In November, U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna won reelection to her Pinellas district by about 10 points.
Her district is solid red, but it doesn’t lean as conservative as some. Democrats dream of flipping it.
A new report from the conservative-leaning Institute for Legislative Analysis found that Luna doesn’t vote like she represents anything close to a swing district.
In 2024, Luna’s second year in Congress, she voted about 92% of the time to decrease the size or scope of government — one of the highest figures in the House, the institute found.
Her score was higher than every Republican in Florida except former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, and U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds — both of whom represent districts far more conservative than Luna’s. (Gaetz resigned from Congress in November after President Donald Trump nominated him to be U.S. attorney general, but his nomination fell through amid a sex scandal.)
Luna represents a portion of Pinellas County that has grown more conservative in recent years, but for decades had a history of electing moderate Republicans and Democrats.
Her dedication to limited government won Luna an A+ from the institute, which says it wants to build “the nation’s most advanced legislative database and lawmaker evaluation platform for the liberty movement.”
Scorecards are helpful when understanding how a lawmaker votes, but they’re often incomplete, the institute’s president, Fred McGrath, said in an interview.
To give voters a better idea of what lawmakers are doing in Washington, McGrath’s group devised a metric that counts how often elected officials vote to increase the size or scope of government. His researchers combed through hundreds of votes, weighing each based on how consequential the policy was. For example, obscure regulations were weighed less heavily than major tax bills. Social issues such as abortion were excluded.
Then the group compared that metric with the political makeup of the elected official’s district and assigned them an “alignment” score. Those who voted more conservatively than their district were given a positive score.
Luna tied for the ninth-highest alignment score in the House, beating out such conservative firebrands as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Luna netted the highest score in Florida. A Luna spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
“Our ultimate goal here is really just to provide a new level of transparency and accountability,” McGrath said. “No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, you want your politicians to be held accountable to what they’re telling you on the campaign trail.”
The institute measured votes in 2024, so some Florida members of Congress are not included: U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody and Reps. Randy Fine and Jimmy Patronis each took office this year.
In general, Florida’s congressional representatives performed about as expected when compared with their districts. Their composite alignment scores were -1.5, meaning Florida’s GOP members of Congress were actually slightly more liberal than their districts.
Florida’s Democrats were also slightly more liberal, netting a total alignment score of -3.3.
Here are the scores for each Tampa Bay area’s congressional representative:
Republican Rep. Gus Bilirakis: -10
Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna: +15
Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor: -8
Republican Rep. Laurel Lee: +2
Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan: -9