Craig Ladwig, over at Hoosier Access, has some interesting critiques of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce’s method of scoring legislator voting records.
The problem, as I understand it, is that the Chamber picks votes it considers important, then scores legislators – docking points when you didn’t go the Chamber’s way. This affects campaign contributions and the likelihood of primary challenges (for Republicans anyway). However, the Chamber’s representative votes are not necessarily good economic ideas; even where one embraces conservative economic principles. Craig gives examples of local Indiana price preferences, carbon dioxide pipelines and eminent domain, and Clean-Energy-Improvement-Financing Districts. But, if legislators vote against those things, they’ll lose Chamber support.
[…] Now it turns out that the Chamber’s economic conservatism may be perverse, counter-productive and – truth be told – not really conservative. (HT Doug Masson) […]