Rep. Harold Sawyer

Former Representative for Michigan’s 5^th District

Sawyer was the representative for Michigan’s 5^th congressional district and was a Republican. He served from 1977 to 1984.

Bioguide

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Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Sawyer is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 1984 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 Sawyer sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 15, 1979 to Oct 11, 1984. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Sawyer was the primary sponsor of 6 bills that were enacted:

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Does 6 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

Sawyer sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Crime and Law Enforcement (28%) Taxation (22%) Government Operations and Politics (15%) Labor and Employment (12%) Private Legislation (8%) Economics and Public Finance (5%) Immigration (5%) Sports and Recreation (5%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Sawyer recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1977 to Oct 1984, Sawyer missed 405 of 4,534 roll call votes, which is 8.9%. This is on par with the median of 7.0% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Oct 1984. 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
1977 Jan-Mar	100	12	12.0%	82^nd
1977 Apr-Jun	273	47	17.2%	88^th
1977 Jul-Sep	198	19	9.6%	71^st
1977 Oct-Dec	135	17	12.6%	75^th
1978 Jan-Mar	150	12	8.0%	54^th
1978 Apr-Jun	300	48	16.0%	78^th
1978 Jul-Sep	308	53	17.2%	84^th
1978 Oct-Oct	76	4	5.3%	46^th
1979 Jan-Mar	63	0	0.0%	0^th
1979 Apr-Jun	221	24	10.9%	72^nd
1979 Jul-Sep	198	12	6.1%	50^th
1979 Oct-Dec	190	15	7.9%	41^st
1980 Jan-Mar	148	5	3.4%	18^th
1980 Apr-Jun	197	4	2.0%	12^th
1980 Jul-Sep	192	1	0.5%	4^th
1980 Oct-Dec	67	3	4.5%	28^th
1981 Jan-Mar	15	0	0.0%	0^th
1981 Apr-Jun	90	11	12.2%	75^th
1981 Jul-Sep	106	4	3.8%	41^st
1981 Oct-Dec	142	9	6.3%	48^th
1982 Feb-Mar	48	1	2.1%	24^th
1982 Apr-Jun	119	0	0.0%	0^th
1982 Jul-Sep	193	6	3.1%	27^th
1982 Oct-Dec	99	2	2.0%	13^th
1983 Jan-Mar	43	2	4.7%	31^st
1983 Apr-Jun	182	18	9.9%	65^th
1983 Jul-Sep	130	1	0.8%	11^th
1983 Oct-Nov	143	30	21.0%	94^th
1984 Jan-Mar	53	1	1.9%	21^st
1984 Apr-Jun	223	36	16.1%	88^th
1984 Jul-Sep	96	6	6.2%	56^th
1984 Oct-Oct	36	2	5.6%	45^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
GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills