Sen. Bob Graham
Former Senator for Florida
Graham was a senator from Florida and was a Democrat. He served from 1987 to 2004.
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Graham is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 2004 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 Graham sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 6, 1999 to Dec 8, 2004. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Graham was the primary sponsor of 32 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:
- S. 2042 (108th): A bill for the relief of Rocco A. Trecosta of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
- S. 2046 (108th): A bill to authorize the exchange of certain land in Everglades National Park.
- S. 1904 (108th): A bill to designate the United States courthouse located at 400 North Miami Avenue in Miami, Florida, as the “Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. United States Courthouse”.
- S. 117 (108th): Florida National Forest Land Management Act of 2003
- S. 111 (108th): A bill to direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a special resource study to determine the national significance of the Miami Circle site in the …
- S. 1670 (106th): A bill to revise the boundary of Fort Matanzas National Monument, and for other purposes.
- S. 2303 (106th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 14900 Southwest 30th Street in Miramar City, Florida, as the “Vicki Coceano Post …
Does 32 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
Graham sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Government Operations and Politics (21%) Economics and Public Finance (16%) Law (13%) Commerce (12%) Health (10%) Social Welfare (10%) Labor and Employment (9%) Families (9%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Graham recently introduced the following legislation:
- S. 3006 (108th): HRIFA Improvement Act of 2004
- S. 2993 (108th): National Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2004
- S. 2960 (108th): Rush Hour Congestion Relief Act of 2004
- S. 2911 (108th): Medicare Competitive Acquisition Improvement Act of 2004
- S. 2857 (108th): Restoring the Everglades, an American Legacy Act of 2004
- S. 2835 (108th): A bill to amend the internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow …
- S. 2704 (108th): Immigrant Children’s Health Improvement Act of 2004
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1987 to Dec 2004, Graham missed 201 of 6,222 roll call votes, which is 3.2%. This is worse than the median of 2.0% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Dec 2004. 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
- 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
- Congressional Pictorial Directory for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills