The Senate next meets Nov 30, 2009; the House next meets Dec 1, 2009.

Rep. Christopher (Chris) Smith [R-NJ4]
U.S. Representative, New Jersey’s 4^th District

Track Christopher Smith

We have two feeds for every member of Congress. Select a feed for more information:

Outside Links

The following external websites may be of interest:

Christopher Smith’s Official Website

Biography from the official Congressional Biographical Directory

Campaign Contributions tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics

State:	New Jersey [map]
District:	4^th Congressional District [map]
Party:	Republican
Birthday:	Mar 4, 1953 / 56 years old

To contact Christopher 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.

Official YouTube Feed

“Smith Calls on China to Release Political Prisioners on CNN” - Jul 11, 2008 7:06 PM. Watch Video.

On the Floor

Watch House proceeding 11-07-09 01 6:19:55 to 6:22:25 at MetaVid. More Videos | Congressional Record

Congressional Service

Christopher Smith has represented New Jersey’s 4^th congressional district since 1981.

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

When	Role	Representing
1981-2010	U.S. Representative	New Jersey’s 4^th	(was preceeded by Frank Thompson)

Sponsorship Analysis

Smith is a moderate Republican 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.

Smith is a leader according to our statistical analysis of bills in this legislative session. Other Members of Congress tend to cosponsor Smith’s 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

Christopher Smith missed 289 (2%) 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 Smith in 2007-2008 was $17,600 from employees of Right to Life. Christopher Smith’s net worth was between $130,003 and $350,000 in 2007, according to Smith’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Smith.

Committee Membership

Christopher Smith sits on the following committees:

Member, House Committee on Foreign Affairs

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Christopher Smith has sponsored 267 bills since May 1, 1991 of which 201 haven't made it out of committee and 30 were successfully enacted. Smith has co-sponsored 2311 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. 764: Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives on the importance of inter-religious dialogue and the protection of religious freedom and related human rights for persons of all faiths and nationalities in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
	H.R. 3588: To amend chapter 141 of title 10, United States Code, to include disclosures made by Department of Defense contract employees to their immediate employers in the provisions providing protections against reprisals for certain disclosures.
	H.R. 2271: Global Online Freedom Act of 2009
	H.R. 1623: International Megan's Law of 2009
	H.R. 1590: Support for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews Act of 2009

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.

GovTrack.us

Log In