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Rep. Collin Peterson [D-MN7]
U.S. Representative, Minnesota’s 7th District

Photo of Peterson
State:Minnesota [map]
District:7th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Jun 29, 1944 / 65 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Collin Peterson has represented Minnesota’s 7th congressional district since 1991.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Collin Peterson:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1991-2010
U.S. RepresentativeMinnesota’s 7th
(was preceeded by Arlan Stangeland)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordCollin Peterson missed 235 (2%) of 11997 votes since Jan 3, 1991. 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

Collin Peterson sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Collin Peterson has sponsored 118 bills since May 1, 1991 of which 109 haven't made it out of committee and 4 were successfully enacted. Peterson has co-sponsored 2411 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Peterson 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 Peterson’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.R. 3157: To name the Department of Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic in Alexandria, Minnesota, as the "Max J. Beilke Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic".
H.R. 2409: Renewable Fuel Standard Improvement Act
H.R. 3509: Agricultural Credit Act of 2009
H.Res. 136: Providing amounts for the expenses of the Committee on Agriculture in the One Hundred Eleventh Congress.
H.R. 977: Derivatives Markets Transparency and Accountability Act of 2009

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.