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Rep. James Oberstar [D-MN8]
U.S. Representative, Minnesota’s 8th District

Photo of Oberstar
State:Minnesota [map]
District:8th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Sep 10, 1934 / 75 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

James Oberstar has represented Minnesota’s 8th congressional district since 1975.

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

WhenRoleRepresenting
1975-2010
U.S. RepresentativeMinnesota’s 8th
(was preceeded by John Blatnik)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

This is a measure of who is following who. The higher the number, the more times others are cosponsoring Oberstar's bills without Oberstar 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 Oberstar missed 577 (5%) of 12533 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 Oberstar in 2007-2008 was $25,712 from employees of AECOM Technology Corp. James Oberstar’s net worth was between $4,767,075 and $10,930,000 in 2007, according to Oberstar’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Oberstar.

Committee Membership

James Oberstar sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

James Oberstar has sponsored 174 bills since Apr 30, 1991 of which 122 haven't made it out of committee and 14 were successfully enacted. Oberstar has co-sponsored 2047 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Oberstar 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 Oberstar’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.R. 3617: Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2009
H.R. 3619: Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010
H.R. 2498: To designate the Federal building located at 844 North Rush Street in Chicago, Illinois, as the "William O. Lipinski Federal Building".
H.R. 3607: Fiscal Year 2010 Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act
H.R. 1174: FEMA Independence Act of 2009

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.