GovTrack.us

 
Bookmark and Share

Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL]
U.S. Senator, Illinois

Photo of Durbin
State:Illinois [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Nov 21, 1944 / 65 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Elected Positions

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Richard Durbin:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1983-1996
U.S. RepresentativeIllinois’s 20th
(was preceeded by Paul Findley)
1997-2014U.S. SenatorIllinois(Most Recent Term Began in 2009)
(was preceeded by Paul Simon)

Sponsorship Analysis

"Ideometer"Durbin is a far-left 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.

"Leader-Follower Score"
Durbin is a leader according to our statistical analysis of bills in this legislative session. Other Members of Congress tend to cosponsor Durbin’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordRichard Durbin missed 233 (2%) of 11,914 roll call votes since Jan 3, 1983. 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 Durbin in 2007-2008 was $94,035 from employees of Simmons Cooper LLC. Richard Durbin’s net worth was between $926,453 and $1,142,450 in 2007, according to Durbin’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Durbin.

Committee Membership

Richard Durbin sits on the following committees:

Member, Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Chairman, Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law
Member, Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs
Member, Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security
Member, Subcommittee on the Constitution

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Richard Durbin has sponsored 444 bills since Jan 6, 1987 of which 381 haven't made it out of committee and 22 were successfully enacted. Durbin has co-sponsored 2,927 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Durbin 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 Durbin’s most recently sponsored bills include...

S. 1714: Open College Textbook Act of 2009
S. 1820: Clean Cruise Ship Act of 2009
S. 846: A bill to award a congressional gold medal to Dr. Muhammad Yunus, in recognition of his contributions to the fight against global poverty.
S. 510: FDA Food Safety Modernization Act
S. 1006: Excessive Pay Shareholder Approval Act

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.