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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse [D-RI]
U.S. Senator, Rhode Island

Photo of Whitehouse
State:Rhode Island [map]
Party:Democrat

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

Official YouTube Feed
“Whitehouse Pushes Geithner on Bankruptcy Reform to Limit Foreclosures” - Feb 4, 2010 6:35 PM. Watch Video.
On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Sheldon Whitehouse:

WhenRoleRepresenting
2007-2012U.S. SenatorRhode Island
(was preceeded by Lincoln Chafee)

Sponsorship Analysis

"Ideometer"Whitehouse 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.

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordSheldon Whitehouse missed 15 (1%) of 1074 votes since Jan 8, 2007. 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 Whitehouse in 2007-2008 was $44,100 from employees of Technology Crossover Ventures. Sheldon Whitehouse’s net worth was between $5,212,170 and $13,857,999 in 2007, according to Whitehouse’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Whitehouse.

Committee Membership

Sheldon Whitehouse sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Sheldon Whitehouse has sponsored 43 bills since Jan 4, 2007 of which 41 haven't made it out of committee and 1 were successfully enacted. Whitehouse has co-sponsored 513 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Whitehouse 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 Whitehouse’s most recently sponsored bills include...

S. 1680: Expanding Access to Medical Records Act
S.Res. 247: A resolution designating September 26, 2009, as "National Estuaries Day".
S. 1289: Foreign Evidence Request Efficiency Act of 2009
S. 1782: Federal Judiciary Administrative Improvements Act of 2009
S. 1742: Women's Hospitals Education Equity Act

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

Photo from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.