Sen. James “Jim” Jeffords
Former Senator for Vermont
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Jeffords is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 2006 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 Jeffords sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 22, 2001 to Dec 8, 2006. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Jeffords was the primary sponsor of 24 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:
- S. 544 (109th): Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005
- S. 269 (108th): Captive Wildlife Safety Act
- S. 1 (107th): Better Education for Students and Teachers Act
- S. 1809 (106th): Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 2000
- S. 2311 (106th): Ryan White CARE Act Amendments of 2000
- S. 3067 (106th): Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act
- S. 2432 (105th): Assistive Technology Act of 1998
Does 24 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
Jeffords sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Government Operations and Politics (19%) Economics and Public Finance (16%) Environmental Protection (13%) Science, Technology, Communications (13%) Health (10%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (10%) Commerce (9%) Law (9%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Jeffords recently introduced the following legislation:
- S. 3698 (109th): Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act
- S. 3689 (109th): National Historic Country Store Preservation and Revitalization Act of 2006
- S. 3654 (109th): Recycling Investment Saves Energy
- S. 3634 (109th): Spent Nuclear Fuel Control and Accounting Act of 2006
- S. 3591 (109th): High-Performance Green Buildings Act of 2006
- S. 2565 (109th): Vermont Wilderness Act of 2006
- S. 2054 (109th): A bill to direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a …
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1989 to Dec 2006, Jeffords missed 246 of 6,068 roll call votes, which is 4.1%. This is much worse than the median of 2.0% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Dec 2006. 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