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Rep. Ike Skelton [D-MO4]
U.S. Representative, Missouri’s 4th District

Photo of Skelton
State:Missouri [map]
District:4th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Dec 20, 1931 / 78 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Ike Skelton has represented Missouri’s 4th congressional district since 1977.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Ike Skelton:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1977-2010
U.S. RepresentativeMissouri’s 4th
(was preceeded by William Randall)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordIke Skelton missed 339 (3%) of 12677 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 Skelton in 2007-2008 was $32,550 from employees of Boeing Co. Ike Skelton’s net worth was between $68,006 and $369,999 in 2007, according to Skelton’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Skelton.

Committee Membership

Ike Skelton sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Ike Skelton has sponsored 43 bills since Jan 3, 1989 of which 28 haven't made it out of committee and 5 were successfully enacted. Skelton has co-sponsored 1187 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Skelton 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 Skelton’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.Con.Res. 196: Making corrections in the enrollment of the bill H.R. 2647.
H.R. 2647: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010
H.R. 2101: Weapons Acquisition System Reform Through Enhancing Technical Knowledge and Oversight Act of 2009
H.Res. 432: Providing for passage of the bill (H.R. 2101) to promote reform and independence in the oversight of weapons system acquisition by the Department of Defense, and for other purposes.
H.Con.Res. 64: Urging the President to designate 2009 as the "Year of the Military Family".

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.