Not surprisingly, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group says Utah's Republican congressional delegation voted for the public interest less than 10 percent of the time, while Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, received a higher 71 percent ranking.
PIRG's Congressional Scorecard for U.S. Senators and Representatives compared lawmakers' voting records on more than 20 different issues from March 2001 to February 2003, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Clean Air Act and the storage of nuclear wastes in Yucca Mountain.
Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch, both Utah Republicans, were said to have voted for the public interest 10 percent of the time. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, received a lower mark of 5 percent.
Cannon's spokeswoman, Meghan Riding, said voters will notice Republican delegates all scored poorly and will quickly realize the source of the rankings.
"We all have the same goals of protecting air and water, but we have different methods of doing that," Riding said. Cannon didn't vote on regulations that would have shut down power plants across the country, but he did vote for the Healthy Forests Initiative, which provides for thinning of forests to prevent large catastrophic forest fires.
"That will do more to protect the environment than many of the things listed on PIRG's scorecard," Riding said.
Matheson's spokeswoman, Alyson Heyrend, said Matheson doesn't put a lot of stock in scorecards either.
"Before he casts his vote, he is looking at the merit of each individual issue and how it will affect the people of Utah," Heyrend said. "There have been many issues we have disagreed on with this group."
PIRG plans to distribute the individual congressional scorecards to hundreds of thousands of Utah households.
"These scorecards are an important tool to educate the public about the voting records of their elected officials and to help citizens hold those officials accountable," said PIRG campaign director Vanessa Pierce in a written statement.
Overall, 166 members of the House or Senate scored 80 percent and above, of whom 34 scored 100 percent. One-hundred-fifty members of either chamber had scores at 10 percent or lower, with 67 members scoring 0 percent.
E-mail: jparkinson@desnews.com