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Rep. James Himes [D-CT4]
U.S. Representative, Connecticut’s 4th District

Photo of Himes
State:Connecticut [map]
District:4th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Jul 5, 1966 / 43 years old

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

Congressional Service

James Himes has represented Connecticut’s 4th congressional district since 2009.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by James Himes:

WhenRoleRepresenting
2009-2010
U.S. RepresentativeConnecticut’s 4th
(was preceeded by Christopher Shays)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordJames Himes missed 19 (2%) of 895 votes since Jan 6, 2009. The graph to the left shows the number of missed votes over time. Click for a larger chart and a list of recent votes.

Committee Membership

James Himes sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Photo from the Congresspedia.