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Rep. Tom Cole

Representative for Oklahoma’s 4th District

pronounced tom // kohl

Cole is the representative for Oklahoma’s 4th congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 7, 2003. Cole’s current term ends on Jan 3, 2025. He is 75 years old.

Photo of Rep. Tom Cole [R-OK4]
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 advisors and associates, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided by themselves rather than by voters through their attempts to suppress state-certified election results at both the state and national level.

Cole was among the Republican legislators who participated in this. On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Cole voted to omit Arizona and/or Pennsylvania from the counting of presidential electors, which could have altered the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor.
In 2023, Trump associates and top advisors pleaded guilty to submitting a fraudulent slate of electors to Congress from Georgia, making false statements about purported widespread fraud in the election, and tampering with voting machines after the election, admitted in civil court to posing as fake electors in Wisconsin, and were convicted of contempt of Congress for withholding documents during its investigation and assaulting police officers at the Capitol. Trump associates and top advisors are also facing charges for submitting fraudulent slates of electors to Congress (in Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Wisconsin) and Trump himself faces criminal charges for coordinating the fraudulent slates of electors and other actions. He was also convicted in 2024 of falsifying business records to cover up acts that he believed might have hurt him in the 2016 election. The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups one member of which was convicted of sedition, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors.

Earmarks

Cole proposed $131 million in earmarks for fiscal year 2024, including:

  • $36 million to The University of Oklahoma for “Max Westheimer Airport Improvements”
  • $25 million to Oklahoma Department of Transportation for “I-35 Interchange at SH-74”
  • $13 million to Oklahoma Department of Transportation for “US-62 Interchange”

These are earmark requests which may or may not survive the legislative process to becoming law. Most representatives from both parties requested earmarks for fiscal year 2024. Across representatives who requested earmarks, the median total amount requested for this fiscal year was $39 million.

Earmarks are federal expenditures, tax benefits, or tariff benefits requested by a legislator for a specific entity. Rather than being distributed through a formula or competitive process administered by the executive branch, earmarks may direct spending where it is most needed for the legislator's district. All earmark requests in the House of Representatives are published online for the public to review. We don’t have earmark requests for senators. The fiscal year begins on October 1 of the prior calendar year. Source: Appropriations.house.gov. Background: Earmark Disclosure Rules in the House

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Cole is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the House of Representatives 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 Cole has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Nov 14, 2024. See full analysis methodology.

Committee Membership

Tom Cole sits on the following committees:

Enacted Legislation

Cole was the primary sponsor of 13 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

View All »

Does 13 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

Cole sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Native Americans (30%) Economics and Public Finance (19%) Health (19%) Crime and Law Enforcement (11%) Law (7%) Social Welfare (7%) Government Operations and Politics (7%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Cole recently introduced the following legislation:

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

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Voting Record

Key Votes

Cole voted Yea
Cole voted Yea
Cole voted Yea
Passed 230/190 on May 18, 2022.
Cole voted Nay
Cole voted Aye
Cole voted Aye
Passed 304/117 on Jun 23, 2011.
The Leahy–Smith America Invents Act (AIA) is a United States federal statute that was passed by Congress and was signed into law by President Barack …

Missed Votes

From Jan 2003 to Nov 2024, Cole missed 317 of 14,452 roll call votes, which is 2.2%. This is on par with the median of 2.2% among the lifetime records of representatives 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:

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