Flake, McSally most supportive of Trump’s legislative agenda

Sen. Jeff Flake and Rep. Martha McSally have been among the most reliable supporters of the Trump administration in Congress, an analysis of congressional roll call votes shows.

Through this week, the Arizona Republicans had voted 32 and 25 times respectively on matters where President Donald Trump had expressed a view, and on each occasion they voted the way he would want, according to FiveThirtyEight’s Congress Tracker.

By that measure, McSally had a more Trump-friendly record than Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who voted against the administration’s position once, on a matter to establish a commission to identify and eliminate regulations to lower government costs.

And Flake, who said he could not support Trump in last year’s election, has had no problem doing so this year. He did miss a close vote to repeal a rule requiring some federal contractors to report certain labor violations.

McSally’s 100 percent support so far is somewhat surprising given that her district voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 5 percentage points. FiveThirtyEight expects voting by members of Congress to generally mirror the way House districts leaned in the presidential election.

At the end of March, McSally is the 13th-most supportive House member of Trump compared to how she would be expected to vote based on how Trump fared with her constituents. Flake ranked ninth among Senators given the state’s overall partisan vote.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has a 97 percent record to this point. He voted against Mick Mulvaney to head the Office of Management and Budget. The state’s other four House Republicans have also shown strong backing for the president’s agenda.

Reps. Trent Franks, Paul Gosar and David Schweikert also have 100 percent pro-Trump voting records. Biggs stands at 96 percent.

Of course, not all votes are created equal, and sometimes key votes aren’t held.

The scores don’t, for example, reflect the GOP’s failed effort to pass health care changes because that measure was never brought to a vote.

In that case, Biggs and Gosar opposed the plan pushed by Trump, while McSally and Schweikert supported it. Franks was officially undeclared. Neither Flake nor McCain said how they viewed House Speaker Paul Ryan’s bill, which never made it to the Senate, either.

Rep. Kyrsten Sinema was the most supportive of Trump-backed measures among the state’s Democrats, at 44 percent. Rep. Tom O’Halleran, DAriz., came in at 32 percent support.

Reps. Raul Grijalva and Ruben Gallego stood at 4 percent, which is among the lowest in Washington, but isn’t surprising considering their districts voted overwhelmingly against Trump.