The Club for Growth Foundation will release a scorecard based on voting records of elected officials from 2021, the contents of which were exclusively shared with The Tennessee Star Thursday.
“The Foundation conducted a comprehensive examination of each lawmaker’s record on votes related to pro-growth policies and computed an Economic Growth Score on a scale of 0 to 100. A score of 100 indicates the highest support for pro-growth policies,” according to the scorecard provided to The Star. “The Foundation’s study examined over 4,400 floor votes and, in the end, included 20 Tennessee House votes and 20 Tennessee Senate votes.”
The club is keeping tabs of the elected officials “to bring increased public transparency and accountability to view voting records of Tennessee’s elected state legislators on economic growth issues.”
High marks on the Economic Scorecard were difficult to achieve, according to the data. Lawmakers were ranked from zero to 100 percent.
In the Tennessee Senate, the average Republican scored only 44 percent. The average Democrat in the Senate scored 16 percent.
The highest-rated Republican was State Senator Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield), who clocked in with a 68 percent score, while the lowest-rated Republicans were State Senators Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville) and Page Walley (R-Bolivar), both of whom only had a score of 33 percent.
Even the lowest-ranked Republicans scored far higher than the highest-ranked Democrat.
State Sen. Brenda Gilmore (D-Nashville) was the highest scoring Democrat at 19 percent.
The lowest-scoring Democrats were State Senators Sara Kyle (D-Memphis) and Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville), both of whom scored only 13 percent.
In the Tennessee House, the average Republican score was 50 percent, while the average Democrat score was 21 percent.
The highest-ranking Republican was State Rep. Tim Rudd (R-Murfreesboro) at 50 percent, while the lowest was Rep. Ron Travis (R-Dayton) at 31 percent.
Meanwhile, the highest-ranking Democrat was Rep. John Windle (D-Livingston) at 45 percent, and the lowest-ranking Democrat was State Representative Bob Freeman (D-Nashville) at only 6 percent.
“Through the release of this scorecard series, the Club for Growth Foundation is looking at how state legislatures perform in terms of pro-growth policies,” said Club for Growth Foundation President David McIntosh. “We believe that this scorecard will help inform citizens and entrepreneurs about who supports the policies that promote economic prosperity.”
The Club for Growth Foundation said it plans on releasing similar state scorecards for legislatures across the country.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Tennessee Capitol” by Peggy Anderson. CC BY-SA 4.0.
