When Making The Grade Means Failing Texas

The Heritage Alliance, an organization dedicated to "equipping conservative Texans to impact politics and the Texas Legislature", released their scorecards for the 2007 Lege session earlier this week.

With a web page title like the one in quotes above, you might get the idea that conservative Texans are going to be equipped to impact politics regarding everyday issues for Texas families like children's health insurance and our number one ranking in the U.S. in teen birth rate. Maybe the Texas Legislature would be impacted to make substantive changes to our Band-Aid financing of public education or the Trans-Texas Corridor giveaway.

Don't hold your breath. The Heritage Alliance's main points of interest focus on "traditional Judeo-Christian values like the sanctity of life and marriage," and their news corner has headlines about the use of Bibles in classrooms and debating the intent of the school day's moment of silence. The Alliance's focus does make it a common yardstick for measuring the social conservatism of our House & Senate, though.

A score of 90% or more indicates that the legislator in question voted for the Heritage Alliance's position on 60 out of the 67 votes used to tally the scorecard. As their press release indicates, 16 House members scored 90% or higher (an increase of 6 from the last legislative session), while no Senators scored 90% or higher (for the sixth straight legislative session).

North Texas unfortunately boasts 6 of those 16 House members, including one in Dallas County (HD 105), one in Denton County (HD 63), two in Collin County (HD 70 & HD 89) and two in Tarrant County (HD 91 & HD 96).

Representative Joe Heflin was the most conservative House Democrat (by the Heritage Alliance's scorecard standards) at 58%, while Representative Anna Mowery (who recently retired) was the least conservative House Republican at 51%. Democratic Representative Paul Moreno was the overall least conservative member of the House at 3%, while one of Collin County's Republican representatives (Jodie Laubenberg) was the most conservative at 96%.

In the Senate, the most conservative senator was Republican Robert Nichols at 79%. The least conservative Republican senator was Jeff Whitworth at 49% while the most conservative Democratic senator was Eddie Lucio at 61%. The least conservative senator was Democrat Eliot Shapleigh at 40%.

The Texas Blue will have more on the Heritage Alliance report in the future; George is crunching numbers and will present a more complete analysis in the next few days.