Rep. Doug LaMalfa
Representative for California’s 1st District
pronounced dug // luh-MAL-fuh
LaMalfa is the representative for California’s 1st congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 3, 2013. LaMalfa is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 63 years old.
![Photo of Rep. Doug LaMalfa [R-CA1]](/static/legislator-photos/412510-200px.jpeg)
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 entire state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and using a disinformation campaign of lies and conspiracy theories was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.
LaMalfa was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, LaMalfa 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.) On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, LaMalfa voted to skip Arizona and/or Pennsylvania in the counting of presidential electors, states which returned certified results for Trump’s opponent. These legislators have generally changed their story after their vote, claiming it was merely a protest and not intended to change the outcome of the election as they clearly sought prior to the vote. 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. President Trump was indicted in 2023 for soliciting the Vice President to subvert Congress’s certification of the election and his role in the fraudulent slates of electors and the insurrection at the Capitol.
Earmarks
LaMalfa proposed $65 million in earmarks for fiscal year 2024, including:
- $15 million to Town of Paradise, CA for “Paradise Sewer Project - Regionalization Connection Payment”
- $10 million to Sewerage Commission - Oroville Region for “SC-OR Wastewater Treatment Plant Upgrade”
- $8 million to Tehama County Transportation Commission for “Lake California Drive Reconstruction Project”
View all requests and justifications on LaMalfa’s website »
View analysis and download spreadsheet from Demand Progress Education Fund »
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
Legislative Metrics
Read our 2022 Report Card for LaMalfa.
Ideology–Leadership Chart
LaMalfa 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 LaMalfa has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Sep 22, 2023. See full analysis methodology.
Committee Membership
Doug LaMalfa sits on the following committees:
Enacted Legislation
LaMalfa was the primary sponsor of 5 bills that were enacted:
- H.R. 228 (117th): To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 2141 Ferry Street in Anderson, California, as the “Norma Comnick Post Office Building”.
- H.R. 8115 (117th): Recreation and Public Purposes Tribal Parity Act
- H.R. 317 (116th): Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians Land Affirmation Act of 2019
- H.R. 6655 (115th): To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 44160 State Highway 299 East Suite 1 in McArthur, California, as the “Janet Lucille Oilar …
- H.R. 2212 (114th): To take certain Federal lands located in Lassen County, California, into trust for the benefit of the Susanville Indian Rancheria, and for other purposes.
Does 5 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
LaMalfa sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Public Lands and Natural Resources (18%) Government Operations and Politics (15%) Taxation (15%) Crime and Law Enforcement (12%) Health (12%) Environmental Protection (10%) Native Americans (10%) Water Resources Development (8%)
Recently Introduced Bills
LaMalfa recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.R. 4970: Protect Innocent Victims Of Taxation After Fire Act
- H.R. 4831: Fair Pay for Federal Firefighters Act
- H.R. 4173: Advancing Automation Research and Development in Agriculture Act
- H.R. 4070: Disaster Mitigation and Tax Parity Act of 2023
- H.R. 3328: Protecting Children From Experimentation Act of 2023
- H.R. 3329: End Taxpayer Funding of Gender Experimentation Act of 2023
- H.Res. 244: Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that mandates imposed on manufacturers …
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2013 to Sep 2023, LaMalfa missed 180 of 6,094 roll call votes, which is 3.0%. This is worse than the median of 1.7% 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.
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
- GPO Member Guide for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
