The Senate meets today; the House next meets Dec 1, 2009.

Sen. John Kerry [D-MA]
U.S. Senator, Massachusetts

Track John Kerry

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Outside Links

The following external websites may be of interest:

John Kerry’s Official Website

Biography from the official Congressional Biographical Directory

Campaign Contributions tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics

State:	Massachusetts [map]
Party:	Democrat
Birthday:	Dec 11, 1943 / 65 years old

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

On the Floor

Watch Senate proceeding 10-27-09 2:24:35 to 2:29:55 at MetaVid. More Videos | Congressional Record

Congressional Service

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by John Kerry:

When	Role	Representing
1985-2014	U.S. Senator	Massachusetts	(Most Recent Term Began in 2009) (was preceeded by Paul Tsongas)

Sponsorship Analysis

Kerry 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.

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

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

This is a measure of who is following who. The higher the number, the more times others are cosponsoring Kerry's bills without Kerry 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 Kerry’s job approval rating at 51% 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

John Kerry missed 623 (9%) of 7073 votes since Jan 25, 1989. 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 Kerry in 2007-2008 was $635,925 from employees of University of California. John Kerry’s net worth was between $284,157,594 and $388,292,172 in 2007, according to Kerry’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Kerry.

Committee Membership

John Kerry sits on the following committees:

Chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

Member, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

Chairman, Subcommittee on Communications and Technology

Member, Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security

Member, Subcommittee on Competitiveness, Innovation, and Export Promotion

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

Member, Subcommittee on Science and Space

Member, Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine

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, Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

John Kerry has sponsored 429 bills since Jan 14, 1991 of which 361 haven't made it out of committee and 8 were successfully enacted. Kerry has co-sponsored 2247 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Kerry 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 Kerry’s most recently sponsored bills include...

	S. 1716: A bill to amend the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 to reauthorize the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.
	S. 1715: A bill to amend the United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994 to extend the authority of the Broadcasting Board of Governors to make grants for the purpose of operating Radio Free Asia.
	S.Res. 275: A resolution honoring the Minute Man National Historical Park on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.
	S. 1669: Equal Access to Medicare Options Act of 2009
	S. 2521: A bill to suspend temporarily the duty on audio interface units for sound mixing, recording, and editing capable of full interface control by separate automatic data processing system using proprietary software protocol.

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.

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