Minnesota’s Congress members ranked on peace issues

Peace Action West, a nonprofit created to “foster broad-based civic activism to create a strong voice for peaceful and pragmatic solutions to global problems,” has released its scorecard on congressional votes in 2009. None of Minnesota’s delegation had a perfect score, but Rep. Keith Ellison scored the highest. Rep. John Kline was lowest among the ratings, which ranked members based on votes for reduced military spending and against war funding, torture and Guantanamo. The group also chastised Democrats for falling back on campaign promises to promote peace.

“Democrats are facing a major enthusiasm gap with their base heading into the elections, and this congressional scorecard provides a glimpse into why,” said Rebecca Griffin, Peace Action West’s political director said in a statement. “In 2008 progressives turned out in droves to give Democrats control of our government in large part because they were fed up with war. If Democrats want progressives to support them again, they need to demonstrate that they are going to stop caving to fear-based politics and show us bold foreign policy leadership.”

Here’s how Minnesota’s members ranked (pdf):

1 Tim Walz (D): 54 percent
2 John Kline (R): 8 percent
3 Erik Paulsen (R): 15 percent
4 Betty McCollum (D): 73 percent
5 Keith Ellison (D): 91 percent
6 Michele Bachmann (R): 9 percent
7 Collin Peterson (D): 38 percent
8 James Oberstar (D): 69 percent