Reworking that ‘power ranking’

Something quick to reiterate this week. Rep. John Campbell doesn’t have much influence yet on Capitol Hill ? but that’s not a surprise and should change dramatically this year.

Last week, both the Pilot’s “Political Landscape” feature and my column mentioned Campbell’s “power ranking,” which was published by Congress.org.

Well, due to the wonders of the Internet, the folks who put together that list saw our stuff. And they got ahold of us.

“Under the methodology Knowlegis developed, Congressman Campbell was at a significant disadvantage to even ‘compete’ in the 2005 Power Rankings we developed,” Brad Fitch, CEO of Knowlegis, the consulting firm that put together the list, wrote me in an e-mail. “According to our research, the primary determinant of power in Congress is the committee positions a congressman holds. Since Congressman Campbell was sworn into office so late in 2005, he did not receive his committee assignments until 2006. However, Knowlegis only used data from 2005 (sort of like looking at one baseball season). Therefore, it was virtually impossible to get any score at all in Power Rankings.

“Since Congressman Campbell is now on the House Financial Services Committee, which has wide jurisdiction over legislation, we expect his Power Score will rise significantly when we issue our next set of Power Rankings in 2006.”

James Vaughn, Vice President for Business Development of Knowlegis, sent me an even more detailed number.

“The data was based on 2005 and as Rep. Campbell was not even sworn in until December, naturally as you point out his score is low,” Vaughn wrote, also in an e-mail. “For comparison sake, if you add in his committee assignments to his position score, which he did not receive until January 2006 after the data cut off point, he would have ranked around 189th in Congress. We are going to add a message to that effect to his ‘baseball card’ on the Power Rankings site. And naturally those changes will be reflected when we do our next update of the rankings in time for the November elections.”

So, where would that 189th ranking have put Campbell compared to his Orange County colleagues?

Still near the bottom, but ahead of his neighbor, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, whose ranking, as reported last week, was 218 in the House. And that is still with Campbell having almost no tenure in the House. So he’ll keep moving on up.

Does it look like a city hall?

The Newport Beach City Council has narrowed its choices for where to put a new city hall down to two: the Newport Boulevard location where City Hall is now and Corporate Plaza West on Newport Center Drive.

It is pretty easy to sum up the pros and cons of each location.

The existing site has history and could be built to order. The existing site isn’t centrally located anymore and, well, a new city hall would have to be built.

The Newport Center location already has enough space and is far more convenient for more of the city. The Irvine Co. owns the land, however, and there is no sense of history to the place.

Here’s one more piece to this puzzle that I haven’t heard mentioned ? yet: The Newport Center site doesn’t look like a city hall.

Will Newport Beach residents settle for it as the seat of their government?