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Sen. Paul Wellstone

Former Senator for Minnesota

Wellstone was a senator from Minnesota and was a Democrat. He served from 1991 to 2002.

Photo of Sen. Paul Wellstone [D-MN, 1991-2002]

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Wellstone is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 2002 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 Wellstone sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 7, 1997 to Nov 20, 2002. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Wellstone was the primary sponsor of 3 bills that were enacted:

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Does 3 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

Wellstone sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (20%) Economics and Public Finance (13%) Law (12%) Health (12%) Labor and Employment (11%) Civil Rights and Liberties, Minority Issues (11%) Families (11%) Crime and Law Enforcement (10%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Wellstone recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

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Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1991 to Oct 2002, Wellstone missed 63 of 4,096 roll call votes, which is 1.5%. This is on par with the median of 1.8% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Oct 2002. 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: