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Rep. Patrick Kennedy [D-RI1]
U.S. Representative, Rhode Island’s 1st District

Photo of Kennedy
State:Rhode Island [map]
District:1st Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Jul 14, 1967 / 42 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Patrick Kennedy has represented Rhode Island’s 1st congressional district since 1995.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Patrick Kennedy:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1995-2010
U.S. RepresentativeRhode Island’s 1st
(was preceeded by Ronald Machtley)

Sponsorship Analysis

"Ideometer"Kennedy 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.

"Leader-Follower Score"
Kennedy is somewhere between a leader and a follower. Kennedy sponsors others’ bills and other Members of Congress cosponsor Kennedy’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordPatrick Kennedy missed 694 (7%) of 10087 votes since Jan 4, 1995. 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 Kennedy in 2007-2008 was $25,000 from employees of Marwood Group. Patrick Kennedy’s net worth was between $116,003 and $315,000 in 2007, according to Kennedy’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Kennedy.

Committee Membership

Patrick Kennedy sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Patrick Kennedy has sponsored 136 bills since Jan 4, 1995 of which 126 haven't made it out of committee and 6 were successfully enacted. Kennedy has co-sponsored 2276 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Kennedy 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 Kennedy’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.Res. 728: Recognizing the importance of "National Drug Facts Chat Day" on November 10, 2009.
H.Con.Res. 180: Expressing support for designation of the period beginning on September 21, 2009, and ending on September 25, 2009, as "National Health Information Technology Week".
H.R. 2258: Liberian Refugee Immigration Protection Act of 2009
H.R. 2490: Generating Reinvestment Opportunities With America's Small Businesses Act of 2009
H.R. 2369: Improving the Quality of Mental and Substance Use Health Care Act of 2009

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.