GovTrack.us

 
Bookmark and Share

Rep. Adam Smith [D-WA9]
U.S. Representative, Washington’s 9th District

Photo of Smith
State:Washington [map]
District:9th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Jun 15, 1965 / 44 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Adam Smith has represented Washington’s 9th congressional district since 1997.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Adam Smith:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1997-2010
U.S. RepresentativeWashington’s 9th
(was preceeded by Randy Tate)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordAdam Smith missed 556 (6%) 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 Smith in 2007-2008 was $17,100 from employees of Microsoft Corp. Adam Smith’s net worth was between $122,013 and $433,000 in 2007, according to Smith’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Smith.

Committee Membership

Adam Smith sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Adam Smith has sponsored 57 bills since Jan 7, 1997 of which 53 haven't made it out of committee and 1 were successfully enacted. Smith has co-sponsored 1450 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Smith 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 Smith’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.Res. 627: Honoring the citizen-soldiers of the National Guard of the State of Washington, including the 81st Brigade Combat Team (Heavy) of the Washington Army National Guard.
H.R. 4058: Veterans to Work Pilot Program Act of 2009
H.R. 2639: Global Poverty Act of 2009
H.R. 2707: National Freight Mobility Infrastructure Act
H.R. 3374: Medicare and Medicaid Access Project through Information Technology (MAP IT) Act

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.