What new Pa. House Speaker Mark Rozzi’s voting record tells us about how independent he is

We collected the data from every vote cast in the last 10 years. Here’s what we learned about Rozzi.

• By Kasturi Pananjady and Gillian McGoldrick
• Published Jan 7, 2023

Pennsylvania Republicans say new state House Speaker Mark Rozzi is a bipartisan policymaker and independent thinker. Democrats say he’s one of them, with a long history of supporting the Democratic agenda.

Rozzi himself, elected last week after 10 years as a Democrat, pledged that he’d be the state’s “first independent speaker” and stay out of either party’s internal legislative deliberations.

What’s the truth?

We don’t know what the future holds, and we won’t know what Rozzi plans to do with his party affiliation until he starts talking to the media. But we can look at his voting history to get a better picture of who this surprise speaker is.

The Inquirer analyzed every split vote where the Democratic leader and Republican leader voted against one another since 2013 to see if Rozzi’s voting record over his decade in office bears out his claims of bipartisanship and independence.

That doesn’t measure ideology, and it doesn’t account for how lawmakers negotiate legislation before it comes up for a vote. But the analysis does tell us how frequently Rozzi aligned with his party’s leadership.

And Rozzi has a consistently Democratic voting record, according to The Inquirer’s analysis.

Rozzi has voted with the Democratic leader nearly 89% of the time since he first took office 10 years ago, putting him in line with other Democrats. That number changes slightly over the years: During the 2021-22 session, he voted with Democratic Leader McClinton 93% of the time – the most he ever voted with Democratic leadership in a two-year legislative session.

Out of 1,649 split votes in Rozzi’s tenure, he sided with the Republican leader just 189 times.

Rozzi isn’t among the Democrats most likely to cross the aisle in the Pa. House

On paper, Rozzi isn’t the most obvious speaker choice for Republicans.

In every legislative session Rozzi’s been in, there were at least 20 Democrats who voted with Republicans more than he did.

Burns, who voted with McClinton 56% of the time, has earned himself a reputation as a faux Democrat in the halls of Harrisburg. His track record of voting with Republicans the most of any Democrat currently in office helped make him a top target who Republicans were hoping would cut a deal amid a contentious fight for the speakership.

Other Democrats who were targeted included Pittsburgh-area Reps. Rob Matzie and Anita Kulik, the sources said. The data underscore why: Like Burns, they voted with Republicans more than Rozzi did.

Rep. Ryan Bizzarro (D., Erie) chaired the House Democratic Policy Committee, on which he helped shape the top Democratic policy goals. Even he voted with Republicans in those split votes more frequently than Rozzi did.

Rozzi, Matzie, Kulik, Burns, and Bizzarro did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

To be clear, every Democrat in the last 10 years voted with the Democratic leader a majority of the time when the leaders disagreed. Most Democrats vote with the Democratic leader 90% of the time.

But if you’re looking for a Democrat to leave the party, Rozzi isn’t the stand-out choice.

What does Rozzi’s voting past as a Democrat say about his future as ‘independent speaker’?

Rozzi’s overall record is clearly one of a rank-and-file Democrat. But Republicans might not have been focusing on the totality of his vote history, said Berwood Yost, a government and public policy professor at Franklin & Marshall College.

Instead, Rozzi likely was on their good side for his willingness to join Republicans on some specific and more controversial votes. For example, he was one of only four Democrats who voted with Republicans on a controversial bill to ban transgender girls from playing women’s sports in schools. He’s also supported a tax credit for businesses that donate to private school scholarships.

Most notably, Rozzi has built his reputation around his support for a constitutional amendment that would allow adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse to sue their abusers or the institutions that protected them. Rozzi has worked closely with Rep. Jim Gregory, a Republican from Blair County, and gained the support of House Republicans at large. Gregory was the one who nominated Rozzi to be the House speaker this week.

So should Pennsylvanians expect that Rozzi will support most Republican proposals?

No, Yost said.

“He has a voting record that is pretty clearly Democratic in its orientation,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine that [pattern] not continuing in some ways, whether consciously or not.”

In his few comments since becoming speaker, Rozzi has claimed that the House speaker position has a history of being a nonpartisan role.

That’s not how the speakership has usually been viewed in the state.

“Theoretically, yes. It’s supposed to be the leader of the Capitol,” Yost said. “But it’s not that. It’s a purely political position, and it has been that way. The speaker uses his powers to get their preferred agenda passed and prevent their political opponents from succeeding.”