In the Massachusetts House certain issues are called "values votes" -- legislative issues like the death penalty or abortion on which Speaker Thomas Finneran deems it acceptable for law makers to vote their conscience.
That handful of votes underscores the fact that at most other times the speaker doesn't brook dissent.
"They call it voting off," says Rep. Byron Rushing. "They say if you vote "off" on this you're going to have a problem with the speaker."
According to Rushing and the dissident House members backing his numerically-doomed bid to unseat Finneran, the concentration of power in the hands of one man is the crux of the problem in the State House.
"I don't want to be in a position where the leader tells me when I can use my conscience or not," Rushing says. "I ask people what do you call the votes that are not conscience."
Perhaps no vote matters more than the vote lawmakers make on the first of each year to support Finneran's bid for re-election to the speakership. A vote against Finneran can easily land a lawmaker in a remote office with a minor role on an obscure committee.
Thus Rushing finds himself somewhat isolated in his bid for the speakership with just 12 firm commitments for votes -- far short of the 81 he would need to unseat Finneran.
And in an intriguing twist, none of the 12 are fellow members of the Legislative Black Caucus. Rushing says he is surprised.
"I thought I'd get mixed support," he said. "I thought some people would be with me, some would not, depending on the experience that they've had in a closed legislature. I guess those are the decisions that people have to make."
When Rushing came into the State House 20 years ago, the Black Caucus was a radically different entity whose members marched in locked-step in pursuit of a progressive agenda. Now the six-member body is widely seen as fractured, lacking in unity and purpose. And the vote for speaker puts the divisions in the Caucus in the public eye.
Of the five House members on the Caucus, only Gloria Fox says she's undecided on the vote. Marie St Fleur, whom Finneran said publicly is in line for a chairmanship, is expected to vote for Finneran, as are reps Ben Swann and Shirley Owens-Hicks.
Asked about her decision to support Finneran, Owens-Hicks said her chairmanship of the Federal Financial Affairs committee factored into her decision.
"You know I'm a chair of a committee," she said. "I've been fortunate to get some significant things done within the established order," she added, citing funding for the Metco and Headstart programs.
"I think Rep. Rushing is doing what he feels he needs to do at this time," she said, calling his bid for the speakership "symbolic."
The divisions on the Caucus began to emerge long before Rushing's insurgency. While Rushing and Fox have championed progressive causes and often find themselves at odds with the speaker, St. Fleur and Owens-Hicks, whose districts abut Finneran's, have taken more conservative stands on issues.
In the '70s and '80s, Caucus members earmarked their legislative priorities each year and pledged to push their agenda en masse. That unity has disintegrated to the point where the words "black" and "progressive" are no longer synonymous on Beacon Hill. Split by ideological lines and political differences, the Caucus members find fewer issues on which they agree.
A nadir in the Caucus came last year when State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson left the body, reportedly frustrated with the infighting in the group.
Fox acknowledges the ideological differences on the Caucus, but says the unity is still there.
"We're all different individuals who come together for a common cause and a common goal: to serve the people in our districts and represent them in the State House."
But Rushing says personality conflicts and ideology have chipped away at the unity of the Caucus.
"I think it's a combination of personalities that find it difficult to work together and not enough shared ideology," he said. "If we had a shared ideology, the other problems wouldn't be so bad."
Political activist Louis Elisa agrees with Rushing's assessment.
"It's not as cohesive an organization as it was in the past," he said. "You'd like to see them do more together."
Elisa notes that the Caucus has not yet attracted the House's Latino members to its ranks. Although Rep. Jarrett Barrios joined the body after his election in 1998, reps Cheryl Rivera and Jose Santiago have not. In other states like Connecticut and New York, blacks and Latinos have a unified Caucus. In Massachusetts, with just five black lawmakers and four Latinos being seated this year, the bodies remain separate. Neither caucus presents much of a bloc in a House that has 160 members and a Senate that has 40.
"Maybe they just don't see that it's in their interests to work together," Elisa said.
Finneran's leadership has done little to expand opportunities for people of color to gain access to Beacon Hill. His redistricting plan packed people of color into Shirley Owens-Hicks' district while his own district whitened, expanding into the predominantly white town of Milton.
While black and Latino activists sought districts in Boston and Chelsea that would expand electoral opportunities for the growing populations of blacks and Latinos, Finneran's redistricting committee reduced the number of so-called majority-minority districts in Boston from seven to just five.
While some Black Caucus members expressed opposition to the redistricting plan, the disagreement was apparently not enough to sour them on Finneran himself.
Fox said the state's tight fiscal budget -- and the process of allocating scarce fiscal resources -- weighed on the decision-making process she and other Caucus members underwent while considering supporting Finneran or Rushing.
"One of the things we talked about is how decisions were going to be made during the budget process," she said. Fox, who has opposed Finneran on key issues including the Clean Elections Law, a rent control bill and domestic partnership, said she had not made up her mind, but admits there is a gap between the conservative policies embraced by Finneran and his leadership team and her constituents.
"It's been a strained relationship with most members of the House when it comes to issues that community sees as priorities and the leadership does not," she said.
But Fox, who was still undecided on the Speaker vote at the Banner's press deadline, said Caucus members are not completely shut out of the decision-making process in the House.
"The Black Caucus has been able to meet with Finneran on certain matters we want his support on," she said. "We haven't always been victorious. But he is willing to meet with us."
Rushing, however, points to popularly-supported bills like domestic partnerships and rent control, that were buried in committees and never made it to the floor for debate.
"I think more and more people in the black community are concerned that their own state representatives don't have access to the political process," he said. "That's not going to change until we change the culture of the House of Representatives."
Photograph (Byron Rushing)
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