2012 ACU Michigan Legislature Ratings

The American Conservative Union has long been the premier organization rating members of Congress on how conservative their voting records are. Last year, ACU began rating state legislators on their voting records, and it recently released its first ratings of the Michigan state legislature.

http://conservative.org/ratingsarchive/stateratings/2012/MIStateLegislativeRatings.pdf

ACU rated 17 house votes and 18 senate votes from 2012. Fourteen of the bills are the same for both halves of the legislature. Many of the bills are closely related to unions and education.

Here are some notes on the results.

In the state house, Dave Agema was the only member to score 100%.

The members who scored 94% (one bad vote) are Franz, Goike, Haveman, Hooker, Huuki, Knollenberg, LaFontaine, Lund, MacGregor, McMillin, Moss, Opsommer, Price, Shirkey, and Walsh.

The lowest-scoring Republicans (not counting Roy Schmidt) were Glardon, Horn, and Muxlow (each 76%).

Party switchin' Roy Schmidt scored 53% overall. He scored 25% while he was a democrat and 78% while he was a Republican.

The top-scoring democrats are Richard LeBlanc (47%) and Lesia Liss (41%). Three democrats (Vicki Barnett, Ellen Lipton, and John Olumba) scored 0%.

In the state senate, Joe Hune was the only member to score 100%. Overall, the scores are

100%: Hune
94%: Brandenberg, Jansen, Pavlov, Robertson, Walker
89%: Colbeck, Emmons, Hildenbrand, Kowall, Meekhof, Richardville
83%: Booher, Jones, Marleau, Moolenaar, Pappageorge, Rocca, Schuitmaker
76-78%: Caswell, Green, Hansen, Kahn, Proos
72%: Casperson, Nofs
28%: Gleason
22%: Hunter
17%: Bieda
11-13%: Andersen, Johnson, Smith, Young
6%: Gregory, Hood, Hopgood, Warren, Whitmer

It's interesting that Randy Richardville scored higher than his competitor for Senate Republican leader, John Proos. Nofs, Proos, and Caswell are the most disappointing Republicans, given that they have safe districts.

The votes that tripped up the most Republicans in both houses were Brian Calley's autism mandate (SB 414) and "a new tax on produce sales from farmers to 'grain dealers'" (SB 888).

Of course, the usual caveats apply to any legislative ratings system. Legislators' scores will vary from year to year, so it will be interesting to compare these scores to future years' scores. Also, ratings only cover issues that were actually voted upon, so controversial issues like Right to Work and never made it to a vote can't be scored.