Somehow after checking the The American Conservative Union (ACU) site for months looking for new Florida legislative ratings they were released without me noticing a month or two back. The ACU is the group that was long run by David Keene (pictured to the left of George W. Bush) that runs the CPAC conference. (As a further note since it has been raised by readers in recent weeks the reason some of our pictures may not seem applicable to the articles we write is that we only use pictures for this site that are not copyrighted OR we have taken ourselves)

The ACU has for years provided some of the most instructive ratings of members of Congress. I personally have been tracking ACU ratings of Congress since the early 1990s, and since I collect the Almanac of American Politics back issues I have the ratings going all the way back to the early 1970s. Beginning in 2011, ACU  began rating the Florida Legislature. Of course, here at TFS, we disagree with the ACU on virtually every issue (but not on all issues).  However the organization’s ratings are very instructive to gauge ideology of members of Congress and now the legislature.

Based on the 2013 ACU Ratings of the Florida Legislature only Senator Jeff Clemens had a perfect liberal score from the organization. In fact many Senate Democrats appear to be quite moderate based on the ACU’s formula ranking near the middle on the organizations ideological scale.  In the House over half the Democratic Caucus had a perfect liberal score. Only Rep. Katie Edwards (D-Plantation) could be considered to be a moderate Democrat based on these rankings. Former Rep. Mike Fasano (R- New Port Richey) was also towards the left of the spectrum and based on these ratings would be considered a “liberal,” although we know that Mr. Fasano is basically an economic populist, something that at one time was more common in this state.

The full ratings are below. You will have to download Scribd to read them if you have not read a document or signed up for Scribd previously.

Florida State Ratings 2013 by The American Conservative Union