Rep. Benjamin Blackburn

Former Representative for Georgia’s 4^th District

Blackburn was the representative for Georgia’s 4^th congressional district and was a Republican. He served from 1967 to 1974.

Bioguide

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Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Blackburn is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 1974 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 Blackburn sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 1973 to Dec 20, 1974. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Blackburn 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

Blackburn sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (17%) Labor and Employment (17%) Taxation (14%) Private Legislation (14%) International Affairs (10%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (10%) Housing and Community Development (10%) Water Resources Development (7%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Blackburn recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1967 to Dec 1974, Blackburn missed 560 of 2,646 roll call votes, which is 21.2%. This is much worse than the median of 9.7% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Dec 1974. 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
1967 Jan-Mar	29	0	0.0%	0^th
1967 Apr-Jun	57	0	0.0%	0^th
1967 Jul-Sep	59	3	5.1%	70^th
1967 Oct-Dec	98	3	3.1%	59^th
1968 Jan-Mar	38	0	0.0%	0^th
1968 Apr-Jun	79	2	2.5%	50^th
1968 Jul-Sep	91	10	11.0%	84^th
1968 Oct-Oct	25	5	20.0%	71^st
1969 Jan-Mar	16	2	12.5%	71^st
1969 Apr-Jun	28	3	10.7%	49^th
1969 Jul-Sep	45	4	8.9%	45^th
1969 Oct-Dec	88	14	15.9%	65^th
1970 Jan-Mar	35	5	14.3%	59^th
1970 Apr-Jun	74	14	18.9%	62^nd
1970 Jul-Sep	76	14	18.4%	70^th
1970 Oct-Dec	81	40	49.4%	95^th
1971 Jan-Mar	22	3	13.6%	66^th
1971 Apr-Jun	90	17	18.9%	70^th
1971 Jul-Sep	74	25	33.8%	93^rd
1971 Oct-Dec	134	48	35.8%	94^th
1972 Jan-Mar	64	11	17.2%	76^th
1972 Apr-Jun	114	25	21.9%	75^th
1972 Jul-Sep	101	22	21.8%	81^st
1972 Oct-Oct	50	18	36.0%	84^th
1973 Jan-Mar	36	5	13.9%	66^th
1973 Apr-Jun	191	31	16.2%	79^th
1973 Jul-Sep	131	35	26.7%	92^nd
1973 Oct-Dec	182	43	23.6%	87^th
1974 Jan-Mar	79	12	15.2%	73^rd
1974 Apr-Jun	170	57	33.5%	93^rd
1974 Jul-Sep	148	22	14.9%	80^th
1974 Oct-Dec	141	67	47.5%	94^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
GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills