Methodology - How Did We Determine Placement in the Deck?

Why is it that all of the Republicans accused of 'being divisive' actually show greater unity with other Republicans than those who accuse them?

We looked at every record vote taken on the floor of the Texas House during regular session, and Republicans like Brian Harrison and Steve Toth vote with every Republican more often than they would ever vote with a Democrat. But Republicans like Charlie Geren and Gary VanDeaver agree more often with some Democrats than all Republicans.

Let's look at Ken King, chairman of the powerful State Affairs committee. When he votes, he disagrees more often with 18 Republicans (Brian Harrison, David Lowe, Mike Olcott, Steve Toth, Andy Hopper, Nate Schatzline, Tony Tinderholt, Shelby Slawson, Brent Money, Cody Vasut, Shelley Luther, Terri Leo Wilson, Mitch Little, Alan Schoolcraft, Katrina Pierson, Matt Morgan, Valoree Swanson, and Keresa Richardson) than with Democrat Terry Canales.

That's not unity at all. Do you think this might affect which bills make it through his committee?

On the other hand, every one of those 18 Republicans disagrees with every Democrat before disagreeing with any Republican. If Republican unity is your aim, that looks far more like unity.

For the record, every Democrat disagrees with Republicans before they ever disagree with another Democrat. But I'm sure it doesn't surprise you that Democrats are unified.

We scored legislators based on unity, using a metric like you see here.

Those who agree with all Republicans before agreeing with Democrats scored 100%. Those who agree with some Democrats more than with Republicans got a lesser percentage because they show less Republican unity.

This percentage was each Republican's Unity Score. From that, we adjusted for other key indicators based on adherence to Republican priorities and a willingness - or a lack of willingness - to limit government.

We credited their score .5 for each bill authored in alignment with the Texas GOP Lege Priorities (as determined by the RPT committees during session).

We debited their score 1 for each bill authored in opposition to the Texas GOP Lege Priorities.

If they abandoned the caucus rules and didn't vote for the majority's nominee for speaker, we subtracted 5. (See the explanation here)

If they voted to close debate and disallow Republican amendments on the House Rules package, we subtracted 10. (See the explanation here)

If they voted for SB1, the largest budget ever ($90B more than in 2021), we subtracted 5. (See the explanation here)

If they voted for SB22, abandoning the idea of limited government to spend your money to bring Hollywood to Texas, we subtracted 5. (See the explanation here)

Based on the degree to which a Republican agreed more on Democrat bills than a Democrat, we subtracted points. (See the explanation here)

And for the 6 Republicans who seemed to suddenly jump in their disagreements with Democrats in May at the end of session, we subtracted a bit. (See the explanation here)

After all points were calculated, the lower the score, the higher the placement in the deck.

To get on the House of Good Cards, if you disagreed more with every Democrat before disagreeing with any Republican, and if you didn't lose any points for the items listed above, and if didn't have any statements of votes on the items listed above and you didn't have a high number of absences or present votes, then you were one of the 12 Republicans who made it onto the House of Good Cards. Congratulations - we need more of representatives like them.