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Rep. Leonard Boswell [D-IA3]
U.S. Representative, Iowa’s 3rd District

Photo of Boswell
State:Iowa [map]
District:3rd Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Jan 10, 1934 / 76 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Leonard Boswell has represented Iowa’s 3rd congressional district since 1997.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Leonard Boswell:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1997-2010
U.S. RepresentativeIowa’s 3rd
(was preceeded by James Lightfoot)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordLeonard Boswell missed 331 (4%) of 8747 votes since Jan 7, 1997. 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 Boswell in 2007-2008 was $11,000 from employees of National Pork Producers Council. Leonard Boswell’s net worth was between $400,003 and $984,999 in 2007, according to Boswell’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Boswell.

Committee Membership

Leonard Boswell sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Leonard Boswell has sponsored 62 bills since Jan 7, 1997 of which 59 haven't made it out of committee and 3 were successfully enacted. Boswell has co-sponsored 1440 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Boswell 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 Boswell’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.Res. 739: Honoring the life and achievements of Dr. Norman E. Borlaug for his many contributions to alleviating world hunger.
H.Res. 740: Recognizing the valuable contributions of the extension offices of land-grant universities.
H.R. 3926: Armed Forces Breast Cancer Research Act
H.R. 3386: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1165 2nd Avenue in Des Moines, Iowa, as the "Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Memorial Post Office".
H.R. 2583: Women Veterans Access to Care Act

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.