Policy positions of state legislators

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This page is a content-and-style guide about how to write sections about the policy positions of incumbent state legislators and candidates for state legislature.

The purpose of this section is to familiarize your reader with the positions that the legislator or candidate takes on various policies and bills.

The section should be called "Campaign themes" and should be a subsection of Elections under the year that the candidate/incumbent is running for.

Evidence for what a legislator/candidate's policy positions are come from:

• The legislation he or she supports, or says they will support.
• The person's overall voting record. In some states, groups or individuals provide assessments of a legislator's guiding philosophy based on the legislator's votes on a variety of bills.
• How the legislator/candidate describes his/her views.

You can add a bullet-pointed list of policy positions, derived from the multiple sources indicated above, or you can create subsections within this section, labeling them with words like "Taxes," "Marijuana," etc...whatever the general topic is that you're going to explain the legislator's views on in the actual subsection.

Ideally, issue positions will be added from as many different sources as possible.

Some things to watch for:

• In many states, there will be some kind of local organization that provides more detailed information about candidates -- including scorecards or policy positions. Much of that information does not become available until October, so for these components there is a need to re-check for more data on a consistent basis.
• For candidates, one of the easiest ways to add policy positions will be to take them from the official campaign website. See the following for examples

• Stanley Novak#Policy positions
• Rebecca Kubacki#Policy positions

For candidates, these lists will be simple and likely only refer to the issues they are campaigning under.

For legislators, these sections can be expanded to include actual stance on existing legislation or voting records.

Places to look for policy position info[edit]

• Local organizations that provide questionnaires on issues
• Official campaign website

Examples[edit]

• Laurie Poppe
• Sean Byrnes

Usage[edit]

XX Located under the elections section XX

2018[edit]

See also: Texas House of Representatives elections, 2018

General election[edit]

Elections for the Texas House of Representatives took place in 2018. An open primary election took place on March 6, 2018.^[1] A primary runoff election took place on May 22, 2018. The general election was held on November 6, 2018. The candidate filing deadline was December 11, 2017.^[2] Incumbent John Raney (R) and Josh Wilkinson (D) are running in the Texas House of Representatives District 14 general election.

Ballotpedia will publish vote totals here after they become available.

Democratic primary election[edit]

Josh Wilkinson defeated Alex Vidal in the Texas House of Representatives District 14 Democratic primary election.

Texas House of Representatives, District 14 Democratic Primary, 2018
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
Josh Wilkinson	63.17%	2,429
Alex Vidal	36.83%	1,416
Total Votes		3,845

Republican primary election[edit]

Incumbent John Raney defeated Sarah Laningham, Rick Davis, and Jeston Texeira in the Texas House of Representatives District 14 Republican primary election.

Texas House of Representatives, District 14 Republican Primary, 2018
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
John Raney Incumbent	57.70%	4,917
Sarah Laningham	23.53%	2,005
Rick Davis	17.06%	1,454
Jeston Texeira	1.71%	146
Total Votes		8,522

Campaign themes[edit]

XNAMEX's campaign website

Research requirements[edit]

You'll need the ability to:

• Locate websites that compile information about legislation sponsored by state legislators.
• Find out if any groups, individuals or newspapers in the state issue "Legislative scorecards."
• Research news sources to find out what you can about the person's policy positions.
• Find other relevant sources.

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