The Washington Ratings Game, Part 5: American Conservative Union

The American Conservative Union’s 2006 Congressional Ratings home page is here. The site has complete rundowns of all House and Senate members.

ACU picked a certain number of key votes in each chamber (25 in both the House and the Senate), but unlike other scorecard groups, it weighted each vote equally. There are pros and cons to the equal-weighting approach, but worst thing you might be able to say about ACU is that they were biased in which votes were selected. With many of the others (National Journal, National Taxpayers Union, and Club for Growth), vote-selection and vote-weighting bias could both be present.

Here’s a summary what the ACU found:

Overall, the House produced 186 members with an ACU rating of 80% or higher—our definition of a conservative, all Republicans. The two Democrats with the highest rating were Dan Boren (OK) and Lincoln Davis (TN), each with a 64% score. At the other end of the spectrum, 155 members rated a liberal rating of 20% or less, all of whom were Democrats except Christopher Shays (CT)…..

In the Senate, 12 GOP Senators received a perfect 100% conservative rating in 2005, compared to eight in 2004, and none in 2003.

I’m going to hold commentary until the weekend, when I’ll do a post digesting the five ratings I have posted on. I was also going to include Citizens Against Government Waste, but their report appears to be at least a couple of months away.

HOUSE — Local

Scores are in the following order: 2006; 2005; Lifetime.

Ohio:
- Chabot — 96; 96; 97.5
- Boehner — 88; 100; 93.63
- Schmidt — 88; 88; 87.75
- Tiberi — 84; 88; 91.25
- Gillmor — 84; 82; 81.34
- Oxley — 83; 91; 87.52
- Turner — 80; 80; 85
- Hobson — 76; 83; 81.2
- Pryce — 72; 83; 78.11
- LaTourette — 72; 71; 72.05
- Regula — 71; 76; 68.72
- Ryan — 28; 25; 24.5
- Brown — 25; 4; 9.41
- Kaptur — 21; 24; 15.64
- Strickland — 18; 28; 18.15
- Jones — 4; 4; 3.88
- Kucinich — 4; 0; 10.3

Kentucky:
- Davis — 84; 88; 86

Indiana:
- Pence — 100; 100; 100
- Sodrel — 88; 92; 90

HOUSE — Other Notables
- Tancredo (CO) — 92; 100; 97.75
- Hunter (CA) — 88; 92; 92.02
- Paul (TX) — 76; 76; 82.26
- Mollohan (WV) — 46; 52; 33.09
- Murtha (PA) — 28; 40; 33.25
- Pelosi (CA) — 8; 0; 3.1
- Conyers (MI) — 4; 13; 4.99
- Hoyer (MD) — 4; 12; 8.19
- Rangel (NY) — 4; 0; 3.94
- My quick eyeball count indicates that 5 House members, all Democrats, had scores of zero in 2006.

SENATE — OH-KY-IN
- DeWine (OH) — 72; 56; 79.8
- Voinovich (OH) — 56; 68; 74.8
- Bunning (KY) — 96; 92; 94.9
- McConnell (KY) — 84; 100; 89.7
- Bayh (IN) — 16; 20; 20.8
- Lugar (IN) — 64; 88; 78.6

SENATE — Other Notables
- DeMint (SC) — 100; 96; 98
- Coburn (OK) — 100; 100; 97.8
- Dole (NC) — 96; 96; 91
- Santorum (PA) — 96; 92; 88.1
- Hagel (NE) — 75; 96; 85.2
- McCain (AZ) — 65; 80; 82.3
- Kerry (MA) — 12; 8; 5.6
- Clinton (NY) — 8; 12; 9
- Obama (IL) — 8; 8; 8
- Biden (DE) — 4; 8; 13.4
- 7 Senators, all Democrats, had scores of 0 in 2006.

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Previous Posts:
- Part 1 — National Journal Has Some Local Surprises
- Part 2 — National Taxpayers Union Notes Little National Improvement
- Part 3 — Americans for Tax Reform — Local Congressional Delegation Gets Straight A’s
- Part 4 — Club for Growth
- Consolidated Rankings for All Five Sources