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Rep. Paul Gosar

Representative for Arizona’s 9th District

pronounced pawl // GOH-sahr


Gosar is the representative for Arizona’s 9th congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 3, 2023. Gosar is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 64 years old.

He was previously the representative for Arizona’s 4th congressional district as a Republican from 2013 to 2022; and the representative for Arizona’s 1st congressional district as a Republican from 2011 to 2012.

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.


Gosar was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Gosar was a part of a coordinated campaign by the Trump Administration to pressure the Vice President to exclude some Democratic states from the electoral count rather than follow the procedure set in law in which Congress may vote to exclude electors, and other extrajudicial strategies to suppress certified election results. Gosar perpetuated a debunked conspiracy theory on the House floor ahead of the final electoral count. On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Gosar voted to reject the state-certified election results of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania (states narrowly won by Democrats), which could have changed the outcome of the election. These legislators pumped the lies and preposterous legal arguments about the election that motivated the January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol. 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.

Misconduct

On Nov. 7, 2021, Rep. Gosar posted on his official social media accounts a video clip taken from the opening credits of an animated show called Attack of the Titans. The clip was altered to add real people's faces to various characters. The result was a character with his face killing one with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's face and flying at one, armed with swords, with President Biden's face. On Nov. 17, Rep. Gosar was censured and removed from his committee assignments (one of which he shared with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez) by a vote of 223-207.

Nov. 7, 2021 Rep. Gosar posted the video clip.
Nov. 17, 2021 House of Representatives censured Rep. Gosar and removed him from committee assignments
Photo of Rep. Paul Gosar [R-AZ9]

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2022 Report Card for Gosar.

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Gosar is shown as a purple triangle in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the House of Representatives 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 Gosar has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Mar 17, 2023. See full analysis methodology.

Committee Membership

Paul Gosar sits on the following committees:

Enacted Legislation

Gosar was the primary sponsor of 11 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

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Does 11 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

Gosar sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Public Lands and Natural Resources (23%) Government Operations and Politics (20%) Immigration (17%) Crime and Law Enforcement (11%) International Affairs (9%) Environmental Protection (8%) Science, Technology, Communications (8%) Education (6%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Gosar recently introduced the following legislation:

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Key Votes

Gosar voted Nay

Gosar voted Nay

Passed 426/3 on Mar 2, 2022.

Gosar voted Nay

Passed 380/4 on Feb 10, 2020.

Gosar voted Nay

Passed 338/88 on May 13, 2015.

The USA Freedom Act (H.R. 2048, Pub.L. 114–23) is a U.S. law enacted on June 2, 2015 that restored in modified form several provisions of …

Gosar voted No

Gosar voted No

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 2011 to Mar 2023, Gosar missed 440 of 7,440 roll call votes, which is 5.9%. This is much worse than the median of 1.5% among the lifetime records of representatives 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: