#ncga: HD-51’s Sauls about as conservative as his Dem predecessor
Meet The New Boss. Same as the old boss.
Folks in Lee and Harnett counties who thought they were voting for a change in 2016 DID NOT GET much of one. They traded a Democrat House member, Brad Salmon, for a Republican named John Sauls. If you check the Civitas conservative rankings, there really has been little difference between the two.
In 2016, Salmon was ranked 32nd out of 120 in the House with a conservative rating of 71.4 percent. Salmon was actually tied with Harnett’s David Lewis (R), Guilford’s Jon Hardister (R), Wake’s Skip Stam (R), and Chowan’s Bob Steinburg (R) among others. Salmon was actually more conservative than Pitt County’s Greg Murphy (R), Wake’s Gary Pendleton (R), Wilson’s Susan Martin (R), and Mecklenburg’s Charles Jeter among others.
In 2016, there was an 11-way tie for most conservative (100%). The list was topped by Wake’s Marilyn Avila (R), Mecklenburg’s Dan Bishop (R), and Guilford’s John Blust (R).
Compare all of that with Sauls in 2017. Sauls was in a 28-way TIE for 29th place with a conservative ranking of 73.3 percent. That ranking tied him with Speaker Tim Moore (R), Harnett’s David Lewis (R), and Pitt’s Murphy (R) among others.
For 2017, the most conservative House members were Pender’s Chris Millis (R — 100%), Union’s Mark Brody (R – 91.7%), and Guilford’s John Blust (R-86.7%).
So, what do we take away from all this? You can make it all about R vs D when you go to the polling place. But picking R does not always guarantee you’re choosing conservatism. Or a radical difference from the Democrats, for that matter.
There really needs to be a new rating group in NC since John Hood neutered Civitas and its rating. The issues for the latest one are mush, and they deliberately left out the key issues that mattered to conservatives in past ratings since Hood began micromanaged them.
Civitas used to be the gold standard of NC legislative ratings but Hood has nixed that. ACU could never be trusted after they manipulated their rating to call Mitch McConnell the most conservative member of the US Senate the year he happened to have a conservative primary challenger. That did not flush with McConnell’s constituents in Kentucky, who knew better, and just destroyed ACU’s integrity.
I always wished that there could be a rating for what members said about issues in caucuses, which are closed to the public. The caucus is where the rubber meets the road. I have often seen people who argued on way in caucus vote differently in public. I also wish there was a way to rate members for how strong they are willing to stand on an issue in caucus, and not just how they vote in caucus after a discussion is concluded. The caucuses are where most of the decisions are made.