Steve Weir (R-Hebron), Connecticut House 55th District · 2023 through 2026 · The 94 bills where Rep. Weir voted "no" while a majority of House Republicans voted "yes"
A personal report by Scott Sauyet · scott@sauyet.com · Not an official document
Compiled May 9, 2026 from Connecticut General Assembly roll-call records; revised August 23, 2026 on the re-derived record, which adds the special sessions and corrects every caucus split by one member covering the 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026 regular sessions. This report focuses on a single, narrow pattern: bills where Rep. Steve Weir voted “no” while a majority of his own party’s caucus voted “yes.” It is a companion to the broader voting record analysis, which establishes that Weir voted with the Republican caucus position on 96.6% of partisan roll calls. The pattern documented here describes the remaining cases — votes where Weir broke from his caucus, but in the opposite direction from what bipartisanship would imply.
Introduction
Across four sessions of the Connecticut House of Representatives, Rep. Steve Weir voted with his own party’s majority on contested questions 96.6% of the time. The companion report Steve Weir’s Voting Record covers that pattern in detail, including issue-by-issue alignment and the rare crossover votes.
This report addresses a different question. When Weir did break from his caucus, in which direction did he break?
The answer, in 1,351 roll calls: he broke to the right of his caucus on 95 occasions (94 unique bills), and to the left of his caucus only 3 times.
That 95-to-3 ratio is the subject of this report. Specifically: when a majority of House Republicans voted “yes” on a bill — including bills they treated as routine, technical, or bipartisan — what bills did Weir nonetheless vote “no” on?
The list is not what one would expect from a small-government conservative dissenting on principled grounds. It includes child-safety regulations, judicial confirmations to seats long held without incident, Uniform Commercial Code housekeeping, conveyances of state land to municipalities, resolutions honoring military veterans, and the enforcement of boating laws on shared interstate waters.
This report walks through the patterns visible in those 94 bills.
Findings
| Direction of break | Roll calls |
|---|---|
| Weir voted “no” while R caucus majority voted “yes” | 95 |
| Weir voted “yes” while R caucus majority voted “no” and D caucus voted strongly “yes” (genuine crossover) | 3 |
| Net direction of breaks from caucus | +92 right |
Notes: The right-of-caucus category requires that the Republican caucus had at least 10 members voting and that more Republicans voted yes than no. The crossover category is more demanding: it requires the Democratic caucus to have voted yes by at least 85% and the Republican caucus to have voted no by at least 70%. The asymmetry reflects the rarity of genuine crossover behavior in the dataset. Source: Connecticut General Assembly roll-call PDFs.
The 95 right-of-caucus roll calls cover 94 unique bills (one bill produced two roll calls, both no votes). For brevity, the rest of this report refers to “94 bills.”
The three crossover votes — bills Weir supported despite Republican caucus opposition — were:
The remaining 94 bills are the focus of this report.
Analysis
These are the bills where Weir’s own caucus voted yes most overwhelmingly while he voted no. The “R vote” column shows Republican caucus members’ yes-no count. The higher the yes count, the more isolated Weir was within his own party on that vote.
| Year | Bill | R vote | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | HB-5350 | 51–1 | Boating-law enforcement near RI/MA/NY borders (Weir was the lone R “no”) |
| 2025 | HJ-31 | 44–2 | Confirming Hon. Elizabeth A. Bozzuto to be a Superior Court judge |
| 2025 | HB-6970 | 45–3 | Adoption of amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code |
| 2023 | SB-905 | 48–4 | Alcoholic liquor permits and tobacco bars |
| 2026 | HB-5467 | 44–4 | DECD employee designated for concierge services to small businesses |
| 2025 | HJ-38 | 42–4 | Confirming Hon. Margaret M. Murphy to be a Superior Court judge |
| 2023 | HR-31 | 48–5 | State Police Union (NP-1) stipulated agreement |
| 2024 | HB-5196 | 47–5 | Expanding the podiatric scope of practice |
| 2025 | HB-6438 | 42–5 | Recognizing and honoring military service of CT veterans |
| 2025 | HJ-30 | 40–5 | Confirming Hon. Barry F. Armata to be a Superior Court judge |
| 2025 | SJ-28 | 39–5 | Confirming Hon. Gerard I. Adelman to be a State Referee |
| 2025 | SB-1336 | 41–6 | Mortgage foreclosures and undischarged mortgages |
| 2025 | HB-5572 | 41–6 | Real estate wholesaler regulation |
| 2025 | HB-7281 | 41–6 | Conveyance of state land to the Town of Southbury (amendment of prior conveyance) |
| 2025 | SB-1179 | 40–6 | Connecticut Community Makerspace Initiative Program |
| 2025 | SJ-27 | 38–6 | Confirming Hon. Holly Abery-Wetstone to be a State Referee |
| 2023 | SB-1069 | 46–7 | Domestic-animal-related statute revisions |
| 2026 | HB-5333 | 40–7 | Regulation of striped bass fishing |
Notes: These 18 bills are the most striking subset of the 94 — votes where, on plain partisan-loyalty grounds, almost every Republican supported the bill and Weir alone (or nearly alone) opposed it. Several are routine procedural matters where opposition is not, so far as the bill text reveals, ideologically motivated. Source: CGA roll-call PDFs.
The full list of 94 bills, with vote counts and links to the official roll-call PDFs, is available as a downloadable spreadsheet — see the Other Formats section at the end of this report.
Analysis
The 94 bills are not a random scatter. They cluster around several recognizable categories.
Weir voted no on 16 of 76 judicial and state referee nominations during this period — a rate of opposition far higher than typical for a member of his caucus. Several of those no votes came on confirmations the Republican caucus broadly supported:
The clustering of these votes in a single year (2025) is notable. Most are uncontroversial confirmations where the Republican caucus voted yes by 80% or more. Routine professional review of judicial nominees does not typically produce that pattern of opposition from a single member.
The Connecticut Constitution requires legislative ratification of contracts negotiated between the executive branch and state employee unions. These ratification votes are typically opposed by a minority of the Republican caucus on principle, and supported by the rest. Weir consistently voted with the harder-right minority — including in cases where his caucus’s majority went the other way:
As Ranking Member of the Labor and Public Employees Committee, Weir’s no votes on these agreements carry additional weight. He is in a structural position to influence his caucus’s stance on labor questions, and his dissents have consistently been to the more anti-labor end of the available options.
Conveyances of state-owned land to specific municipalities — bills that ordinarily pass with broad bipartisan support — drew Weir no votes throughout 2023, 2025, and 2026:
Other procedural and routine governance items in the same pattern:
These are the kind of bills that legislators typically vote yes on without controversy because they are local, technical, or organizational. The opposition pattern is unusual.
A category that should be especially difficult to dissent from on principled small-government grounds:
The 2023 bill on Medicaid coverage of diapers warrants individual attention because it was a study — a task force directed to research the question, not a regulation creating coverage. Even on this preliminary, study-only measure, Weir voted no while two-thirds of his caucus voted yes.
The reproductive-rights bill in this list is striking because the Republican caucus narrowly voted yes — meaning Weir was opposing legislation his own caucus’s majority supported, not just legislation the Democratic majority supported.
In addition to the broader environmental record covered in the companion report, several environmental and energy-siting bills drew right-of-caucus opposition:
A particularly surprising cluster, given Weir’s stated platform emphasizes business-friendly economic policy and his recent role as Chair of the CT River Valley Chamber of Commerce:
The DECD concierge-services bill (HB-5467, 2026) — providing a single point of contact within the state’s economic development department to help small businesses navigate state regulations — is exactly the kind of business-friendly, government-efficiency measure that one would expect a former Chamber of Commerce chair to support. Weir voted no.
The Republican caucus voted yes. Weir voted no.
(HB-6866 of 2023, a study of nonbinary gender options on state forms, was listed here in the May 2026 edition; on the re-derived record the Republican caucus split exactly 26–26 on it, so it no longer meets the right-of-caucus test. Weir voted no. SB-1490 of 2025, battery-powered smoke detectors, left the list for the same reason, R caucus 24–24.)
These are the bills hardest to explain on any consistent ideological grounds:
These bills do not align with any recognizable ideological position. They are technical, ceremonial, or statutory-housekeeping measures.
Analysis
Two interpretations are worth considering, and the data is consistent with a combination of both.
A legislator might oppose state-land conveyances on the grounds that the state should retain its property. They might oppose state employee union agreements on the grounds that public-sector collective bargaining is too generous. They might oppose health-care or public-safety regulations on the grounds that government over-regulates these areas. None of these positions is unreasonable in itself.
But a principled small-government dissenter would typically apply the principle consistently — including, for example, on bills they vote yes on. It is difficult to identify a coherent small-government rule under which Weir would vote against the boating-law enforcement bill (HB-5350, 2024), the UCC amendments (HB-6970, 2025), or the resolution honoring military veterans (HB-6438, 2025), but not against the hundreds of other routine bills where he voted with his caucus.
The principled dissent also fails to explain the pattern on judicial confirmations. Weir does not vote against all judicial nominees — he voted yes on 60 of 75. The 15 he voted no on are not concentrated in any obviously controversial category.
The alternative interpretation is that Weir’s no votes on these bills are not driven by individual analysis of the bills themselves, but by a default position of opposition to legislation produced by the Democratic majority. On most bills, his caucus colleagues calibrate this default — they recognize routine governance, they recognize technical housekeeping, they recognize bills that warrant a yes vote even if the bill’s sponsor is from the other party. Weir does so less often.
This interpretation is consistent with the boating-law vote (out of 53 voting Republicans, only Weir voted no), the UCC vote, the veterans’ resolution, and the broader cluster of bills with high R-yes percentages. It is also consistent with the fact that 96.6% of Weir’s partisan votes align with his caucus position — high R-alignment is what one would expect from reflexive party-line voting.
The data does not allow a definitive choice between these interpretations. What it does allow is the observation that the 94 bills cataloged here are, as a set, more easily explained by reflexive opposition than by principled small-government dissent. The principled-dissent reading would require a consistent rule that the bills themselves do not appear to share.
At a glance
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Total roll calls 2023–2026 | 1,351 |
| Right-of-caucus roll calls (Weir N, R majority Y) | 95 |
| Unique bills behind those roll calls | 94 |
| Genuine crossover votes (D ≥ 85% Y, R ≤ 30% Y, Weir Y) | 3 |
| Right-of-caucus to crossover ratio | 32:1 |
| Most-isolated vote | HB-5350 (2024) — boating-law enforcement; R caucus 51–1 |
| Judicial / state-referee nominations Weir opposed | 15 of 75 (vs. caucus, which supported most overwhelmingly) |
| Right-of-caucus state-land conveyances | 6 (Danbury, Preston, Southbury, Cheshire, New Haven × 2) |
| Right-of-caucus state employee union agreements | 6 (NP-1, NP-2, SEBAC, UConn UAW, Judicial Branch, etc.) |
| Right-of-caucus public-health and child-safety bills | 13 (including diaper-coverage study, ED crowding, nursing-home transparency) |
Analysis
The 95-to-3 ratio is the headline. When Weir broke from his caucus, he broke right at 32 times the rate he broke left. This is not statistical noise; it is a sustained pattern across four sessions and 1,351 votes.
The bills involved are often uncontroversial. A small-government conservative might plausibly oppose, say, expanded reproductive-rights legislation on principled grounds. The bills cataloged here are largely not that. They are judicial confirmations, conveyances of state land to municipalities, statutory housekeeping, public-health task forces, and resolutions honoring veterans. These are not the bills one expects to find a single legislator’s name on the no side.
The “lone Republican” vote is particularly notable. On HB-5350 (2024), the boating-law enforcement bill, every other Republican in the chamber voted yes. Weir was the lone no. There is no record of a public statement explaining the dissent.
The cluster of right-of-caucus judicial confirmations is unusual. Republicans across the country do sometimes vote against individual judicial nominees on grounds of judicial philosophy, but a sustained pattern of opposition to confirmations the rest of the caucus supports overwhelmingly is uncommon. Weir voted no on judges his caucus confirmed by margins of 45–2, 43–4, and 41–5.
The pattern conflicts with Weir’s stated platform on multiple specific points. As immediate past Chair of the CT River Valley Chamber of Commerce, Weir voted no on a DECD bill creating a small-business concierge service that his caucus supported 45–4. As Ranking Member of the Labor and Public Employees Committee, he voted no on labor agreements his caucus’s majority supported. As a self-described supporter of “limiting government intrusion,” he voted no on a bill removing intrusive municipal restrictions on multifamily housing.
Reproductive rights belong in this list now. HB-7213 (2025), the access-to-reproductive-health-care bill, drew Republican caucus support of 24–23 — narrowly in favor. Weir’s no vote put him to the right of his own caucus’s majority on a high-profile question, not just to the right of Democrats.
The interpretive question matters more than the count. The 94 bills could be cataloged as evidence of either principled dissent or reflexive opposition. A reader who concludes the former should be able to identify the consistent principle that ties them together; this report has not been able to. A reader who concludes the latter has the empirical pattern on their side: the bills’ ideological diversity and procedural-routine character are more easily explained by a default-no posture than by any coherent policy framework.
Caveats
This report focuses narrowly on the 94 bills where Weir voted “no” while a majority of House Republicans voted “yes.” It does not address:
Documentation
Vote records:
Companion report:
Biographical and platform information:
Download
This report is available in four formats, all located alongside this page:
Compiled May 9, 2026; revised August 23, 2026 on the re-derived roll-call record (regular and special sessions) · Data from Connecticut General Assembly roll-call records. Not an official document.