Capitol Weekly released its annual legislative scorecard late last night, and we thought we’d share our thoughts. First of all, they derived their scores off just 19 bills chosen by their editors. A very telling thing to take note of in Democrat-controlled California: on all but 3 of the bills, the ‘yes’ vote was considered the more liberal vote. If I were a legislator today, all I would do is push to take old bills off the record; we are over-legislated as it is. But hey, that’s just me. Onward.
A score of ‘0′ represents a perfect conservative score, and a score of ‘100′ represents just the opposite – a complete liberal.
Only one ‘Republican’ in either house scored higher than a 25, the infamous Abel Maldonado with a 55 – higher than Democrats Correa, McLeod and Wright.
The next major thing I noticed was that only 1 Republican legislator in either house – Assemblyman Mike Villines – got a perfect conservative score. Yet 17 Democrat legislators voted perfectly partisan. This tells me Democrats have long-since stopped trying to find solutions to problems, and simply vote in favor of their friends’ bills in order to get votes on their own. Political wins and re-election are king in Sacramento. Principles sadly take a back seat.
On to some more tidbits. Nathan Fletcher was the only Republican in either house – other than the aforementioned Abel Maldonado – to score higher than a 20.
On the other side, other than McLeod with a 49, Lou Correa (Senate) and Alyson Huber (Assembly) were the only two Democrats in the 40’s. Not surprisingly, these two Democratic lawmakers are in more contested districts and tend to vote like centrists. The Democrats in ’safe’ districts vote in a very partisan manner.
Take from it what you will – these numbers are just generalizations, but it’s always fun to pontificate. In my view, I’d have a lot more single digits in the legislature, but that’s just me. 
Allan…
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