Sen. Robert Stafford

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Stafford 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 ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).

The chart is based on the bills Stafford sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 26, 1983 to Oct 22, 1988. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Stafford was the primary sponsor of 17 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 2496 (100th): A bill to provide for the leasing of certain real property to the American National Red Cross, District of Columbia Chapter, for the construction and maintenance of …
• S.J.Res. 308 (100th): A joint resolution to designate June 1988 as “National Recycling Month”.
• S. 1965 (99th): Higher Education Amendments of 1986
• S. 173 (99th): Tehran American School Claim Act of 1985
• S. 1706 (99th): A bill to authorize the Architect of the Capitol, in cooperation with the Union Station Redevelopment Corp., to design a building or buildings adjacent to Union Station …
• S. 3021 (98th): A bill to name the Federal Building in Elkins, West Virginia, the “Jennings Randolph Federal Center”.
• S. 1330 (98th): Public Works Improvement Act of 1984

View All »

Does 17 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 110^th Congress).

Bills Sponsored

Issue Areas

Stafford sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Economics and Public Finance (22%) Government Operations and Politics (20%) Environmental Protection (20%) Education (11%) Energy (9%) Transportation and Public Works (6%) Native Americans (6%) Water Resources Development (6%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Stafford recently introduced the following legislation:

• S. 2666 (100th): Global Environmental Protection Act of 1988
• S. 2663 (100th): Global Environmental Protection Act of 1988
• S. 2496 (100th): A bill to provide for the leasing of certain real property to …
• S. 2432 (100th): Student Aid Integrity and Accountability Amendments of 1988
• S. 2380 (100th): Disaster Relief Act Amendments of 1988
• S.J.Res. 308 (100th): A joint resolution to designate June 1988 as “National Recycling Month”.
• S. 2101 (100th): Water Resources Development Act of 1988

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jun 1971 to Oct 1988, Stafford missed 1,060 of 8,581 roll call votes, which is 12.4%. This is much 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.

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:

• 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