Santa is not the only one making lists this year.
A right-leaning advocacy group ranked North Carolina General Assembly members according to their ideology in a recent report. The report, released last month, determined that the state legislature has become more conservative than in recent years. This is not surprising given that the General Assembly is Republican-controlled for the first time in more than a century.
The Civitas Action Conservative Effectiveness Scores and Rankings rated legislators on an ideological scale from liberal to conservative. Although conservatives maintain that the report is a fair assessment, some legislators contest the validity of the report, which was compiled by Civitas Action, a conservative, nonprofit political advocacy group.
“The scale gives voters a chance to look at their legislators on an ideological spectrum and see if they represent them,” said Francis De Luca, president of Civitas Action. “It is valuable to both conservatives and liberals because it shows a comparative scale. It’s very transparent, and it’s a quick way of looking at a broad range of votes.”
The report gives legislators a rating from zero to 100, with zero indicating the most liberal and 100 indicating the most conservative. The report then gives legislators a corresponding letter grade, ranging from “A+” for the most conservative to “F” for the most liberal. The rankings are determined by the way each member votes on issues that span three general categories: economic and budgetary, social and cultural and crime and justice.
The state House of Representatives jumped from a rating of 31.5 percent on average in 2010 to 63.4 percent this year, and the Senate saw an increase from 26.5 percent to 75.7 percent. Percentage scores ranged from 10.9 percent by Democratic Rep. Earline Parmon to 100 percent by Republican Sen. Harris Blake.
De Luca said he was pleased that all Republicans in the House and Senate received high marks, which indicates a conservative voting trend.
“We are happy to see all the passing grades this year and hope to see even better grades next year,” De Luca added.
Despite Civitas Action’s claim to be universal, Democratic Rep. Paul Luebke said the report primarily interests voters who already have a vested interest in conservative politics.
“For that small group of conservatives who are paying close attention to the General Assembly, these rankings catch their attention,” Luebke said. “The overwhelming percentage of voters—Democrats, Republicans or unaffiliated—don’t hear about something as specialized as this.”
Democrats believe that Civitas Action’s grading system is an invalid and overtly partisan way to determine representational effectiveness, said Walton Robinson, communications director of the North Carolina Democratic Party.
“[The Democratic Party] does not put much stock into anything that comes out of Civitas,” Robinson said. “They are merely a mouthpiece for the radical Tea Party agenda.”
De Luca noted that one of the main purposes of the grading scale is to inform voters about the effectiveness of their representatives. He added that the scale is also straightforward because it uses a familiar grading scale and includes 50 votes in the House and 43 votes in the Senate.
The rankings also function to keep representatives aware of their own voting habits, De Luca added. He noted that, for example, General Assembly members were given a zero both for voting liberally and for having an unexcused absence or vote.
“We want to encourage [representatives] to think about the issues on which they vote… and at the end of the day, we hope they vote in a way that is true to conservative principles—support for the individual, less government, less regulation, strong families, personal freedoms and individual responsibilities,” De Luca said.
Although the report seeks to hold representatives accountable for their voting patterns, Luebke said most legislators still vote based on criteria independent of third-party ranking systems like Civitas Action’s.
“I vote in ways that are best for the state and for Durham,” Luebke said. “I am not influenced by the Civitas ranking system…. The rankings come so much later after people vote that they have little effect on the legislators’ positions.”
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