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Sen. James Lankford

Senator for Oklahoma

pronounced jaymz // LANK-ferd


Lankford is the senior senator from Oklahoma and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 6, 2015. Lankford is next up for reelection in 2028 and serves until Jan 3, 2029. He is 55 years old.

He was previously the representative for Oklahoma’s 5th congressional district as a Republican from 2011 to 2014.

Elections must be decided by counting votes

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 instead by incumbent politicians running in the very same election. 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.


Lankford was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. In the days leading up to January 6, 2021’s congressional certification of the election, Lankford announced his intent to object to the inclusion of some states from the certification, which would have disenfranchised millions of voters and amplified lies, conspiracy theories, and preposterous legal theories about purported fraud. (He ultimately did not vote to exclude any states from the Electoral College, however.) 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.
Photo of Sen. James Lankford [R-OK]

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2022 Report Card for Lankford.

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Lankford is shown as a purple triangle in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the Senate 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 Lankford has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Mar 22, 2023. See full analysis methodology.

Committee Membership

James Lankford sits on the following committees:

Enacted Legislation

Lankford was the primary sponsor of 14 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

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Does 14 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

Lankford sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (37%) International Affairs (16%) Armed Forces and National Security (14%) Taxation (10%) Health (10%) Economics and Public Finance (7%) Immigration (5%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Lankford recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Key Votes

Lankford voted Yea

Lankford voted Nay

Bill Passed 97/1 on May 14, 2015.

The Trade Preferences Extension Act extends a trade agreement with sub-Saharan African partners and prevents trade partners from undercutting United States businesses with artificially low …

Lankford voted Nay

Passed 219/206 on Dec 11, 2014.

This bill became the vehicle for passage of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015 [pdf], which was approved by the House on December …

Lankford voted No

Lankford voted Aye

Lankford voted No

Lankford voted Nay

Lankford voted Aye

Lankford voted Aye

Passed 304/117 on Jun 23, 2011.

The Leahy–Smith America Invents Act (AIA) is a United States federal statute that was passed by Congress and was signed into law by President Barack …

Missed Votes

From Jan 2015 to Mar 2023, Lankford missed 10 of 2,830 roll call votes, which is 0.4%. This is better than the median of 2.3% among the lifetime records of senators 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.

Show the numbers...

Primary Sources

The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including: