RLCNH Scores Republicans, Backs Incumbents By Voting Record

The Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire has a legislative scorecard for state representatives and senators based on their faithfulness to conservative values. 

The group recommended two Republican candidates to represent Amherst based on their findings: Rep. Peter Hansen and Rep. Laurie Sanborn.

“The RLCNH intends to drive the agenda for the Republican Party in the coming years, and our new scorecard will be one of the tools that we use for this end,” said Carolyn McKinney, chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire. “While we still intend to promote the best outcome for Republican primary elections by recommending candidates who perform well on our incumbent scorecard or candidate survey, we will only endorse and actively support candidates who have truly exhibited a strong commitment to the principles that make our state and country great. Our endorsements will be reserved for the best of the best.”

The scorecard is a culmination of the organization’s two-year effort to track and advocate for or against bills that either advanced or retracted the common sense principles of limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility and free markets. In its weekly RLCNH Report sent to legislators and activists, the RLCNH supported 217 bills and opposed 26 bills during the two-year session. The bills supported or opposed in the various RLCNH Reports are the basis for the Legislative Scorecard. 

In total, the RLCNH scored 223 House roll call votes and 110 Senate roll call votes and used those votes as the basis of its score for incumbents. The 2012 RLCNH Legislative Scorecard can be view in full at www.rlcnh.org/2012scorecard.

RLCNH's score for Amherst Representatives:

Only incumbents with a score of 85 percent or above on the scorecard were considered for endorsement. Some incumbents with this score, however, did not earn an endorsement because their voting record did not reflect their overall understanding of liberty. Incumbents who scored between 80 percent and 85 percent were considered for a recommendation, a lower standard than an endorsement, but some of these candidates were also disqualified based on some of their public positions.

Incumbents who scored below an 80 percent were automatically disqualified for endorsement or recommendation. RLCNH has now endorsed 84 candidates for the 2012 Republican Primary.