How conservative is Raymore? Based on who is representing the city in the U.S. House of Representatives, only two more districts throughout the entire country are more conservative.

According to GovTrack’s Report Card, Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-MO-4, is the third most conservative member of the House. Considering there are more than 400 House members throughout the nation, that is no easy task. The only two House members more conservative than Hartzler are Reps. Ralph Norman, R-SC-5, and Randy Weber, R-TX-14.

According to GovTrack, its ideology analysis assigns a score to members of Congress according to their legislative behavior by whether they sponsor and cosponsor overlapping sets of bills and resolutions with other members of Congress. The score can be interpreted as a left/right scale measuring the dominant ideological difference or differences among members of Congress.

Compared to most House Republicans, Hartzler exhibited more leadership. Based on the ability to get cosponsors on bills, Hartzler’s leadership score was the 11th highest among all House Republicans.

Hartzler appears to be relatively moderate when it comes to introducing bills. In a multi-way tie for 200th, Hartzler introduced only 22 bills during the last session of Congress. She cosponsored 360 bills, ranking her 219th in that category. Rep. Eleanor Norton, D-DC, leads the pack in both categories with 105 bills introduced and more than 2,100 cosponsored. In a distant second for most cosponsored bills is Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-PA-1, with less than 1,300 cosponsored bills.

Getting bills past committee and onto the floor for consideration is difficult for any House member, and Hartzler is no exception. She only got one bill out of committee, HR 639. That bill amends the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to specify that National Urban Search and Rescue Response System task forces may include federal employees. It was signed into law in August 2019. Rep. James McGovern, D-MA-2, had the most success with 38 bills out of committee.

Although extremely conservative, Hartzler has a decent track record of cosponsoring bipartisan legislation during the 116th Congress. More than a third of the bills she cosponsored were introduced by a Democrat, putting her in the 67th percentile among all representatives. However, she is only in the 29th percentile among all House Republicans and the 25th percentile among the Missouri delegation. Rep. Fitzpatrick took the lead again with nearly 82% of cosponsored bills introduced by the other party.

In fact, Republicans dominate the bipartisan category. The highest Democrat ranking is No. 91, which is Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-NJ-5. He joined bipartisan bills the most often among all House Democrats at 43%. Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-MD-5, is the only representative who did not cosponsor a single bill outside his party.