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Rep. Darin LaHood

Representative for Illinois’s 16th District

pronounced DAR-un // luh-HUUD

LaHood is the representative for Illinois’s 16th congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 3, 2023. LaHood is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 55 years old.

He was previously the representative for Illinois’s 18th congressional district as a Republican from 2015 to 2022.

Photo of Rep. Darin LaHood [R-IL16]
Elections must be decided by counting votes

Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his senior government advisors, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided by themselves rather than by voters. Their attempts to suppress state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and by using lies and fraudulent documents was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.

LaHood was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, LaHood joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election, based on lies and a preposterous legal argument which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.)
The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors. In 2023, Trump advisors and associates pleaded guilty to or were convicted of submitting fraudulent slates of electors to Congress (which Trump was briefed on), abetting lies, tampering with voting machines after the election, and assaulting police officers at the Capitol, and Trump faces criminal charges for soliciting the Vice President to subvert Congress’s certification of the election, his role in the fraudulent slates of electors, and the insurrection at the Capitol.

Earmarks

LaHood proposed $145 million in earmarks for fiscal year 2024, including:

  • $120 million to US Army Corps of Engineers, Rock Island District for “Upper Mississippi River - Illinois Waterway System, IL, IA, MN, MO, & WI”
  • $4 million to Village of Metamora for “Metamora Public Safety Building”
  • $3.5 million to Joliet Young Men's Christian Association DBA Greater Joliet Area YMCA for “Partnership for a Healthier Community”

These are earmark requests which may or may not survive the legislative process to becoming law. Most representatives from both parties requested earmarks for fiscal year 2024. Across representatives who requested earmarks, the median total amount requested for this fiscal year was $39 million.

Earmarks are federal expenditures, tax benefits, or tariff benefits requested by a legislator for a specific entity. Rather than being distributed through a formula or competitive process administered by the executive branch, earmarks may direct spending where it is most needed for the legislator's district. All earmark requests in the House of Representatives are published online for the public to review. We don’t have earmark requests for senators. The fiscal year begins on October 1 of the prior calendar year. Source: Appropriations.house.gov. Background: Earmark Disclosure Rules in the House

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

LaHood is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the House of Representatives 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 LaHood has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Mar 5, 2024. See full analysis methodology.

Committee Membership

Darin LaHood sits on the following committees:

Enacted Legislation

LaHood was the primary sponsor of 4 bills that were enacted:

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Does 4 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 110th Congress).

Bills Sponsored

Issue Areas

LaHood sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Taxation (50%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (11%) Health (9%) Education (7%)

Recently Introduced Bills

LaHood recently introduced the following legislation:

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

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Voting Record

Key Votes

LaHood voted No

Passed 314/117 on May 31, 2023.
This bill would enact a compromise reached by House Republicans and President Biden to avert an impending fiscal crisis related to the statutory debt limit. …

LaHood voted Nay

LaHood voted Nay

Passed 361/66 on Sep 28, 2021.
The ratio was 100:1 starting in 1986, then 18:1 starting in 2010. Should it be 1:1 now? # Context Cocaine is federally classified as a …

LaHood voted Nay

LaHood voted Yea

Passed 327/85 on Dec 21, 2020.
This bill became the vehicle for passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, a major government funding bill, which also included economic stimulus provisions due …

LaHood voted Yea

LaHood voted Yea

LaHood voted Nay

Passed 342/85 on Sep 28, 2016.
The Continuing Appropriations and Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017, and Zika Response and Preparedness Act (H.R. 5325) is an appropriations …

LaHood voted Nay

Passed 316/113 on Dec 18, 2015.
This vote was on the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, also known as the omnibus spending bill. The bill would fund the federal government for the …

LaHood voted Nay

Passed 277/151 on Sep 30, 2015.
This was a vote to agree to the provisions to keep the government funded through December 11, 2015 that the Senate had added in a …

Missed Votes

From Sep 2015 to Mar 2024, LaHood missed 78 of 4,780 roll call votes, which is 1.6%. This is on par with the median of 1.9% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving. 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: