mbayrob commented on my earlier entry where I had a grid of the votes on the budget bills suggesting a courage rating for the Assembly and Senators. I thought about that, and considered some options. Since most of these ratings are usually simple percentages based on bill votes, it made sense to just look at the percentage of no votes. So, here are the courage ratings for the Democrats in the Assembly. The Senate Democrats are below the fold, as are some ideas for more complicated ratings if others want to tackle them.
| Name | District | Courage Rating |
| Assembly | ||
| Sandre R. Swanson | 16 | 64.0% |
| V. Manuel Peréz | 80 | 44.0% |
| Anna M. Caballero | 28 | 28.0% |
| Marty Block | 78 | 24.0% |
| Mariko Yamada | 8 | 20.0% |
| Alyson Huber | 10 | 20.0% |
| Nancy Skinner | 14 | 20.0% |
| Joan Buchanan | 15 | 20.0% |
| Tony Mendoza | 56 | 16.0% |
| Mary Salas | 79 | 16.0% |
| Wesley Chesbro | 1 | 12.0% |
| Dave Jones | 9 | 12.0% |
| Tom Torlakson | 11 | 12.0% |
| Alberto Torrico | 20 | 12.0% |
| Ira Ruskin | 21 | 12.0% |
| Paul Fong | 22 | 12.0% |
| Jim Beall Jr. | 24 | 12.0% |
| Julia Brownley | 41 | 12.0% |
| Hector De La Torre | 50 | 12.0% |
| Ted W. Lieu | 53 | 12.0% |
| Jared Huffman | 6 | 8.0% |
| Fiona Ma | 12 | 8.0% |
| Tom Ammiano | 13 | 8.0% |
| Mary Hayashi | 18 | 8.0% |
| Jerry Hill | 19 | 8.0% |
| Joe Coto | 23 | 8.0% |
| William W. Monning | 27 | 8.0% |
| Felipe Fuentes | 39 | 8.0% |
| Bob Blumenfield | 40 | 8.0% |
| Mike Feuer | 42 | 8.0% |
| Paul Krekorian | 43 | 8.0% |
| Kevin de Leon | 45 | 8.0% |
| Bonnie Lowenthal | 54 | 8.0% |
| Warren T. Futurani | 55 | 8.0% |
| Norma J. Torres | 61 | 8.0% |
| Lori Saldaña | 76 | 8.0% |
| Noreen Evans | 7 | 4.0% |
| Cathleen Galgiani | 17 | 4.0% |
| Pedro Nava | 35 | 4.0% |
| Anthony J. Portantino | 44 | 4.0% |
| John A. Peréz | 46 | 4.0% |
| Mike Eng | 49 | 4.0% |
| Isadore Hall III | 52 | 4.0% |
| Edward P. Hernandez | 57 | 4.0% |
| Wilmer Amina Carter | 62 | 4.0% |
| Jose Solorio | 69 | 4.0% |
| Karen Bass | 47 | 0.0% |
| Mike Davis | 48 | 0.0% |
| Charles M. Calderon | 58 | 0.0% |
(ties are all broken solely by sorting on district number — no relative judgment implied)
| Name | District | Courage Rating |
| Senate | ||
| Lou Correa | 34 | 48.4% |
| Gilbert Cedillo | 22 | 44.4% |
| Leland Yee | 8 | 40.7% |
| Mark DeSaulnier | 7 | 33.3% |
| Loni Hancock | 9 | 33.3% |
| Ellen Corbett | 10 | 22.2% |
| Carol Liu | 21 | 18.5% |
| Fran Pavley | 23 | 18.5% |
| Gloria Romero | 24 | 18.5% |
| Mark Leno | 3 | 14.8% |
| S. Joseph Simitian | 11 | 14.8% |
| Alan Lowenthal | 27 | 14.8% |
| Christine Kehoe | 39 | 14.8% |
| Denise Moreno Ducheny | 40 | 14.8% |
| Louis Wolk | 5 | 11.1% |
| Gloria Negrete McLeod | 32 | 11.1% |
| Patricia Wiggins | 2 | 7.4% |
| Dean Florez | 16 | 7.4% |
| Rod Wright | 25 | 7.4% |
| Curren D. Price, Jr | 26 | 7.4% |
| Alex Padilla | 20 | 3.7% |
| Jenny Oropeza | 28 | 3.7% |
| Darrell Steinberg | 6 | 0% |
| Elaine Alquist | 13 | 0% |
| Ron Calderon | 30 | 0% |
Before settling on the simple percentage, I seriously considered some metrics involving how many votes were cast for and against a bill, the partisan split on the voting, the partisan split on the district, and the effect of term limits (a term limited assemblymen/senator has less to lose by bucking the party line.) But, I then realized that I’d need to include some subjective ratings of the weights for each of those factors and then it would be more of a personal measure than an objective and reproducible measure.
If there’s interest in the more subjective measure, let me know (and give me some suggestions) and I’ll look at grinding away at the numbers over the weekend.
My naive initial survey of the data (by eyeball only) suggested that Swanson should rate very high, and Bass very low, so whatever you did is an excellent “proxy” for what we want.
The next step is for people who are familiar with the bills and the politics of them to look at the rankings and see if they make sense to them. I can’t do that, since I don’t really know what bills were “tough votes” and which bills were not.
What say the wonks? There’s an old adage, “what gets measured gets managed”. We want to manage how these people vote, so having a reasonable measure makes for a good whip for riding herd on these people.
What do people think of the rankings? My sense is that the percentage of no-votes is too simple minded an approach for general use, although it’s pretty good for the Black Thursday Budget session from last week. But for a general measure, how do we approach this?