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Sen. Ted Budd

Senator for North Carolina

pronounced ted // bud


Budd is the junior senator from North Carolina and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 3, 2023. Budd is next up for reelection in 2028 and serves until Jan 3, 2029. He is 51 years old.

He was previously the representative for North Carolina’s 13th congressional district as a Republican from 2017 to 2022.

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.


Budd was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, Budd 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.) Budd was a part of a coordinated campaign with the Trump Administration spreading conspiracy theories about the election. On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Budd 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 Sen. Ted Budd [R-NC]

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2022 Report Card for Budd.

Committee Membership

Ted Budd sits on the following committees:

Enacted Legislation

Budd was the primary sponsor of 2 bills that were enacted:

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Does 2 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

Budd sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Finance and Financial Sector (27%) Government Operations and Politics (20%) Taxation (15%) Health (13%) International Affairs (7%) Labor and Employment (7%) Armed Forces and National Security (6%) Crime and Law Enforcement (5%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Budd recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Key Votes

Budd voted Yea

Passed 307/101 on Nov 29, 2022.

Budd voted Yea

Passed 325/93 on Sep 29, 2022.

Budd voted Yea

Budd voted Yea

Budd voted Yea

Passed 336/85 on Jun 22, 2022.

Budd voted Yea

Budd voted Yea

Budd voted Nay

Passed 327/85 on Dec 21, 2020.

This bill became the vehicle for passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, a major government funding bill, which also included economic stimulus provisions due …

Budd voted Nay

Budd voted Nay

Passed 361/61 on Sep 26, 2018.

H.R. 6157 provides $674.6 billion in total discretionary budget authority for the Department of Defense for fiscal year (FY) 2019. The bill provides $606.5 billion …

Missed Votes

From Feb 2023 to Mar 2023, Budd missed 4 of 61 roll call votes, which is 6.6%. This is much worse than the median of 2.3% among the lifetime records of senators 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: