Rep. Diane Watson [D-CA33]
U.S. Representative, California’s 33^rd District

Track Diane Watson

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Outside Links

The following external websites may be of interest:

Diane Watson’s Official Website

Biography from the official Congressional Biographical Directory

Campaign Contributions tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics

State:	California [map]
District:	33^rd Congressional District [map]
Party:	Democrat
Birthday:	Nov 12, 1933 / 76 years old

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

On the Floor

Watch House proceeding 01-20-10 0:24:40 to 0:26:25 at MetaVid. More Videos | Congressional Record

Congressional Service

Diane Watson has represented California’s 33^rd congressional district since 2003.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Diane Watson:

When	Role	Representing
2003-2010	U.S. Representative	California’s 33^rd	(was preceeded by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard [D-CA34])
2001-2002	U.S. Representative	California’s 32^nd	(was preceeded by Julian Dixon)

Sponsorship Analysis

Watson is a far-left 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.

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

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

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

Voting Record

Diane Watson missed 344 (6%) of 6192 votes since Jun 7, 2001. 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 Watson in 2007-2008 was $10,000 from employees of Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Diane Watson’s net worth was between $116,003 and $315,000 in 2007, according to Watson’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Watson.

Committee Membership

Diane Watson sits on the following committees:

Member, House Committee on Foreign Affairs

Member, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Diane Watson has sponsored 41 bills since Jan 3, 2001 of which 31 haven't made it out of committee and 7 were successfully enacted. Watson has co-sponsored 1391 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Watson 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 Watson’s most recently sponsored bills include...

	H.Con.Res. 136: Authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for a celebration of Citizenship Day.
	H.R. 2131: To amend the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 to reauthorize the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.
	H.R. 3931: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend for 2 years the election to treat the cost of a qualified film or television production as an expense which is not chargeable to a capital account.
	H.R. 2760: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1615 North Wilcox Avenue in Los Angeles, California, as the "Johnny Grant Hollywood Post Office Building".
	H.Res. 49: Honoring Karen Bass for becoming the first African-American woman elected Speaker of the California State Assembly.

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.

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