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Scorecard from national group rebrands GOP lawmakers as Dems

By
Jasmine Hall with the Jackson Hole News&Guide, via the Wyoming News Exchange

JACKSON — The Wyoming Legislature is run by “Democrats.”
 
That’s the main takeaway from a scorecard released last week by the Institute for Legislative Analysis based in Washington, D.C., which triggered a range of reactions. Some lawmakers scoffed at their Republican identity being questioned, while others expressed real concern for their colleagues being labeled “philosophically Democrat.”
 
“It’s a bunch of bullshit,” said House Speaker Albert Sommers, a Republican rancher from Pinedale. “They choose what bills they want to grade legislators on, in an effort to try to marginalize some.”
 
House Speaker Sommers is one of the 31 Republicans in the House that are being branded Democrats in the analysis. 
 
It was touted as “the most comprehensive analysis ever performed on the Wyoming Legislature,” and based on 4,488 total votes on nearly 50 bills.
 
Lawmakers were placed on a 0 to 100 political ideology scale after researchers sifted through data. A 0% score represents a far-left Democrat or progressive, and 100% a far-right Republican considered conservative. The line was drawn at 50%.
 
Sommers was cited as a Democrat at 41% — 9% below the cutoff.
 
Twenty-six remaining Republican lawmakers were declared “philosophically Republican,” many of whom won limited government awards for being above the 80% threshold in the House.
 
“These are just efforts to label legislators in order to try to upend them in the next election,” Sommers said of scorecards distributed by a variety of organizations. “Mostly, they are meaningless if people really dug into it.”
 
But other Republicans lauded the scorecards. 
 
Democrats, meanwhile, countered that if the Legislature were really liberal, the state would have expanded Medicaid and not banned abortion access.
 
Freedom Caucus correlation
 
The institute’s final score for Republicans versus Democrats in the House fell 26 to 36, with “Democrats” holding the majority. Although the Wyoming Freedom Caucus doesn’t publish its members, all 26 are members or have been associated with the far-right faction of the lower chamber.
 
The scorecard aside, the actual numbers cited by the Wyoming Legislative Service Office are 56 Republicans and five Democrats in the Wyoming House of Representatives.
 
In the Senate, there are only two Democrats and 29 Republicans. Those numbers reflect candidates who ran in party primaries and won the approval of voters in those primaries.
 
The Institute for Legislative Analysis, however, questions the letters next to their names on the ballot. The institute’s scorecard claims there are 14 Democrats — not just two — in the Senate, though philosophical Republicans still hold the majority.
 
“Unfortunately, it appears a large number of philosophically Democratic lawmakers have decided to mislabel their party affiliation as ‘Republican,’ perhaps in an attempt to confuse voters,” said the institute’s CEO, Ryan McGowan, along with the analysis release.
 
“The fraudulent practice should be of great concern to the people of Wyoming as it is resulting in the passage of some of the exact same policies our research team finds in progressive states like California or New York, places with values I don’t think are shared by many in the Cowboy State.”
 
The Institute for Legislative Analysis is a newly established data and policy hub that launched in May. Members of the research team previously served together for nearly a decade at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and the American Conservative Union, where they constructed the nation’s first 50-state legislative scorecards.
 
Behind the analysis
 
President Fred McGrath told the News&Guide that his team wanted to dive further into the data and expand the initiative.
 
While the institute is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, there is no way to see the nonprofit’s tax filings or source of donations. This is due to how fresh the organization is, and McGrath said it is in the process of getting documents together and the accountants will file them early next year.
 
When asked about how many dollars in donations the organization has received in the past couple of months, he said the information is generally not publicized. The president said there wasn’t a large seed money amount, and organizers often volunteered their time in order to keep other staff paid.
 
“And ultimately, for me, it’s like everyone has kind of a mission in life and what you want to accomplish. And this is just a passion of mine,” he said. “And I know if this data doesn’t get out there, that’s how corruption and politics happens. Because when the masses don’t know, people can get away with things.”
 
However, he said the group is primarily a small grassroots organization with a large portion of donations from conservative or Republican supporters. He said it is not beholden to special interest groups, and the data speaks for itself.
 
“Most of the people interested in our analysis, they’re going to be like minded,” he said. “They’re going to view things from a constitutional perspective. But our ultimate hope is to really branch out to all Americans.”
 
The institute has launched scorecards for lawmakers in six states, with Wyoming being one of the first. He said there were key legislatures in political swing states the team wanted to analyze, and where “there’s a huge divide amongst how Republicans vote.”
 
The guiding methodology is to review each policy lawmakers vote on through a “constitutional and limited government lens — regardless of how the issue may fall along political lines.” It also doesn’t include social or cultural issues, such as abortion, but there were bills focused on funding, elections, housing, natural resources and more.
 
McGrath said the group selected bills that showcased how officials believe the role of government should operate.
 
“Our first goal is not to engage in any type of electioneering. We’re a national group, so we don’t have any horses in the race,” he said. “We’re merely trying to bring transparency for your ‘everyday citizen.’”
 
Gillette lawmaker John Bear is the Wyoming Freedom Caucus chairman and a lawmaker who received a “limited government award” from the group. He was among the top five most conservative lawmakers in the House with 84%, and was not surprised by his rating.
 
He also agreed with the analysis that the Wyoming House leans left.
 
An example he used was the spending within the supplemental budget during the last general session. He said the House voted to increase the governor’s recommendation in the wake of a $2 billion surplus by 10%, despite him giving speeches pushing not to spend more money.
 
He said the line often was drawn 36 to 26 in votes on appropriations, with the minority voting to reduce spending. He said it was a perfect illustration of the philosophical difference between growing government and reducing government spending.
 
He said, “Absolutely, I do,” when asked if the Freedom Caucus members align more closely with that perspective.
 
“They philosophically believe that the government should not grow at a higher rate than the GDP and the population,” Bear said. “That is the definition of growth of government.”
 
Other Republicans who ranked high on the group’s scorecard — Reps. Sarah Penn and Chip Neiman and Sen. Beau Biteman — did not respond for comment.
 
For constituents reading the analysis, Bear said they should take it under consideration for elections and believes it will have an impact. Although he advised voters to review where the information is coming from and whether or not there is bias present, he said scorecards boil lawmakers’ voting records down into “something a little more digestible.
 
“We really have a biased media,” he said. “And so people are looking for other sources of information to make their determination. And so you have groups like CPAC that have popped up — you have several small groups throughout the state of Wyoming that have popped up — and what they’re trying to do is get the information out to the voters.
 
“And then in what they consider to be an unbiased way, but it’s in opposition to what people are seeing in the media.”
 

 
Context is everything’
 
Another Republican whose score didn’t startle him was Rep. Andrew Byron, despite being dubbed “philosophically Democrat” at 40%.
 
“We have the super duper majority,” he said. “I think we have a very good representation of our districts.”
 
The only Republican in the Teton County delegation, Byron said voters should be suspicious of the results, as anonymous ranking sites and outside organizations paint them as less than conservative.
 
He said results matter more than rankings and “the proof was in the pudding,” after being docked by the Institute for Legislative Analysis for voting to fund the Wyoming Recreational Trust Fund and support state parks.
 
“Those are important to people in Wyoming, and that was a good bill,” Byron said. “The great thing I can say about all these ranking systems is I, as a freshman, obviously learned a lot. But I stand behind every vote I make, and there’s not a single vote I would switch.”
 
Some of the other bills he and other Republican lawmakers were considered “against limited government” for supporting were to expand eligibility under the Wyoming Colorectal Cancer Early Detection and Prevention Program, a state-funded program that provides reimbursements for colonoscopies; establishing requirements on financial institutions to assess potential financial exploitation of elderly or individuals with disabilities and report it to the Department of Family Services; or extending the duration of postpartum coverage from 60 days to one year for mothers on Medicaid.
 
Sommers said he questioned what bills the group selected and the interpretation, as the scorecard used language such as “fueling out-of-control spending” or “advancing government take-over” when analyzing the legislation.
 
Additionally, he said there was no context to the votes.
 
“Context is everything in the Legislature,” the House speaker said. “What does the bill really do? Is it the idea or the bill itself that’s good or bad? You could have a really great idea, and the bill just sucks, and you vote against it.”
 
He said the analysis and its methodology worked to contribute to the incivility in politics, and to drive extreme agendas.
 
“It’s a national effort to try to take over the Wyoming Legislature,” he said. “That’s my opinion.”
 
Bear rebutted.
 
“I disagree. I think that what the speaker is determining to be incivility is a lack of unity, and following his lead,” he said. “And our country has a rich history of people challenging a point of view, and that challenge, unfortunately, in his mind is considered uncivil. But that challenge is being supported by the people of Wyoming understanding that the current direction is not sustainable or wise.
 
“And how do the people come to that conclusion? Some of it may be based on those rankings.”
 
What do Wyomingites think?
 
Lawmakers who criticized the report said a scorecard could be created to present any message, and those choosing the bills or developing the rating had the power.
 
A way this was observed was through the Wyoming Conservative Accountability Project, which in some cases flipped the ratings from the Institute for Legislative Analysis on its head. Former Republican leaders and politicians across the state — Wyatt Agar, Jamie Flitner, Ron Micheli and Frank Moore — developed their own scorecard “to make sure all legislators are held accountable to the Wyoming Republican Platform.”
 
They cited a certified conservative as anyone with a score of 80% or higher, and based the audit on 11 bills spanning right to life issues to marriage.
 
“The Accountability Project, I think, was an effort to push back on that,” Sommers said regarding the marginalization of certain Republicans.
 
“A true Wyoming conservative” voted for historic wide-sweeping protection of life, protecting fairness in high school sports, advancing school choice, protecting Wyomingites from the practice of child marriages or putting surplus revenue into savings.
 
In the Senate, no one fell below 50%, but lawmakers considered “philosophically Democrat” in the out-of-state rankings scored the opposite on the in-state group’s scorecard. Rep. Bear was listed at 40%, with Sommers at 100%.
 
Dems question premise
 
A small group of legislators in the capitol who experienced zero rebranding were Democrats.
 
The seven, two in the Senate and five in the House, were all at the bottom of the scorecard, and deemed “philosophically Democratic” based on the limited-government methodology.
 
Teton County Rep. Liz Storer wasn’t offended.
 
“I question the premise that this is the best way to govern,” Storer said, regarding being docked for votes against limited government. “I disagree with it, and it’s reflected in my score. So, I don’t really worry about scores.
 
“As far as the House being run by Democrats, if that were the case, we would have passed Medicaid expansion and not limited personal freedoms by passing the anti-abortion bans,” Storer said.
 
She and her colleagues in the Teton County delegation make up nearly half of all Democrats in the Legislature, and Rep. Mike Yin and Sen. Mike Gierau laughed at the notion they were actually in the majority.
 
“I don’t know whether I can trust the scorecard if I don’t know who they are, and looking at the bills, I think they aren’t framed very well at all,” Yin said. “They purposely pick bills to lump people into certain zones.
 
“And from my expectations, Bob is not a Democrat,” he added, referencing Rep. Bob Nicholas, a Cheyenne Republican who was the closest to House Democrats at 29%. “No one in the Republican Party is a Democrat. I can tell you that 100%.”
 
He said Democrats uphold the pillars of the Wyoming party platform. Those included supporting good governance practices, fair and open elections, access to quality and affordable health care, investing in public education, economic diversification and access to and conservation of public lands.
 
Some of those issues he didn’t consider partisan, and he said there are lots of values that are shared by people in Wyoming.
 
Gierau said the scorecard is used to drive a wedge between lawmakers and adheres to the “burn it down” agenda.
 
“It doesn’t help the hard-working people of Wyoming,” he said. “It does not help move forward things like paying teachers, getting good jobs, making sure people have enough money in their paycheck to pay for a necessary expense.
 
“That’s why they need some tax relief. Those are things that people care about. They don’t care about rankings from organizations that are carpetbagging on Wyoming values, and I have little use for them.”
 
This story was published on November 22, 2023. 

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