By | Ben Giles October |Arizona Capitol Times
So-called “moderate” Republican state legislators in Arizona aren’t so moderate after all.
Only a handful of Republican senators and representatives vote alike with a few Democrats in their respective chambers, according to an analysis by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Most of the time, they’re still reliably conservative and mostly cast votes in a similar fashion to their Republicans colleagues.
Related: Some GOP lawmakers vote solid red, support caucus bills
Small group of Republicans buck their party, vote their conscience
Collectively, four GOP senators voted with seven out of the chamber’s 13 Democrats at least 435 times. That’s about 52 percent of the 841 votes cast on the Senate floor in 2017.
Those same four Republican senators voted just as many times with most, if not all, of their Republican colleagues.
In the House, 18 Republican representatives collectively voted with five of their chamber’s 25 Democrats at least 230 times, or 20 percent of the 1,126 floor votes cast this year.
Every Republican in the House also voted at least 230 times with the rest of the GOP caucus.
