Legislative scorecard: Who is the most, least conservative?
By Suzanne Downing -June 22, 2022
Alaska’s Legislature continues to fall short, according to a new scorecard from the CPAC Foundation and the American Conservative Union Foundation. In fact, Alaska has a last place finish among Republican states, when the policy evaluators rated how well each of Alaska’s lawmakers adhered to conservative principles in 2021.
The Alaska State Legislature earned an overall conservative rating of 46%. Alaska trails behind top-ranked legislatures such as Alabama (74%) and Florida (73%), and the state even falls short of the national average of 49%, the group said.
The conservative rating is based on lawmaker voting across 186 policy areas ranging from cultural and life to tax, fiscal and regulatory policies. The entire scoring and methodology is at this link.
The state’s least conservative Republican is Rep. Louise Stutes of Kodiak, with a score of 22%. She scored lower than the most conservative of the Democrats, Chris Tuck, who was ranked 23% conservative.
Sen. Natasha Von Imhof was the least conservative Republican senator, with a 25% score. She is not running for reelection. Sen. Donny Olson, a Democrat, was the most conservative of his party, at 31%.
The top conservatives, according to the analysis:
Rep. David Eastman, Rep. Chris Kurka, Rep. Sarah Vance all received a 100% score. Rep. George Rauscher and Rep. Ben Carpenter were close behind at 95% and 95% respectively.
Representatives Kevin McCabe, Ron Gillham, James Kaufman, Cathy Tilton, Thomas McKay were all scored in the 90s.
Dead last for conservatives in the House were Democrats Reps. Geran Tarr (5%), Liz Snyder (4%), and Sara Hannan, (4%).
In the Senate, Sens. Rob Myers and Lora Reinbold were both scored 92% conservative.
The ratings have also been incorporated into CPAC’s new Lawmaker Comparison Tool, which runs head-to-head comparisons on lawmakers’ strongest and weakest policy areas.