Chafee was a senator from Rhode Island and was a Republican. He served from 1976 to 1999.
![Photo of Sen. John Chafee [R-RI, 1976-1999]](/static/legislator-photos/402412-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Chafee is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 2000 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 Chafee sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 4, 1995 to Dec 15, 2000. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Chafee was the primary sponsor of 31 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:
- S. 1752 (106th): Coastal Barrier Resources Reauthorization Act of 2000
- S. 835 (106th): Estuaries and Clean Waters Act of 2000
- S. 1744 (106th): An original bill to amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to provide that certain species conservation reports shall continue to be submitted.
- S. 1652 (106th): A bill to designate the Old Executive Office Building located at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, in Washington, District of Columbia, as the Dwight D. Eisenhower ...
- S. 2364 (105th): Economic Development Administration and Appalachian Regional Development Reform Act of 1998
- S. 2038 (105th): John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Authorization Act
- S. 1228 (105th): 50 States Commemorative Coin Program Act
Does 31 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
Chafee sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Government Operations and Politics (17%) Commerce (16%) Economics and Public Finance (15%) Environmental Protection (14%) Law (11%) Finance and Financial Sector (9%) Health (9%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (8%)
Recent Bills
Some of Chafee’s most recently sponsored bills include...
- S. 1752 (106th): Coastal Barrier Resources Reauthorization Act of 2000
- S. 1744 (106th): An original bill to amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to ...
- S. 1730 (106th): An original bill to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to ...
- S. 1731 (106th): An original bill to amend the Clean Air Act to provide that ...
- S. 1653 (106th): National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Establishment Act Amendments of 2000
- S. 1652 (106th): A bill to designate the Old Executive Office Building located at 17th ...
- S. 1537 (106th): Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1999
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1977 to Oct 1999, Chafee missed 375 of 9,160 roll call votes, which is 4.1%. This is much worse than the median of 1.9% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Oct 1999. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses and major life events.
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
