Sen. Byron Dorgan

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Dorgan is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 2010 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 Dorgan sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 24, 2005 to Dec 22, 2010. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Dorgan was the primary sponsor of 17 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 797 (111th): Tribal Law and Order Act of 2009
• S. 1436 (111th): Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010
• S. 3503 (110th): Organ Transplant Authorization Act of 2008
• S. 2098 (110th): Northern Plains Heritage Area Act
• S. 2096 (110th): Do-Not-Call Improvement Act of 2007
• S. 1898 (106th): Interstate Transportation of Dangerous Criminals Act of 2000
• S. 391 (105th): Mississippi Sioux Tribes Judgment Fund Distribution Act of 1998

View All »

Does 17 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

Dorgan sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (18%) Law (15%) Economics and Public Finance (13%) Commerce (13%) Health (12%) Native Americans (10%) Finance and Financial Sector (10%) Energy (9%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Dorgan recently introduced the following legislation:

• S. 3997 (111th): A bill to authorize appropriations for certain Native American programs.
• S.Res. 689 (111th): A resolution recognizing National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month and …
• S. 3893 (111th): A bill to establish the Emergency Trade Deficit Commission, and for other …
• S. 3851 (111th): Clean Sports Protection Act
• S. 3752 (111th): Indian Energy Parity Act of 2010
• S. 3761 (111th): A bill to ensure that amounts appropriated to the Bureau of Indian …
• S.Res. 607 (111th): A resolution recognizing the month of October 2010 as “National Principals Month”.

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Key Votes

Missed Votes

From Feb 1993 to Dec 2010, Dorgan missed 108 of 6,233 roll call votes, which is 1.7%. This is on par with the median of 2.0% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Dec 2010. 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...

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
• The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
• 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
• Congressional Pictorial Directory for the photo
• GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills