Chiles was a senator from Florida and was a Democrat. He served from 1971 to 1988.
![Photo of Sen. Lawton Chiles [D-FL, 1971-1988]](/static/legislator-photos/402495-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Chiles is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 1988 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 Chiles sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 26, 1983 to Oct 22, 1988. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Chiles was the primary sponsor of 29 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:
- S. 2215 (100th): Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act Amendments of 1988
- S. 90 (100th): Big Cypress National Preserve Addition Act
- S.J.Res. 64 (100th): A joint resolution to designate May, 1987, as “Older Americans Month”.
- S. 511 (99th): A bill to change the name of the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, Florida, to the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.
- S.J.Res. 407 (99th): A joint resolution designating November 12, 1986, as “Salute to School Volunteers Day”.
- S.J.Res. 354 (99th): A joint resolution to designate the week of October 5, 1986, through October 11, 1986, as “National Drug Abuse Education and Prevention Week”.
- S.J.Res. 335 (99th): A joint resolution to designate May 8, 1986, as “Naval Aviation Day”.
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
Chiles sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Crime and Law Enforcement (19%) Government Operations and Politics (16%) Economics and Public Finance (15%) International Affairs (12%) Health (11%) Immigration (10%) Foreign Trade and International Finance (9%) Social Welfare (8%)
Recent Bills
Some of Chiles’s most recently sponsored bills include...
- S.Res. 499 (100th): A resolution commending Richard Brandon for his faithful and outstanding service to ...
- S. 2450 (100th): Business and Citizen School Volunteers of America Act of 1988
- S. 2429 (100th): A bill to redesignate the National Fisheries Research Center in Gainesville, Florida, ...
- S. 2434 (100th): A bill to designate Building #31, National Institutes of Health reservation, 9000 ...
- S.Con.Res. 118 (100th): A concurrent resolution to express the sense of the Congress regarding the ...
- S.Con.Res. 117 (100th): A concurrent resolution to express the sense of the Congress regarding relief ...
- S. 2340 (100th): A bill to amend title 28, United States Code, with respect to ...
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Feb 1971 to Oct 1988, Chiles missed 769 of 8,781 roll call votes, which is 8.8%. This is worse than the median of 5.9% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Oct 1988. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
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
