Throughout the session, we tracked the disagreements each Republican legislator had with Democrats.
We noticed a substantial change for six Republicans between the period prior to May 1 and the period after May 1.
This reminds us a bit of the legislators who used the local and consent votes from the 88th session to harmlessly disagree with Democrats to make themselves appear more conservative in the Rice University ranking done by Mark Jones.
As
Jones himself said: "Unlike in previous analyses, information from votes on bills located on the House Local & Consent Calendar are not included in this analysis. This is primarily due to the calculated effort this year by a small number of Republican House members to make their Lib-Con Scores appear more conservative than they actually were by strategically registering their opposition to bills on the Local & Consent Calendar in a way that was inconsistent with their floor voting behavior."
One of those who engaged in this gamesmanship with the Rice analysis, Rep. Jared Patterson, unsurprisingly is one of the six this session with a significant change in disagreements from before and after May 1.
The six are:
- Rep. Jared Patterson
- Rep. Matt Shaheen
- Rep. Lacey Hull
- Rep. John McQueeney
- Rep. Will Metcalf
- Rep. Trey Wharton
For this Republican, the jump was + 17.41 points.