The Senate meets today; the House next meets Nov 23, 2009.

Sen. Maria Cantwell [D-WA]
U.S. Senator, Washington

Track Maria Cantwell

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Outside Links

The following external websites may be of interest:

Maria Cantwell’s Official Website

Biography from the official Congressional Biographical Directory

Campaign Contributions tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics

State:	Washington [map]
Party:	Democrat
Birthday:	Oct 13, 1958 / 51 years old

To contact Maria Cantwell, visit her official website. (Read our tips for communicating with Congress.) See the Project Vote Smart page for Cantwell for more biographical and issue information.

Official YouTube Feed

“Senator Cantwell Speaks on Small Business and Health Care Reform” - Nov 18, 2009 8:52 PM. Watch Video.

Congressional Service

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Maria Cantwell:

When	Role	Representing
2001-2012	U.S. Senator	Washington	(Most Recent Term Began in 2007) (was preceeded by Slade Gorton)
1993-1994	U.S. Representative	Washington’s 1^st	(was preceeded by John Miller)

Sponsorship Analysis

Cantwell is a rank-and-file Democrat according to GovTrack's own analysis of bill sponsorship.

These labels come from the Political Spectrum statistical analysis that we have carried out. The statistical analysis puts members of Congress on a scale based on patterns of bill sponsorship, and is blind to party affiliation and the content of bills. From there, we have somewhat arbitrarily divided the Members of Congress into far-left/right, rank-and-file, and moderate (i.e. centrist). For each party, the most extreme 23% of Members of Congress are labeled far-left or -right. The most centrist 30% (i.e. those closest to the other party) are labeled moderate. The remaining 47% are labeled as rank-and-file.

Cantwell is somewhere between a leader and a follower. Cantwell sponsors others’ bills and other Members of Congress cosponsor Cantwell’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

To compute the leader-follower score for Cantwell, we make a table that lists all other Members of Congress. Each row has the number bills sponsored by Cantwell and cosponsored by the other Member of Congress divided by the number of bills sponsored by the other Member of Congress and cosponsored by Cantwell.

This is a measure of who is following who. The higher the number, the more times others are cosponsoring Cantwell's bills without Cantwell returning the favor. We then take the mean of (the logorithms of) these ratios. Thanks to Joe Barillari for the idea.

Approval Rating

SurveyUSA reports Cantwell’s job approval rating at 50% as of 2007-11-20. The average approval rating among senators in states surveyed is 53%. See their survey details for more information.

Voting Record

Maria Cantwell missed 22 (1%) of 2958 votes since Jan 23, 2001. The graph to the left shows the number of missed votes over time. Click for a larger chart and a list of recent votes.

Money & Influence

The top campaign contribution to Cantwell in 2007-2008 was $174,200 from employees of Microsoft Corp. Maria Cantwell’s net worth was between $2,103,014 and $10,371,000 in 2007, according to Cantwell’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Cantwell.

Committee Membership

Maria Cantwell sits on the following committees:

Member, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

Chairman, Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard

Member, Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security

Member, Subcommittee on Communications and Technology

Member, Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine

Member, Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy

Member, Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests

Member, Subcommittee on Water and Power

Member, Senate Committee on Finance

Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure

Member, Subcommittee on Health Care

Member, Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness

Member, Subcommittee on Taxation, IRS Oversight, and Long-term Growth

Member, Senate Committee on Indian Affairs

Member, Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Maria Cantwell has sponsored 189 bills since Jan 22, 2001 of which 160 haven't made it out of committee and 2 were successfully enacted. Cantwell has co-sponsored 1128 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Cantwell and companion bills identified by CRS that were themselves enacted, but not if they were incorporated into other bills, as that information is not readily available.)

Some of Cantwell’s most recently sponsored bills include...

	S. 1682: Derivatives Market Manipulation Prevention Act of 2009
	S. 1388: Spokane Tribe of Indians of the Spokane Reservation Grand Coulee Dam Equitable Compensation Settlement Act
	S. 2528: A bill to extend and modify the temporary suspension of duty on certain women's footwear, valued over $23/pair, not covering the ankle, with a coated or laminated textile fabric.
	S. 2531: A bill to extend and modify the temporary suspension of duty on certain women's footwear, valued over $23/pair, covering the ankle, with a coated or laminated textile fabric.
	S. 2544: A bill to suspend temporarily the duty on certain men's wading boots, valued over $30/pair, with textile outer soles and uppers of leather or composition leather whose height from the bottom of the outer sole to the top of the upper does not exceed 9 inches (22.86 cm).

View All... (including bills from previous years)

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.

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