DesJarlais is the representative for Tennessee’s 4th congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 5, 2011. DesJarlais is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 58 years old.
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.
DesJarlais was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, DesJarlais joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election, based on lies and a preposterous legal argument which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.) On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, DesJarlais 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 have generally changed their story after their vote, claiming it was merely a protest and not intended to change the outcome of the election as they clearly sought prior to the vote. 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.
![Photo of Rep. Scott DesJarlais [R-TN4]](/static/legislator-photos/412477-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
DesJarlais 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 DesJarlais has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Feb 2, 2023. See full analysis methodology.
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
DesJarlais sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Armed Forces and National Security (37%) Health (26%) Government Operations and Politics (16%) Education (11%) Animals (11%)
Recently Introduced Bills
DesJarlais recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.Res. 1310: Acknowledging and commemorating the women in the Army who served in the Women’s …
- H.Res. 1187: Recognizing the exemplary service of the soldiers of the 30th Infantry Division of …
- H.R. 8102: Student Loan Accountability Act
- H.R. 8076: Student Loan Accountability Act
- H.R. 7359: Stop Fentanyl Border Crossings Act
- H.R. 6540: Respecting the Rights of Organ Donor Recipients Act of 2022
- H.R. 6341: Protecting Horses from Soring Act of 2021
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2011 to Dec 2022, DesJarlais missed 342 of 7,297 roll call votes, which is 4.7%. This is much worse than the median of 2.0% 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.
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
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- GPO Member Guide for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
