Rep. William Patman

Former Representative for Texas’s 14^th District

Patman was the representative for Texas’s 14^th congressional district and was a Democrat. He served from 1981 to 1984.

Bioguide

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Patman is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 1984 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 Patman sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 15, 1979 to Oct 11, 1984. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Patman was the primary sponsor of 1 bill that was enacted:

H.R. 1935 (98th): A bill to ratify an exchange agreement concerning National Wildlife Refuge System lands located on Matagorda Island in Texas.

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Does 1 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

Patman sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Finance and Financial Sector (50%) Government Operations and Politics (50%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Patman recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1981 to Oct 1984, Patman missed 43 of 1,718 roll call votes, which is 2.5%. This is better than the median of 7.0% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Oct 1984. 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...

Time Period	Votes Eligible	Missed Votes	Percent	Percentile
1981 Jan-Mar	15	1	6.7%	46^th
1981 Apr-Jun	90	16	17.8%	86^th
1981 Jul-Sep	106	1	0.9%	15^th
1981 Oct-Dec	142	2	1.4%	10^th
1982 Feb-Mar	48	1	2.1%	24^th
1982 Apr-Jun	119	0	0.0%	0^th
1982 Jul-Sep	193	2	1.0%	8^th
1982 Oct-Dec	99	2	2.0%	13^th
1983 Jan-Mar	43	1	2.3%	15^th
1983 Apr-Jun	182	0	0.0%	0^th
1983 Jul-Sep	130	1	0.8%	11^th
1983 Oct-Nov	143	0	0.0%	0^th
1984 Jan-Mar	53	0	0.0%	0^th
1984 Apr-Jun	223	14	6.3%	48^th
1984 Jul-Sep	96	0	0.0%	0^th
1984 Oct-Oct	36	2	5.6%	45^th

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
GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills