Karth was the representative for Minnesota’s 4th congressional district and was a Democrat. He served from 1959 to 1976.
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Karth is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives 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 Karth sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 1973 to Oct 1, 1976. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Karth was the primary sponsor of 1 bill that was enacted:
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 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Karth sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Taxation (29%) Transportation and Public Works (19%) Government Operations and Politics (10%) Agriculture and Food (9%) Commerce (8%) Armed Forces and National Security (8%) Labor and Employment (8%) Social Welfare (8%)
Recent Bills
Some of Karth’s most recently sponsored bills include...
- H.R. 15806 (94th): A bill to provide for the temporary suspension of duty on the ...
- H.R. 15720 (94th): A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 relating to ...
- H.R. 15363 (94th): National Forest Management Act
- H.R. 14196 (94th): Consumer Communications Reform Act
- H.R. 13436 (94th): A bill to amend title II of the Social Security Act to ...
- H.R. 13278 (94th): A bill to amend section 5051 of the Internal Revenue Code of ...
- H.R. 13136 (94th): Consumer Communications Reform Act
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1959 to Oct 1976, Karth missed 833 of 4,966 roll call votes, which is 16.8%. This is much worse than the median of 8.7% among the lifetime records of representatives 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 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
- 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