black hole. There's also the issue that it's one thing to support it silently on a poll but another thing to actually play a role in instating it and then find out it was used on an innocent or not very deserving person.

[Liberté]

You're very astute for recognizing this dichotomy. It stems from the basic differentials in perspective a national level candidate has to approach politics from and how they contrast with those of local-level candidates. A national Republican has to consider his position in relation to Federal issues; to him, he has to "stand for something" that Republicans, and voters generally, across the nation can sink their proverbial teeth into. And so it's only natural that he would adopt a viewpoint that local and State-level officials might balk at. And the opposite is true as well: a local-level politician, and especially a Republican on that level, has more leeway to hook his ideological approach into opposition to the death penalty.