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Rep. Ted Poe [R-TX2]
U.S. Representative, Texas’s 2nd District

Photo of Poe
State:Texas [map]
District:2nd Congressional District [map]
Party:Republican
Birthday:Oct 13, 1948 / 61 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Ted Poe has represented Texas’s 2nd congressional district since 2005.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Ted Poe:

WhenRoleRepresenting
2005-2010
U.S. RepresentativeTexas’s 2nd
(was preceeded by James Turner)

Sponsorship Analysis

"Ideometer"Poe is a far-right 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.

"Leader-Follower Score"
Poe is somewhere between a leader and a follower. Poe sponsors others’ bills and other Members of Congress cosponsor Poe’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordTed Poe missed 169 (4%) 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 Poe in 2007-2008 was $11,059 from employees of Kirby Corp. Ted Poe’s net worth was between $31,004 and $116,000 in 2007, according to Poe’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Poe.

Committee Membership

Ted Poe sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Ted Poe has sponsored 49 bills since Jan 4, 2005 of which 43 haven't made it out of committee and 3 were successfully enacted. Poe has co-sponsored 643 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Poe 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 Poe’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.Res. 763: Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United Nations resolutions on the "defamation of religions" are incompatible with the fundamental freedoms of individuals to freely exercise and peacefully express their religious beliefs.
H.R. 3628: To create a cause of action and allow standing in Federal courts against a country that denies or unreasonably delays the repatriation of a national ordered removed from the United States to such country who later commits a crime of violence in the United States, to withhold foreign assistance from each country that denies or unreasonably delays the repatriation of nationals of such country who have been ordered removed from the United States, to prohibit the issuance of visas to nationals of such country, and for other purposes.
H.Res. 729: Expressing support for designation of a "National Firefighters Memorial Day" to honor and celebrate the firefighters of the United States.
H.R. 2469: Drug Trafficking Elimination Act of 2009
H.Res. 378: Recognizing the 30th anniversary of the election of Margaret Thatcher as the first female Prime Minister of Great Britain.

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.