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Rep. Erik Paulsen [R-MN3]
U.S. Representative, Minnesota’s 3rd District

Photo of Paulsen
State:Minnesota [map]
District:3rd Congressional District [map]
Party:Republican
Birthday:May 14, 1965 / 44 years old

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

Paulsen’s latest tweet:Just introduced bill to end bailout program at end of this year. http://alturl.com/o8bn. Over 50 original co-sponsors!.(Nov 18, 2009)

Congressional Service

Erik Paulsen has represented Minnesota’s 3rd congressional district since 2009.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Erik Paulsen:

WhenRoleRepresenting
2009-2010
U.S. RepresentativeMinnesota’s 3rd
(was preceeded by James Ramstad)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordErik Paulsen missed 6 (1%) 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.

Money & Influence

The top campaign contribution to Paulsen in 2007-2008 was $61,378 from employees of Target Corp. Erik Paulsen’s net worth was between $123,034 and $629,000 in 2007, according to Paulsen’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Paulsen.

Committee Membership

Erik Paulsen sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Photo from the Congresspedia.