Sen. James Buckley

Former Senator for New York

Buckley was a senator from New York and was a Conservative. He served from 1971 to 1976.

Bioguide

Photo of Sen. James Buckley [C-NY, 1971-1976]

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Buckley is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 1976 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 Buckley sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 1973 to Oct 1, 1976. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Buckley was the primary sponsor of 1 bill that was enacted:

S. 865 (94th): Public Buildings Cooperative Use Act

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Does 1 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

Buckley sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (17%) Law (15%) Taxation (12%) International Affairs (12%) Economics and Public Finance (12%) Armed Forces and National Security (11%) Social Welfare (10%) Civil Rights and Liberties, Minority Issues (9%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Buckley recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Feb 1971 to Oct 1976, Buckley missed 837 of 3,404 roll call votes, which is 24.6%. This is much worse than the median of 13.0% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Oct 1976. 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
1971 Feb-Mar	25	6	24.0%	68^th
1971 Apr-Jun	89	18	20.2%	56^th
1971 Jul-Sep	109	22	20.2%	66^th
1971 Oct-Dec	202	20	9.9%	39^th
1972 Jan-Mar	119	31	26.1%	79^th
1972 Apr-Jun	130	35	26.9%	71^st
1972 Jul-Sep	206	36	17.5%	69^th
1972 Oct-Oct	75	5	6.7%	30^th
1973 Jan-Mar	67	28	41.8%	93^rd
1973 Apr-Jun	192	23	12.0%	61^st
1973 Jul-Sep	167	28	16.8%	80^th
1973 Oct-Dec	168	20	11.9%	56^th
1974 Jan-Mar	94	12	12.8%	58^th
1974 Apr-Jun	179	33	18.4%	79^th
1974 Jul-Sep	138	21	15.2%	74^th
1974 Oct-Dec	133	47	35.3%	90^th
1975 Jan-Mar	118	13	11.0%	75^th
1975 Apr-Jun	141	37	26.2%	87^th
1975 Jul-Sep	170	48	28.2%	94^th
1975 Oct-Dec	182	19	10.4%	52^nd
1976 Jan-Mar	109	13	11.9%	59^th
1976 Apr-Jun	263	138	52.5%	95^th
1976 Jul-Sep	315	171	54.3%	94^th
1976 Oct-Oct	13	13	100.0%	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