How conservative is conservative enough? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

The Third Congressional district race may tell us the answer to that question this year

    We published an article the other day (10-21-11) that struck a nerve with a couple of our loyal readers. Both of them felt we should not have published the article, because it "made Walter look bad."

    The "Walter" they are referring to is Third District Congressman Walter B. Jones. The article contained a rating from the Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington 'watchdog' organization. It rated and ranked all 535 members of Congress on their voting records to reduce government spending by cutting out waste. Walter Jones scored 61% in that assessment.

    Our friends believe Walter Jones is a staunch conservative. So they argued that the Citizens rating was an aberration, and not indicative of his real record. So we did some research and found that indeed, the Citizens' rating was accurate. We went to the seminal conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation and checked their latest ratings of our representatives in Washington and found that, low an behold, Walter B. Jones was rated as voting "conservative" 45% of the time. You can check the original by clicking here.

    To put that 45% rating in perspective, Jones ranked at the bottom of the Republicans in the delegation, voting liberal more than he voted conservative.

    Of course, he was not as liberal as our other Congressman, G. K. Butterfield, who voted conservative only 8% of the time and nowhere near as liberal as the top liberal in the delegation, Sen. Kay Hagen with 6% conservative rating. Our other senator, Richard Burr, did better at 75%.

    We contacted Rep. Jones' office to offer him an opportunity to comment on this article, but at deadline we have not heard back from him or anyone in his office. But that is becoming par for the course with Mr. Jones' office lately. We still get the things they broadcast but in several instances lately they have failed to respond to specific queries we have made. The most recent one was related to whether Rep. Jones intended to endorse Democrat-turned-Republican Arthur Williams. We got no response.

    Jones does have opposition in the Republican Primary, with former New Bern Police Chief Frank Palombo challenging him for the Republican nomination and it is anticipated by most observers that the Democrats will also run someone against Jones.

    Whether Jones' self-fashioning himself as a "conservative" will work in this election remains to be seen.

   UPDATE October 25, 2011 @ 4:00 PM

    Catherine Fodor responded to this article saying that they were unaware of our attempts to contact Rep. Jones. She agreed to secure a response and on the same day sent this statement to us: "Congressman Jones votes for the best interests of Eastern North Carolina, consistent with his conservative principles. His conservative voting record is well established. He has a lifetime rating with the American Conservative Union of 86.3."

   We appreciate Ms. Fodor responding, and we humbly retract our complaint about his office not being responsive. We do appreciate the response.