Lawmakers in Minnesota received notably low scores from Liberty Minnesota’s third annual legislative scorecard. Liberty MN is a Conservative Political Action Committee.
The group puts out a yearly legislative scorecard, looking at a select number of votes and determining whether or not the legislator voted with what they consider “liberty principles.”
Karl Eggers is the Executive Director of Liberty Minnesota – Eggers says the scores they gave out this year were lower than usual, with the lowest score going to a Republican Representative. Eggers told us the lowest scoring Representative is Tara Mack, explaining, “Representative Tara Mack had the lowest score, I think of anybody, in the House actually with a 19%, but scores generally in the House were down quite a bit with Republicans in control of that chamber, scores in the Senate were about where they have been for the last three years.”
Senator Branden Petersen won the highest score for the third year in the row. Representative Steve Drazkowski was given the highest score in the House.
Some of the bills they used to grade legislators include Sunday Liquor Sales, Felons Voting, and various omnibus bills that combine multiple laws in to one vote. Eggers says their scorecard is receiving quite a bit of criticism this year, particularly from legislators whose scores were lowered from voting on omnibus bills. Eggers says some critics feel that omnibus bills are not “fair” to look at when scoring lawmakers, but he believes that omnibus bills are fair game, explaining, “Usually there’s two or three good little conservative nuggets in those things that keep people voting for them, but the rest is just pork and waste and regulation, and that’s an increase in government, not a decrease, overall. So that really led to lower scores in the house especially this year.”
Eggers says their scorecard has reached more people this year than the previous two years, and that he believes it will have an impact when it comes election time.
Let us know if you think omnibus bills are fair representation of a lawmakers ‘ performance, and subscribe to alpha news as we continue looking in to various legislative scorecards.