GovTrack, an organization that tracks congressional voting records, confirmed to Fox News Digital that it had removed a 2019 webpage ranking Kamala Harris as that year's “most liberal” U.S. senator sometime in the past two weeks.
The self-described “government transparency” website ranked Harris as the “most liberal of all senators” in 2019, beating out Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren at the time.
But the webpage with the ranking, which received extensive media coverage during the 2020 election, was recently deactivated. The link now displays a message that says “Page not found.” The Internet Archive shows the page was taken down sometime between July 10 and July 23, and some on X claim the page was still active on July 22.
President Biden announced his decision to suspend his campaign and endorse Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee on July 21. Harris announced in the early hours of July 23 that she had secured enough delegates to secure the nomination at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) next month.
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Vice President Kamala Harris was once ranked as the “most liberal” U.S. senator. (REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt/Pool)
When reached by Fox News Digital, GovTrack founder Joshua Tauberer said the page was removed because the company adopted a policy “several years ago” of ending its single-year ratings of lawmakers and only doing ratings based on congressional sessions, which are two years long.
“We determined that the limited data available in a single year was not sufficient to create a reliable portrait of legislator activity, particularly given the ups and downs of the legislative calendar, and therefore did not serve as a useful tool for our users and the American public,” Tauberer said. “We subsequently removed previously published single-calendar-year statistics for the same reason.”
Tauberer confirmed to Fox News Digital that the page was taken down sometime in the past two weeks, but did not give a specific date or explain why the pages were not removed when single-year report cards were abandoned years ago.
Tauberer said the organization continued to publish report cards based on two-year congressional sessions and pointed Fox News Digital to Harris’ existing webpage for 2020, which ranked her ideology as the “most politically left-wing compared to Senate Democrats” for the 116th Congress. She was ranked as the second-most liberal in the entire Senate, behind independent Sanders.
Sometime in October 2020, GovTrack changed its ranking language from “more liberal” to “more politically left-wing.”
The group's analysis is based on senators' “legislative behavior” and their history of sponsoring or co-sponsoring bipartisan bills, which it says “only takes into account a small aspect of reality.”
The 2019 analysis showed that Harris joined bipartisan legislation “less frequently compared to Senate Democrats.”
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris attends an infrastructure event addressing high-speed internet in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House in Washington, U.S., June 3, 2021. (Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)
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The Trump campaign cited the rating after Biden announced Harris as his 2020 running mate, pushing back against a New York Times article that described Harris as a “pragmatic moderate.”
“Reminder: GovTrack ranked Senator Kamala Harris as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate in 2019 — further to the left than Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, and even Bernie Sanders,” the campaign emailed in August 2020. “Kamala Harris is a radical left-wing liberal, despite what the New York Times may say.”
Harris's 2019 record came under scrutiny again this week after Biden endorsed Harris as his successor on Sunday, releasing an explosive letter informing the American public that he was responding to growing calls to suspend his reelection campaign.
Harris confirmed she will run for the Democratic nomination, writing in a statement: “I am honored to have the President's endorsement and intend to win this nomination.”
President Biden has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor in the November election. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
As Harris heads toward the Democratic nomination, her allies in the media are now suggesting it is unfair to blame her for the thorny issue of illegal immigration.
Axios came under particular fire on Wednesday for an article insisting Harris was not the “border czar,” which seemed to contradict its own previous reporting. The outlet was even forced to update the story by admitting it had “incorrectly” called her the “border czar” in the past.
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Harris has received endorsements from former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as several Democratic lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Former House Speaker Nancy PelosiD-California.
Fox News' Brooke Singman and Brian Flood contributed to this report.
