Rep. Barbara Jordan

Former Representative for Texas’s 18^th District

Jordan was the representative for Texas’s 18^th congressional district and was a Democrat. She served from 1973 to 1978.

Bioguide

Photo of Rep. Barbara Jordan [D-TX18, 1973-1978]

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Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Jordan is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 1978 positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).

The chart is based on the bills Jordan sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 1973 to Oct 15, 1978. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Jordan was the primary sponsor of 3 bills that were enacted:

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Does 3 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.

We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110^th Congress).

Bills Sponsored

Issue Areas

Jordan sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Social Welfare (24%) Labor and Employment (15%) Government Operations and Politics (13%) Taxation (11%) Armed Forces and National Security (11%) Economics and Public Finance (9%) Crime and Law Enforcement (9%) Law (9%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Jordan recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1973 to Oct 1978, Jordan missed 185 of 3,891 roll call votes, which is 4.8%. This is better than the median of 8.8% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Oct 1978. The chart below reports missed votes over time.

We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.

Show the numbers...

Time Period	Votes Eligible	Missed Votes	Percent	Percentile
1973 Jan-Mar	36	1	2.8%	23^rd
1973 Apr-Jun	191	3	1.6%	7^th
1973 Jul-Sep	131	1	0.8%	12^th
1973 Oct-Dec	182	17	9.3%	63^rd
1974 Jan-Mar	79	7	8.9%	51^st
1974 Apr-Jun	170	3	1.8%	10^th
1974 Jul-Sep	148	6	4.1%	36^th
1974 Oct-Dec	141	8	5.7%	30^th
1975 Jan-Mar	68	2	2.9%	29^th
1975 Apr-Jun	199	2	1.0%	10^th
1975 Jul-Sep	154	14	9.1%	68^th
1975 Oct-Dec	191	6	3.1%	29^th
1976 Jan-Mar	106	4	3.8%	37^th
1976 Apr-Jun	267	9	3.4%	17^th
1976 Jul-Sep	281	27	9.6%	65^th
1976 Oct-Oct	7	0	0.0%	0^th
1977 Jan-Mar	100	2	2.0%	23^rd
1977 Apr-Jun	273	11	4.0%	29^th
1977 Jul-Sep	198	25	12.6%	74^th
1977 Oct-Dec	135	4	3.0%	24^th
1978 Jan-Mar	150	3	2.0%	15^th
1978 Apr-Jun	300	9	3.0%	18^th
1978 Jul-Sep	308	13	4.2%	26^th
1978 Oct-Oct	76	8	10.5%	66^th

Primary Sources

The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:

unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990 by Howard L. Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole.
Martis’s “The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress”, via Keith Poole’s roll call votes data set, for political party affiliation for Members of Congress from 1789 through about year 2000
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress for the photo
GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills