The American Conservative Union Foundation (ACUF), host of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), has just released its ratings of the 2019 meeting of the Florida Legislature.
The Florida Legislature’s overall conservative score was 66.34%, far outperforming neighboring Georgia (50.97%) and once again in contention for ACUF’s rankings of the most conservative legislatures in the country, according to ACUF’s Year in Review.
In the 2019 session, Florida remained one of the top conservative states for the fourth year in a row,” said ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp. “Many conservative agenda items that moved through the legislature were driven by Florida’s newly-elected Governor Ron DeSantis (ACUF Lifetime 99%). Governor DeSantis and conservative members of the legislature expanded choices in education, health care and technology for all Floridians and rewarded teachers who were making positive impacts on their students. And thanks to the leadership of those conservatives, Governor DeSantis also worked to hold agencies accountable for inefficient spending and limit wasteful use of taxpayer dollars.”
Notably, every Republican of the House earned an award for scoring 80% or better, while 17 of 22 Republican senators earned awards. Democrats of the senate (43% average) voted slightly more conservatively than did Democrats of the house (34% average), with 46 of 62 Democrats in the legislature scoring below 50%.
ACUF’s Ratings of Congress and Ratings of the States are initiatives of ACUF’s Center for Legislative Accountability (CLA). These ratings are designed to reflect how over 8,000 elected officials across the nation view the role of government while illustrating the differences between chambers of the legislature and revealing lawmakers’ positions on a wide variety of issues that directly affect citizens.
ACU Foundation reviewed each piece of legislation voted on in both chambers of the legislature to produce average scores of each chamber as well as individual scores for each sitting member.
