GovTrack.us

 
Bookmark and Share

Rep. William Clay, Jr. [D-MO1]
U.S. Representative, Missouri’s 1st District

Photo of Clay
State:Missouri [map]
District:1st Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Jul 27, 1956 / 53 years old

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

Official YouTube Feed
“CONG. CLAY 1ST SUBCOMMITTE HEARING ON FOIA” - Apr 26, 2007 9:35 PM. Watch Video.
On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

William Clay has represented Missouri’s 1st congressional district since 2001.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by William Clay:

WhenRoleRepresenting
2001-2010
U.S. RepresentativeMissouri’s 1st
(was preceeded by William Clay)

Sponsorship Analysis

"Ideometer"Clay 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"
Clay is somewhere between a leader and a follower. Clay sponsors others’ bills and other Members of Congress cosponsor Clay’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordWilliam Clay missed 488 (8%) of 6346 votes since Jan 3, 2001. 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 Clay in 2007-2008 was $11,500 from employees of Anheuser-Busch InBev. William Clay’s net worth was between $18,004 and $95,000 in 2007, according to Clay’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Clay.

Committee Membership

William Clay sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

William Clay has sponsored 74 bills since Jan 3, 2001 of which 60 haven't made it out of committee and 4 were successfully enacted. Clay has co-sponsored 1593 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Clay 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 Clay’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.R. 685: United States Civil Rights Trail Special Resource Study Act of 2009
H.R. 4134: Subcontractor Fairness Act of 2009
H.Con.Res. 119: Expressing the sense of Congress that the United States Postal Service should issue a postage stamp in commemoration of Carl B. Stokes.
H.R. 1744: Consumer Rental Purchase Agreement Act
H.Con.Res. 79: Expressing the sense of Congress that a commemorative postage stamp should be issued to honor Wilton "Wilt" Chamberlain.

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.