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Rep. Jim Costa [D-CA20]
U.S. Representative, California’s 20th District

Photo of Costa
State:California [map]
District:20th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Apr 13, 1952 / 57 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Jim Costa has represented California’s 20th congressional district since 2005.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Jim Costa:

WhenRoleRepresenting
2005-2010
U.S. RepresentativeCalifornia’s 20th
(was preceeded by Calvin Dooley)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordJim Costa missed 185 (5%) of 3985 votes since Jan 4, 2005. 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 Costa in 2007-2008 was $18,400 from employees of McCaffrey Group. Jim Costa’s net worth was between $483,010 and $6,045,998 in 2007, according to Costa’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Costa.

Committee Membership

Jim Costa sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.