By their votes shall ye know them.
I have read many comments here displaying an intense dislike of Alan Grayson. That's understandable for someone who is your neighbor, or is about to become your father-in-law. But the job of U.S. Representatives and Senators is ultimately to vote, not to lead parades.
What follows is an examination of their voting records, specifically to determine which Representative is more supportive of the Democratic Party. While it's not possible to define, for everyone, what "better" (Democrats) means, it is possible to identify "more" (Democratic) when it comes to votes.
Here are the results of an examination of 294 votes.
Grayson: Sided with Democrats 245 times. Sided with Republicans 49 times. Murphy: Sided with Democrats 49 times. Sided with Republicans 245 times.
On these votes, Murphy sided with Republicans 5 times as often as Grayson.
Since a vote only slightly tilted toward Democrats counts the same as one where the parties were almost unanimously in opposition to each other, I calculated the averages:
Grayson's average score: 219.16 Murphy's average score: -219.16 (where positive is Democratic-leaning, and negative is Republican-leaning)
Boring explanation of scoring methodology: I looked at the voting records for both Grayson and Murphy starting in January of 2013, on into 2015. I looked only at those votes where they voted differently. I identified 294 votes where they differed, which is about 20% of all votes in which they both participated. I then scored each vote, as follows:Score for Y vote = Dem Y votes minus Dem N votes minus Rep Y votes plus Rep N votes. Score for N vote = Dem N votes minus Dem Y votes minus Rep N votes plus Rep Y votes.
That's what the statistics reveal. But what about each vote's importance? What about each vote's value? A vote on, for example, the ACA, is far more important than a vote on an amendment affecting $500K in spending for one year. And the votes' values will be different. One may be a “Yahoo!!”, another may be “BOOOO!!”, while another is “Meh”. (Far too many will be “I have no idea what you're saying”). I could assign both importance and value to every vote. I could. Which would be utterly useless to anyone else. I can only suggest that people look at votes of particular interest to them. I did identify a few votes I consider notable.
- Murphy voted for the Keystone XL pipeline. Grayson voted against it.
- Murphy voted for one of those “Repeal Obamacare; The Death of a Hundred Cuts” bills, voting to change the definition of “full-time” (the point at which an employer is required to provide insurance) from 30 hours to 40 hours.
- Murphy voted for more offshore drilling. Grayson voted against it.
- Murphy voted for something called the Stop Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act of 2014. Anyone remember that little disingenuous Issault?
- Murphy voted Yes on the Pentagon budget, multiple . times. Grayson voted No. (IMO, we spend far too much on the military as it is).
Grayson is more supportive of the Democratic Party than is Murphy. The DSCC is endorsing Murphy. I see that as a policy of leaning toward the "center" - which aggressive Republican politicking has pushed further and further to the "right". I reject that endorsement. Because in choosing Murphy, they are supporting - in the U.S. Senate - the Keystone XL pipeline, more drilling off the coasts, a weakening of the ACA, a continued bloated military and its global war machine....
And policies that are more Republican.
Bonus: I decided to look at votes for the Republican Representatives in, or considering, the Senate race; David Jolly, Ron DeSantis, and Jeff Miller. For this comparison, I evaluated all votes, whether the others voted or not. And the results are...
| Grayson | Murphy | Jolly | DeSantis | Miller |
| 248.78 | 164.69 | -219.49 | -267.68 | -267 |
Strategic voters, if convinced that Grayson will lose to any Republican, will want to vote for Murphy. For myself, I'll remember Charlie Crist, and Charlie Crist. Or, rather, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.
More boring details. Data was compiled using Perl and OpenOffice. Vote pages were downloaded from the Congress.gov roll call votes page) to a local drive, then info was extracted using Perl. Generated reports were imported into OpenOffice Calc, then formulas were added, and a few manual counts were made. An extract from the final report (or even the entire report) is available on request; if anyone is interested, I'll place it in a separate diary and provide a link. I'd provide an extract here, but when I do that, there is a loooong empty space between the table and the rest of the diary. The list of roll call votes where one voted Y and the other N is shown below, by year and roll call vote number.2013: 11, 30, 38, 44, 62, 68, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 89, 105, 117, 140, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 179, 190, 194, 200, 205, 211, 214, 215, 218, 221, 229, 232, 237, 239, 244, 260, 265, 266, 268, 269, 271, 272, 274, 276, 277, 280, 282, 286, 290, 293, 297, 325, 335, 336, 340, 345, 348, 361, 363, 366, 368, 369, 372, 381, 382, 384, 385, 392, 393, 396, 397, 401, 408, 412, 414, 420, 422, 436, 439, 459, 480, 481, 488, 489, 497, 506, 507, 508, 513, 514, 516, 518, 528, 530, 537, 540, 542, 548, 553, 555, 559, 564, 569, 587, 602, 608, 609, 611, 623, 625, 627, 629, 639, 641.
2014: 11, 23, 31, 41, 60, 64, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 74, 78, 90, 97, 108, 110, 113, 129, 135, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 156, 162, 164, 168, 172, 173, 174, 176, 181, 182, 185, 188, 190, 200, 203, 204, 209, 211, 228, 230, 232, 233, 240, 247, 251, 254, 257, 260, 264, 267, 286, 299, 302, 308, 309, 310, 311, 315, 321, 324, 327, 329, 334, 338, 343, 349, 351, 354, 359, 372, 392, 402, 404, 408, 409, 410, 416, 420, 422, 429, 438, 449, 451, 455, 464, 470, 473, 485, 486, 491, 495, 501, 502, 507, 513, 517, 519, 523, 531, 540, 542, 548, 551, 558, 562, 563.
2015: 9, 13, 14, 16, 22, 33, 37, 41, 50, 56, 62, 68, 73, 75, 78, 82, 83, 89, 94, 99, 103, 104, 119, 122, 135, 136, 137, 139, 152, 158, 173, 182, 184, 185, 186, 203, 204, 224, 228, 232, 239, 245, 260, 262, 269, 276, 279, 282, 298, 305, 309, 313, 317, 321, 327, 332, 335, 340, 342, 343, 344, 350, 356, 358, 360, 369, 375.
And, with year and roll call number,
Grayson’s 10 worst (scoring), Murphy’s 10 best
2015, 99 2013, 290 2014, 164 2014, 74 2015, 119 2014, 232 2014, 162 2014, 267 2014, 264 2013, 268
Grayson’s 10 best (scoring), Murphy’s 10 worst. 2014, 200 2014, 203 2014, 299 2015, 158 2013, 221 2014, 491 2015, 89 2014, 392 2015, 13 2013, 372