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Rep. Bobby Rush [D-IL1]
U.S. Representative, Illinois’s 1st District

Photo of Rush
State:Illinois [map]
District:1st Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Nov 23, 1946 / 63 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Bobby Rush has represented Illinois’s 1st congressional district since 1993.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Bobby Rush:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1993-2010
U.S. RepresentativeIllinois’s 1st
(was preceeded by Charles Hayes)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordBobby Rush missed 1493 (13%) of 11208 votes since Jan 5, 1993. 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 Rush in 2007-2008 was $33,100 from employees of Exelon Corp. Bobby Rush’s net worth was between $0 and $0 in 2007, according to Rush’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Rush.

Committee Membership

Bobby Rush sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Bobby Rush has sponsored 90 bills since Jan 5, 1993 of which 79 haven't made it out of committee and 5 were successfully enacted. Rush has co-sponsored 2411 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Rush 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 Rush’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.R. 3655: Bereaved Consumer's Bill of Rights Act of 2009
H.R. 4000: Conflict Resolution and Mediation Act of 2009
H.R. 3990: To grant the Congressional Gold Medal to John H. Johnson in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the United States.
H.R. 4004: Black Metropolis National Heritage Area Study Act
H.R. 2299: Minority Small Business Enhancement Act of 2009

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.