Northern Virginia’s three Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives continued traditional norms of low scores in a ranking compiled by the American Conservative Union Foundation, based on votes taken in Congress during 2020.
U.S. Reps. Don Beyer (D-8th) and Jennifer Wexton (D-10th) scored 4 percent while U.S. Rep. Gerald Connolly scored 0 percent in the ranking, released last week.
(Totaling up their lifetime voting records in Congress, Connolly has a 6-percent approval rating from the American Conservative Union, with Wexton at 5.2 percent and Beyer at 2.6 percent.)
The typical Democrat in the House in 2020 had a rating of 3 percent, unchanged from a year before. The average rating of House Republicans was 79 percent, down 3 percent from 2019.
In the House, the lowest-rated Republican was U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, at 22 percent. He was three ticks above the highest rated Democrat, U.S. Rep. Colin Peterson of Minnesota, who scored 19 percent.
On the U.S. Senate side, Democrat Tim Kaine scored 5 percent in 2020, compared to a lifetime average of 2.2 percent. Democrat Mark Warner, who positions himself as the centrist’s centrist in the Senate, proved not so much in the 2020 ranking, scoring 4 percent compared to his lifetime rating of 6.7 percent.
Democrats in the Senate averaged a 7-percent rating for 2020 while Republicans averaged 79 percent, each up 4 percent. The highest rated Democrat (Joe Manchin of West Virginia) stood at 26 percent while the lowest rated Republican (Susan Collins) garnered a 35-percent ranking.
The annual rating is now in its 50th year. Those with the highest scores are invited to appear at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) next month in Texas.
Full data can be found at www.conservative.org.