Ratchford was the representative for Connecticut’s 5th congressional district and was a Democrat. He served from 1979 to 1984.
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Ratchford 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 Ratchford sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 15, 1979 to Oct 11, 1984. See full analysis methodology.
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Ratchford sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Social Welfare (33%) Private Legislation (17%) Foreign Trade and International Finance (12%) Transportation and Public Works (12%) Health (8%) Education (8%) Labor and Employment (8%)
Recent Bills
Some of Ratchford’s most recently sponsored bills include...
- H.R. 6282 (98th): A bill for the relief of Mary Lou Golightly.
- H.R. 4953 (98th): A bill to establish procedures for exempting certain interstate highways from the ...
- H.R. 3588 (98th): A bill to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to ...
- H.R. 3496 (98th): A bill to make certain repairs on a bridge on Interstate Route ...
- H.R. 3246 (98th): A bill conferring jurisdiction upon the United States Court of Claims to ...
- H.R. 2776 (98th): A bill relating to the tariff treatment of gut imported for use ...
- H.R. 2497 (98th): A bill to delay implementation of the requirement that States allow tandem ...
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1979 to Oct 1984, Ratchford missed 136 of 2,994 roll call votes, which is 4.5%. 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 and major life events.
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
