Democrat State Sen. Rob Hogg doesn’t have the best attendance record this legislative session. In fact, he has a pretty horrible attendance record.
He isn’t showing up for work and the people he represents have little voice in Des Moines.
Hogg has many concerns with COVID-19. That seems to be what is keeping him away from work for the overwhelming majority of the legislative session thus far.
Hogg is electing not to show up and not to vote on bills, but a quick glance at his Twitter account shows he is making his thoughts known on bills.
For instance, on Wednesday he criticized Senate Republicans for passing Senate File 534 with a few tweets.
But you know what he didn’t do? Show up to vote on the bill.
Hogg serves Linn County. Forget the salary he earns for serving as a senator, he also is supposed to receive $169 per diem each day of session.
That adds up. Quick.
It would be interesting to know if he’s able to pocket all of that despite rarely showing up to the Capitol.
But worse than that — I think — is the fact he is playing arm-chair quarterback as many Iowans do when it comes to politics while refusing to get in the game.
I mean, the $169 a day he is getting to not show up and do his job (in addition to the $25,000 salary) is bad. But he’s actually been given the “power” to be able to cast votes in the Iowa Senate and instead tweets.
To my knowledge, Hogg didn’t run for Twitter Senate, he ran for Iowa Senate. In his defense, there isn’t much he could do for his district in Des Moines anyway since the GOP enjoys such a comfortable margin in the Senate. Nonetheless, it is a job and comes with responsibility.
If Hogg isn’t comfortable showing up for work, he really shouldn’t be finding time to tweet about the issues that the legislators who are showing up for work are attempting to address.
I mean, if he cared that much, maybe he should make it to the Capitol and do his job.
