North Dakota House Mid-Session Legislative Vote Ranking

North Dakota’s legislature meets only once every two years for a constitutionally-constrained 80 day session. That means the legislative process can get hectic and hard to follow. Which, in turn, means it can be hard to keep track of your legislators are doing.

To that end, LegitSlater and I put our heads together to come up with a ranking of our legislators based on a group of votes we felt clearly represented a conservative or liberal position. Below are the rankings for members of the House; we’ll post the Senate results later.

Now, to be clear, we’re not laying any claim to perfection here. Some of these bills represent complicated issues, and legislators often have very complicated reasons for why they voted for or against them. Our intent is to provide a snapshot of how these legislators voted in the aggregate which we hope will serve a lead-in to conversations between you readers and your legislators. Please, don’t judge your legislators based only on this list. Reach out to them (their contact info is here). Talk with them. Find out why they voted the way they did, then make up your mind. And remember that the legislative session isn’t over yet. This is just a summary of how these elected leaders have governed so far.

The full results of our vote ranking including the bills we used to rank them on is included in a spreadsheet below as well as a best-to-worst listing complete with letter grades (Democrat legislators are italicized). If you need to figure out who your legislators are, click here.

The rankings reveal that partisan affiliation really isn’t all that useful in breaking down the ideological divide in the state House. There are a lot of Republicans who spend a lot of time voting like Democrats. Republicans have become so dominant in the state that the ideological divide is clearly within the Republican caucus itself.

Grade A

Rep. Dan Ruby – 93.18%
Rep. Blair Thoreson – 90.00%

Grade B

Rep. Rick Becker – 88.89%
Rep. Mike Schatz – 87.50%
Rep. Larry Bellew – 86.67%
Rep. Jim Kasper – 86.67%
Rep. Roscoe Streyle – 86.36%
Rep. Scott Louser – 86.36%
Rep. Randy Boehning – 86.05%
Rep. Mark Dosch – 82.5%
Rep. Mike Brandenburg – 82.22%
Rep. Keith Kempenich – 82.22%
Rep. Ben Koppelman – 82.22%
Rep. Roger Brabandt – 82.22%
Rep. Karen Rohr – 82.22%
Rep. Nathan Toman – 82.22%
Rep. Kim Koppelman – 82.22%
Rep. Bette Grande – 80.00%
Rep. Craig Headland – 80.00%
Rep. Gary Kreidt – 80.00%
Rep. Todd Porter – 80.00%

Grade C

Rep. Jim Schmidt – 79.49%
Rep. Wes Belter – 77.78%
Rep. Jeff Delzer – 77.78%
Rep. Dwight Kiefert – 77.78%
Rep. Mike Nathe – 75.56%
Rep. Chet Pollert – 75.56%
Rep. Jason Dockter – 75.56%
Rep. Alex Looysen – 75.56%
Rep. Vicky Steiner – 75.56%
Rep. Alan Fehr – 74.42%
Rep. Al Carlson – 73.33%
Rep. Brenda Heller – 73.33%
Rep. Lisa Meier – 73.33%
Rep. Bob Skarphol – 72.73%
Rep. Matt Klein – 72.73%
Rep. Don Vigesaa – 71.11%
Rep. Dick Anderson – 70.45%
Rep. David Drovdal – 70.00%

Grade D

Rep. Vernon Laning – 68.89%
Rep. Alon Wieland – 68.89%
Rep. Glen Froseth – 68.89%
Rep. Karen Karls – 68.89%
Rep. Kurt Hofstad – 66.67%
Rep. Thomas Beadle – 65.12%
Rep. Joe Heilman – 64.86%
Rep. David Rust – 64.44%
Rep. Chuck Damschen – 64.44%
Rep. Lawrence Klemin – 64.44%
Rep. Diane Larson – 64.44%
Rep. Mark Owens – 63.64%
Rep. Dave Monson – 63.41%
Rep. Dennis Johnson – 63.41%
Rep. Robin Weisz – 61.36%
Rep. John Wall – 61.36%
Rep. Bill Devlin – 60.98%
Rep. Peter Silbernagel – 60.00%

Grade F

Rep. Wayne Trottier – 58.14%
Rep. Gary Paur – 55.56%
Rep. Curtiss Kreun – 55.56%
Rep. Bob Martinson – 55.56%
Rep. Jon Nelson – 55.56%
Rep. George Keiser – 55.26%
Rep. Andrew Maragos – 55.26%
Rep. Gary Sukut – 51.11%
Rep. Bob Frantsvog – 48.89%
Rep. Patrick Hattlestad – 48.89%
Rep. Clark Williams – 43.90%
Rep. William Kretschmar – 40.00%
Rep. Tracy Boe – 33.33%
Rep. Kathy Hawken – 32.50%
Rep. Nancy Johnson – 29.73%
Rep. Joshua Boschee – 28.89%
Rep. Ben Hanson – 28.89%
Rep. Jessica Haak – 27.91%
Rep. Corey Mock – 27.27%
Rep. Marvin Nelson – 27.27%
Rep. Jerry Kelsh – 26.67%
Rep. Marie Stinden – 26.67%
Rep. Steven Zaiser – 25.00%
Rep. Scot Kelsh – 24.44%
Rep. Ron Guggisberg – 24.44%
Rep. Bob Hunksor – 22.22%
Rep. Bill Amerman – 20.51%
Rep. Ed Gruchalla – 20.45%
Rep. Naomi Muscha – 20.00%
Rep. Gail Mooney – 17.78%
Rep. Lois Delmore – 15.56%
Rep. Rick Holman – 15.56%
Rep. Kenton Onstad – 15.56%
Rep. Kylie Oversen – 15.56%
Rep. Kathy Hogan – 14.29%
Rep. Eliot Glassheim – 13.33%

ND House Crossover Vote Ranking by