The local contingent to the General Assembly scored relatively low on the new ranking from a conservative group.
But only one ranked low enough to be included in the group’s “Coalition of the Radical Left” grouping, based on votes taken during the 2022 session of the Virginia legislature.
That would be Del. Marcus Simon, who scored 10 on the 0-to-100 ranking and no doubt would wear the group’s designation as a badge of honor.
The Center for Legislative Accountability, an effort of the American Conservative Union Foundation and CPAC Foundation, each year ranks about 8,000 federal and state lawmakers, based on their votes on matters important to the organization.
Only those with scores of 10 or below make the “Radical Left” grouping, and none besides Simon of those in the GazetteLeader’s coverage area of Fairfax County did so.
Besides Simon, whose score was down six points from 2021, the lowest among local legislators – Democrats all – was Del. Rip Sullivan at 18 on the 0-to-100 scale. That’s up three points from the 2021 session.
Del. Mark Keam scored 20, up five points from 2021. (Keam was not back for 2022, having resigned from the legislature to take a post in the Biden administration. He was succeeded by fellow Democrat Holly Seibold.) Del. Kathleen Murphy, like Keam, scored 20 in the ranking, up five points from a year before.
Overall, the 2022 ranking of the General Assembly was 47.71, up from 44.77 a year before and taking Virginia past Alaska to stand at 30th highest on the state-by-state conservative-o-meter.
During the year, “the voting of lawmakers from both political parties [was] trending more moderate,” the conservative group said, perhaps because the new split in power (Republicans running the House of Delegates and governorship, Democrats retaining control of the state Senate) led to more compromise.
The cumulative conservative ranking of Republicans in the General Assembly dipped from 80 percent in 2021 to 73 percent in 2022, while on the Democratic side it rose from 15 percent to 22.5 percent. The shift was most pronounced among GOP members in the Senate, with not a single member tallying more than 80 percent on the scorecard.
In the Senate, a scant 9 points separated the lowest ranked Republican member, Sen. Emmitt Hanger at 49, from the highest ranked Democrat, Sen. Lynwood Lewis at 40. Among the local delegation, Democrat Chap Petersen was rated at 37 on the 0-to-100 scale, up nine points from a year before, with his Democratic colleagues Sen. Janet Howell scoring 24, up five, and Sen. Barbara Favola taking home a score of 23, up 11.
On the House side, 18 of 52 Republicans won accolades for scoring more than 80, led by Del. Nick Freitas’s 100-percent ranking.
Lowest on the ranking was Democratic Del. Candi Mundon King, at 7 percent.
For the full list, see the Website at www.conservative.org.
