Sen. Gary Hart

Former Senator for Colorado

Hart was a senator from Colorado and was a Democrat. He served from 1975 to 1986.

Bioguide

Photo of Sen. Gary Hart [D-CO, 1975-1986]

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Hart is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 1986 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 Hart sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 5, 1981 to Oct 18, 1986. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Hart was the primary sponsor of 8 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

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Does 8 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

Hart sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

International Affairs (21%) Economics and Public Finance (18%) Armed Forces and National Security (16%) Taxation (11%) Energy (11%) Education (10%) Labor and Employment (7%) Science, Technology, Communications (7%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Hart recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1975 to Oct 1986, Hart missed 668 of 5,889 roll call votes, which is 11.3%. This is much worse than the median of 6.0% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Oct 1986. 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
1975 Jan-Mar	118	11	9.3%	67^th
1975 Apr-Jun	141	17	12.1%	64^th
1975 Jul-Sep	170	7	4.1%	25^th
1975 Oct-Dec	182	8	4.4%	22^nd
1976 Jan-Mar	109	13	11.9%	67^th
1976 Apr-Jun	263	23	8.7%	39^th
1976 Jul-Sep	315	30	9.5%	28^th
1976 Oct-Oct	13	0	0.0%	0^th
1977 Jan-Mar	92	6	6.5%	43^rd
1977 Apr-Jun	178	9	5.1%	35^th
1977 Jul-Sep	233	21	9.0%	71^st
1977 Oct-Dec	133	3	2.3%	12^th
1978 Jan-Mar	78	3	3.8%	16^th
1978 Apr-Jun	119	7	5.9%	41^st
1978 Jul-Sep	237	16	6.8%	35^th
1978 Oct-Oct	86	4	4.7%	37^th
1979 Feb-Mar	32	2	6.2%	49^th
1979 Apr-Jun	121	7	5.8%	56^th
1979 Jul-Sep	171	7	4.1%	29^th
1979 Oct-Dec	184	5	2.7%	15^th
1980 Jan-Mar	67	6	9.0%	65^th
1980 Apr-Jun	216	22	10.2%	61^st
1980 Jul-Sep	179	16	8.9%	61^st
1980 Oct-Dec	84	23	27.4%	86^th
1981 Jan-Mar	57	1	1.8%	32^nd
1981 Apr-Jun	125	9	7.2%	83^rd
1981 Jul-Sep	122	4	3.3%	38^th
1981 Oct-Dec	193	23	11.9%	82^nd
1982 Feb-Mar	79	2	2.5%	54^th
1982 Apr-Jun	127	4	3.1%	44^th
1982 Jul-Sep	177	6	3.4%	48^th
1982 Oct-Dec	86	14	16.3%	89^th
1983 Feb-Mar	54	15	27.8%	95^th
1983 Apr-Jun	122	57	46.7%	99^th
1983 Jul-Sep	92	21	22.8%	91^st
1983 Oct-Nov	103	44	42.7%	94^th
1984 Jan-Mar	45	42	93.3%	99^th
1984 Apr-Jun	144	101	70.1%	99^th
1984 Jul-Sep	68	27	39.7%	99^th
1984 Oct-Oct	34	3	8.8%	69^th
1985 Jan-Mar	22	0	0.0%	0^th
1985 Apr-Jun	116	0	0.0%	0^th
1985 Jul-Sep	60	2	3.3%	53^rd
1985 Oct-Dec	183	10	5.5%	64^th
1986 Jan-Mar	51	5	9.8%	80^th
1986 Apr-Jun	103	3	2.9%	54^th
1986 Jul-Sep	149	5	3.4%	66^th
1986 Oct-Oct	56	4	7.1%	76^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
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress for the photo
GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills