This is the fifth in a series related to
how congresspeople were rated (Follow this link to look up your own congresspeople, and for details on which congressional votes were used to generate the ratings.) by the
League of Conservation Voters, the nation's premier environmental group focused on electoral politics.
The most recent diary showed that Black and Hispanic Congresspeople were, on average, better environmentalists than white Democrats (and much more so than all white Congresspeople). Before that was the Regional and State breaskdown of average Democrats ratings, meant to reflect the level of environmentalism in the region/state, and it contained some surprising results! Prior to that was the List of Environmental Heroes = all congresspeople whose LCV rating was 89% or higher, and the Most Improved Environmentalists = those whose 2003 ratings were at least 16% since the 2001-2 session, and were at least 50.
Todays is a sad topic: it shows the Most Regressing Environmentalists - those whose 2003 LCV rating was 15 or more points below their 2001-2 average. The mirror image, if you will, of the Most Improved Environmentalists diary.
Of the 26 representatives to drop 15 or more points, 6 are Democrats (5 if you don't count the traitor from Georgia Zell Milller) and 20 are republicans (21 if you count Zell), compared to the 39 most improved environmentalists, in which 33 of 39 were Democrats and 6 were Republicans. This again confirms that the centers-of-gravity of the parites are moving further apart on the environment, with Democrats getting better as Republicans get worse. It is becoming increasingly difficult for an honest environmentalist to be non-partisan. (As a side note, we can take solace in the fact that more reps are getting substantially better (39) than substantially worse (26).)
I've corrected for a silly flaw in the way LCV ratings are generated: LCV counts a missed vote as equal to an anti-environmental vote. Thus, some scores are artificially low; in particular, the scores of everyone who ran for president (Edwards, Gephardt, Graham, Kucinich, Kerry) tanked, as they were often absent. (For example, of 19 key votes, John Edwards voted pro-environment on 7, anti-environment on 2, and missed 10. LCV gives him a score of 7/19 or 37%, but the percentage of his votes that were pro was 7/9 or 78%, which is exactly equal to his average in the previous 4 years.) Thus, you can be assured that all of the people listed here had real drops, and weren't simply absent.
Here's the list, by state. States are listed in alphabetical order by state name (For example, IL comes before IA.)
If a Republican on this list is defeatable (for example, Sen. Specter (R-PA), whose opponent, Rep. Hoeffel, advertises on Kos.), then let's knock his sorry ass out of congress this November!
If you spot your own rep on this list, and he is either a Democrat or a Republican in a safe district, the best thing to do is to send him a letter or email and let him know that you're watching, and that you hope this drop is his environmental record is a 1-year anomaly.
STATE Rep (party) Rating Loss
CA Baca (D) 50 -18
FL Bilirakis (R) 20 -16
FL Weldon (R) 5 -18
GA Sen. Miller (D) 0 -16
IL Sen. Fitzgerald (R) 21 -31
IL LaHood (R) 20 -16
IA Nussle (R) 0 -23
MI Hoekstra (R) 10 -22
MN Oberstar (D) 65 -17
MN Peterson (D) 20 -25
NV Sen. Ensign (R) 17 -19
NY McHugh (R) 16 -20
NY Fossella (R) 11 -16
NY Quinn (R) 13 -27
NY Sweeney (R) 16 -20
NY Walsh (R) 32 -18
NC Jones (R) 5 -18
ND Pomeroy (D) 50 -18
OH Ney (R) 5 -18
OH Regula (R) 0 -18
PA Sen. Specter (R) 32 -20
PA Brady (D) 50 -17
PA English (R) 15 -17
PA Greenwood (R) 42 -17
SC Wilson (R) 0 -25
TX Paul (R) 7 -34
WV Capito (R) 25 -20
WI Ryan (R) 10 -17