Kennedy was a senator from Massachusetts and was a Democrat. He served from 1962 to 2009.
Misconduct
On July 18, 1969, Kennedy faced an allegation of leaving the scene of an accident after driving a car into the Poucha Pond inlet while his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne drowned. On Jul. 25, 1969, he pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence.
| Jul. 25, 1969 | Pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence. |
![Photo of Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy [D-MA, 1962-2009]](/static/legislator-photos/300059-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Kennedy 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 liberal–conservative ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills Kennedy sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 24, 2005 to Dec 22, 2010. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Kennedy was the primary sponsor of 115 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:
- S. 1405 (111th): Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site Designation Act
- S. 982 (111th): Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act
- S. 277 (111th): Serve America Act
- S. 3712 (110th): A bill to make a technical correction in the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008.
- S. 3352 (110th): A bill to temporarily extend the programs under the Higher Education Act of 1965.
- S. 901 (110th): Health Care Safety Net Act of 2007
- S. 682 (110th): Edward William Brooke III Congressional Gold Medal Act
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
Kennedy sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Government Operations and Politics (19%) Economics and Public Finance (14%) Health (13%) Labor and Employment (12%) Law (12%) Social Welfare (11%) Education (9%) Families (9%)
Recent Bills
Some of Kennedy’s most recently sponsored bills include...
- S. 1580 (111th): Protecting America’s Workers Act
- S. 1410 (111th): Time for Innovation Matters in Education Act of 2009
- S. 1411 (111th): Keeping PACE Act
- S. 1405 (111th): Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site Designation Act
- S. 1152 (111th): Healthy Families Act
- S. 982 (111th): Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act
- S. 909 (111th): Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 1963 to Aug 2009, Kennedy missed 2,831 of 18,069 roll call votes, which is 15.7%. This is much worse than the median of 2.0% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Aug 2009. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
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
