The California Republican Assembly, the state’s largest and most active conservative GOP volunteer organization has just released its 2009 legislative scorecard.
As always, this particular scorecard of the many out there, is the most significant and the most telling in terms of really figuring out how our elected officials are voting on the spectrum, with those endorsing a bigger, fatter and more intrusive state government scoring lower (all of the "zeroes" belong to Democrats) and those who believe in freedom, liberty and individual responsibility scoring higher (all of the "100’s" are Republicans).
Below is the release put out my CRA President Ken Mettler framing this year’s ratings, and a link to check them out online. As always, the scorecard is easy to read and well documented, with all of the bills that made up the ratings being listed and a spreadsheet being created so you can see how your representative voted. I was very pleased to see that a great many of the bills highlighted in FR’s "Top Twenty Bills To Veto" (co-authored by Senator Mimi Walters and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who both got 100’s from CRA by the way) made the list.
Senators Sam Aanestad, Dennis Hollingsworth, Bob Huff, George Runner and Mimi Walters; and Assembly Members Joel Anderson, Chuck DeVore, Curt Hagman and Jeff Miller got the perfect scores this year – congratulations!
Mettler notes below that unfortunately the average score for Republicans went from 88 last year to 81 this year. It’s important to note that good policy is good politics, and as the minority party Republicans need to present a stark contrast and different point of view from the Democrats who control the legislature. The lower that average number, the more blurry Republican legislators make the distinction between the parties, and the more difficult the case becomes for making a change in the control of the legislature.
With a "shout out" to CRA for including the AB 606, the legislation on which I harped quite a bit, that created a "Blueberry Commission" (seriously) for California — I did want to draw the attention of FR readers to the votes on two specific bills that CRA rated. One was SCA 4 which was part of the terrible February budget deal and placed the so-called "open" primary on the June ballot. It’s passage would mean a permanent GOP minority as it would work to moderate legislators, preventing the kind of contrast needed for a sea-change in Sacramento. A surprisingly high number of Republicans voted for this terrible idea. The other is AB 1422 which (and you can’t make this up) raised taxes in order to grab federal dollars to expand a social welfare program that the legislature had cut, and then on the short term uses those federal dollars (in part) to relieve the new taxes — of course the federal dollars sunset, the tax does not. It was outright depressing to see how many Republicans voted for this bill authored by liberal Assembly Speaker Karen Bass.
Finally, CRA goes out of its way to note that Senator Abel Maldonado scored a sorry 22 on their rating — being "out voted" by two Democrats.
OK, without any other commentary, here is CRA’s release with the link to the scorecard…
CRA Releases 2009 Legislative Scorecard
Senator Abel Maldonado, the lowest scoring Republican, scored worse than two Democrats.
Nine legislators rated perfect scores on the annual Legislative Scorecard published by the California Republican Assembly. That’s a drop from thirteen perfect scores last year.
More significantly, the average Republican score dropped from 87 to 81, while the averages for Democrats remained constant at three.
“It’s clear that Republicans moved to the left this year,” noted CRA President Ken Mettler. “Overall, the budget crisis seems to have brought out the worst in our Republican legislators. Too many of them supported tax increases and growth of government in the middle of the worst recession in a generation.”
Mettler praised the legislators who achieved perfect scores: Senators Sam Aanestad, Dennis Hollingsworth, Bob Huff, George Runner and Mimi Walters; and Assembly Members Joel Anderson, Chuck DeVore, Curt Hagman and Jeff Miller.
“These legislators continue to demonstrate their commitment to Republican principles and should be thanked,” Mettler stated.
CRA reviewed hundreds of bills before settling on 18 key votes. Notable among the bills are measures to increase taxes and fees, provide for early release of criminals, and declare “Harvey Milk Day.”
The complete scorecard can be downloaded here.
The purpose of the scorecard is to focus on bills which may not seem important on the surface, but clearly demonstrate the divisions within the Democrat and Republican caucuses.
“Once again, Democrats accounted for all of the zero ratings in the scorecard,” commented Mettler. “Although the total number of zeros dropped from 63 last year to 56.”
The highest scoring Democrat on the CRA scorecard was again Senator Lou Correa who received a weak 39% – an increase of 20 points from his score last year. On the Assembly side, Assemblywoman Alyson Huber was tops among Democrats with a score of 28%.
Of the 120 legislators, the lowest scoring Republican was Senator Abel Maldonado scoring a paltry 22%.
“This is the first time in recent memory, perhaps in the history of the scorecard, that a Republican scored lower than two Democrats,” added Mettler.
Current and past CRA scorecards are available online at: www.CaliforniaRepublicanAssembly.com.
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