I don’t know if I inspired a Maryland blogosphere row by doing my own General Assembly rating system here on monoblogue, but late last week I came across a post on another site I occasionally contribute to called the Pro-Maryland Gazette. On that post, “Bud the blogger” made the claim that State Senator Andy Harris was the highest-rated Republican in the General Assembly by the Progressive Maryland group, arguably one of the farthest left bunches active in state politics. While a 44 rating doesn’t put Harris into moonbat territory by any means, it was an interesting tactic for a Kratovil supporter to point this out and possibly siphon a few of the more conservative voters into not showing up at the polls.
On the other hand, while I have some misgivings about the company he keeps, Nick Loffer picked apart the Progressive Maryland system with a post on the Salisbury News website. (It’s definitely a wheat post among all of the chaff.) Loffer notes that two of the Progressive Maryland votes were unanimous votes for a particular issue and another one wasn’t necessarily a clearly partisan issue as both parties split into factions. Loffer also points out that the Progressive Maryland ratings were weighted heavily toward their pet issues, and finally links to a file (as I do for this post) showing Harris’s much more believable 15% rating this year, a legislative year which also includes in their case votes for the 2007 Special Session.
(Local readers should note that I took the liberty of checking out their results for Districts 37 and 38. Most ironic is that “Republican” Page Elmore has a higher PM score than Democrat Jim Mathias among District 38 politicians – my ratings have results fairly close for the two during the Special Session, not so much in 2008. Not surprisingly, longtime District 38B representative Norm Conway talks conservative in the district but votes far-left in Annapolis.)
One flaw I see in the system is the dearth of votes that Progressive Maryland bases their rating scale on. In comparing theirs to mine, fewer than ten votes doesn’t hold a candle to the over 60 House votes and 70-plus Senate votes I have used. I also delve into amendments which were proposed but may not have survived the legislative process in order to show where one could be for an idea before being against the final bill, or vice versa. It was also a method I used to weight issues a little bit but the large number of votes should show a good pattern and as it turns out Andy Harris is one of the most conservative people in the Maryland General Assembly; in fact, based on the overall ratings he would probably be my body double in Congress since we agree on so much.
So it was a nice try Bud, but something tells me Progressive Maryland isn’t going to be placing its money or resources behind Andy Harris in the First District race.
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