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Rep. Frederick (Rick) Boucher [D-VA9]
U.S. Representative, Virginia’s 9th District

Photo of Boucher
State:Virginia [map]
District:9th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Aug 1, 1946 / 63 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Frederick Boucher has represented Virginia’s 9th congressional district since 1983.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Frederick Boucher:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1983-2010
U.S. RepresentativeVirginia’s 9th
(was preceeded by William Wampler)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordFrederick Boucher missed 688 (5%) of 12677 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 Boucher in 2007-2008 was $20,500 from employees of Patton Boggs LLP. Frederick Boucher’s net worth was between $117,012 and $405,000 in 2007, according to Boucher’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Boucher.

Committee Membership

Frederick Boucher sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Frederick Boucher has sponsored 96 bills since Jan 3, 1989 of which 67 haven't made it out of committee and 6 were successfully enacted. Boucher has co-sponsored 2373 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Boucher 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 Boucher’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.R. 2994: Satellite Home Viewer Reauthorization Act of 2009
H.R. 2584: To amend title 35, United States Code, to limit the patentability of tax planning methods.
H.R. 985: Free Flow of Information Act of 2009
H.R. 1689: Carbon Capture and Storage Early Deployment Act
H.R. 865: To convey the New River State Park campground located in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area in the Jefferson National Forest in Carroll County, Virginia, to the Commonwealth of Virginia, and for other purposes.

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.