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Rep. James (Jim) McGovern [D-MA3]
U.S. Representative, Massachusetts’s 3rd District

Photo of McGovern
State:Massachusetts [map]
District:3rd Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Nov 20, 1959 / 50 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

James McGovern has represented Massachusetts’s 3rd congressional district since 1997.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by James McGovern:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1997-2010
U.S. RepresentativeMassachusetts’s 3rd
(was preceeded by Peter Blute)

Sponsorship Analysis

"Ideometer"McGovern 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"
McGovern is a leader according to our statistical analysis of bills in this legislative session. Other Members of Congress tend to cosponsor McGovern’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordJames McGovern missed 139 (2%) of 8603 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 McGovern in 2007-2008 was $25,950 from employees of Sepracor Inc. James McGovern’s net worth was between $508,010 and $4,870,999 in 2007, according to McGovern’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for McGovern.

Committee Membership

James McGovern sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

James McGovern has sponsored 79 bills since Jan 7, 1997 of which 71 haven't made it out of committee and 5 were successfully enacted. McGovern has co-sponsored 3909 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by McGovern 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 McGovern’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.Res. 772: Providing for consideration of the conference report to accompany the bill (H.R. 2918) making appropriations for the Legislative Branch for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes.
H.Res. 799: Providing for consideration of the conference report to accompany the bill (H.R. 2997) making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes.
H.Res. 857: Expressing support for designation of the week of October 25, 2009, through October 31, 2009, as American Pharmacy Educator Week.
H.Res. 761: Remembering and commemorating the lives and work of Jesuit Fathers Ignacio Ellacuria, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Segundo Montes, Amando Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno, Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, and housekeeper Julia Elba Ramos and her daughter Celina Mariset Ramos on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of their deaths at the University of Central America Jose Simeon Canas located in San Salvador, El Salvador on November 16, 1989.
H.R. 4017: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 43 Maple Avenue in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, as the "Ann Marie Blute Post Office".

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.