Rep. Edolphus (Ed) Towns [D-NY10]
U.S. Representative, New York’s 10^th District

Track Edolphus Towns

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Outside Links

The following external websites may be of interest:

Edolphus Towns’s Official Website

Biography from the official Congressional Biographical Directory

Campaign Contributions tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics

State:	New York [map]
District:	10^th Congressional District [map]
Party:	Democrat
Birthday:	Jul 21, 1934 / 75 years old

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

On the Floor

Watch House proceeding 02-02-10 00 0:32:25 to 0:32:55 at MetaVid. More Videos | Congressional Record

Congressional Service

Edolphus Towns has represented New York’s 10^th congressional district since 1993.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Edolphus Towns:

When	Role	Representing
1993-2010	U.S. Representative	New York’s 10^th	(was preceeded by Sen. Charles Schumer [D-NY])
1983-1992	U.S. Representative	New York’s 11^th	(was preceeded by James Scheuer)

Sponsorship Analysis

Towns 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.

Towns is a leader according to our statistical analysis of bills in this legislative session. Other Members of Congress tend to cosponsor Towns’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

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

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

Voting Record

Edolphus Towns missed 1306 (10%) 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 Towns in 2007-2008 was $18,900 from employees of UnitedHealth Group. Edolphus Towns’s net worth was between $-288,984 and $714,998 in 2007, according to Towns’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Towns.

Committee Membership

Edolphus Towns sits on the following committees:

Chair, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Edolphus Towns has sponsored 186 bills since Jan 3, 1989 of which 168 haven't made it out of committee and 6 were successfully enacted. Towns has co-sponsored 4159 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Towns 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 Towns’s most recently sponsored bills include...

	H.R. 3686: To authorize appropriations for the Federal Trade Commission for certain international technical assistance activities.
	H.R. 3718: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make residents of Puerto Rico eligible for the refundable portion of the child tax credit.
	H.Res. 926: Honoring former Representative Shirley Chisholm, on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of her birth, for her dedication and for providing an example of selfless service.
	H.R. 4098: Secure Federal File Sharing Act
	H.R. 2182: Enhanced Oversight of State and Local Economic Recovery Act

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.

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