It’s the middle of the school year, and I’m reviewing my children’s report cards. It’s also the midpoint of the congressional session, so I thought it’s a good time to also look at my congressional representative’s performance.
A helpful rubric is found at fivethrityeight.com. “Tracking Congress in the Age of Trump” tracks and compares your congressional representative. It provides a score for how often the representative votes in line with Trump’s position.
Importantly it includes algorithms for a predicted score of how often a member is expected to support Trump, based on their district’s share of Trump votes in the 2016 election.
It was surprising to see that my representative, Erik Paulsen, has a Trump score of 98.4 percent. This means he is voting with Trump’s position nearly all of the time. Given this district’s presidential preference (Trump lost by 9.4 points), Paulsen’s predicted score is 43.8 percent (how often a member is expected to support Trump based on Trump’s 2016 margin). It’s surprising to see the truth as Paulsen portrays himself as a “moderate” to align with the constituents of his district, when the reality is that Paulsen is too extreme.
Representatives should be judged by the preferences of their constituents. For Representative Paulsen, the difference between his actual and predicted Trump support score is a startling 54.6 percent, an “F.”
Maybe this is why he hides behind robo-calls instead of holding actual public town halls.
Jena Martin, Minnetonka
Lakeshore Weekly News, February 2, 2018