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Rep. Barbara Lee [D-CA9]
U.S. Representative, California’s 9th District

Photo of Lee
State:California [map]
District:9th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Jul 16, 1946 / 63 years old

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

Official YouTube Feed
“Rep. Barbara Lee speaks on the U.S. travel ban to Cuba” - Nov 19, 2009 10:05 PM. Watch Video.
On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Barbara Lee has represented California’s 9th congressional district since 1997.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Barbara Lee:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1997-2010
U.S. RepresentativeCalifornia’s 9th
(was preceeded by Ronald Dellums)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordBarbara Lee missed 178 (2%) of 7864 votes since Apr 21, 1998. The graph to the left shows the number of missed votes over time. Click for a larger chart and a list of recent votes.

Committee Membership

Barbara Lee sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Barbara Lee has sponsored 120 bills since Jan 7, 1997 of which 114 haven't made it out of committee and 1 were successfully enacted. Lee has co-sponsored 3170 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Lee 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 Lee’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.R. 3699: To prohibit any increase in the number of members of the United States Armed Forces serving in Afghanistan.
H.Con.Res. 14: Supporting the goals and ideals of Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week.
H.R. 1338: Student Support Act
H.Res. 302: Honoring and recognizing the life and achievements of John Hope Franklin, one of the Nation's most distinguished scholars.
H.R. 1594: Income Equity Act of 2009

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.