“Langevin has been the most reliable vote for Speaker Pelosi.”

Republican Mark Zaccaria, a candidate for Congress in the 2nd District,  has challenged Democratic U.S. Rep. James Langevin’s claim, made in a Providence Journal story, that he is non-partisan. Zaccaria says that Langevin votes with his party “about 98 percent of the time” and “has been the most reliable vote” for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

We rated the 98 percent claim as True in a separate item.  But we were also interested in the Pelosi claim. Here’s the full context from Zaccaria’s news release:

“Mr. Langevin is right that people are tired of partisan politics,” Zaccaria said. “But I find it laughable that he would describe himself as ‘non-partisan.’ Langevin has been the most reliable vote for Speaker Pelosi, voting the party line about 98 percent of the time. If he doesn’t see that as being partisan, then he is delusional. Rhode Island cannot afford to allow Mr. Langevin and Speaker Pelosi to continue to put people out of work and drive businesses out of this country while catering to their special interests.”

Most reliable?

We went to the same source cited by Zaccaria’s campaign manager, Parker Lacoste — a page on WashingtonPost.com that looks at the voting record of individual members of Congress. The same paragraph that says Langevin “voted with a majority of his Democratic colleagues 99.2% of the time during the current Congress” also invites people to see “a full list of party voters.”

That’s where we discovered that there were eight Democrats with higher ratings, including Rep. Hilda Solis of California, who voted the party line 100 percent of the time.

Langevin may be a very reliable vote for Pelosi, but it was VERY easy to discover that eight other representatives were more reliable.

So we can reliably tell you that Zaccaria’s “most reliable” claim is False.