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Rep. Gary Ackerman [D-NY5]
U.S. Representative, New York’s 5th District

Photo of Ackerman
State:New York [map]
District:5th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Nov 19, 1942 / 67 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Gary Ackerman has represented New York’s 5th congressional district since 1993.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Gary Ackerman:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1993-2010
U.S. RepresentativeNew York’s 5th
(was preceeded by Raymond McGrath)
1983-1992
U.S. RepresentativeNew York’s 7th
(was preceeded by Joseph Addabbo)

Sponsorship Analysis

"Ideometer"Ackerman 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.

"Leader-Follower Score"
Ackerman is a follower according to our statistical analysis of bills in this legislative session. Ackerman tends to cosponsors the bills of other Members of Congress who do not cosponsor Ackerman’s own bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordGary Ackerman missed 1095 (9%) of 12533 votes since Jan 23, 1990. 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 Ackerman in 2007-2008 was $20,100 from employees of Technetek Ltd. Gary Ackerman’s net worth was between $329,013 and $896,999 in 2007, according to Ackerman’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Ackerman.

Committee Membership

Gary Ackerman sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Gary Ackerman has sponsored 114 bills since Jan 16, 1991 of which 109 haven't made it out of committee and 1 were successfully enacted. Ackerman has co-sponsored 2479 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Ackerman 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 Ackerman’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.R. 1389: Fraudulent Tax Relief Act of 2009
H.R. 1553: Mutual Savings Association Preservation Act
H.R. 3127: To direct the Architect of the Capitol to acquire a statue of "The Unknown Slave" for permanent display in Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center, and for other purposes.
H.R. 302: To require the Securities and Exchange Commission to reinstate the uptick rule on short sales of securities.
H.R. 710: Public Retiree's Investment Act of 2009

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.