The Daily Background

Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John Edwards may have the upper-hand in some ways. The three, all frontrunners in the top tier of Presidential candidates becoming known as “the big six” have no official duties related to the government, so they have more free time than many of the colleagues with work in the House and Senate.

Several 2008 Presidential candidates are balancing their day jobs in Congress with campaign events, with varying levels of success. According to databases of votes cast in the 110th Congress so far, there is a broad spectrum of missed votes among those competing for the White House.

In the Senate, the second highest vote-misser is John McCain, who is vying for the Republican nomination (the highest number of missed votes goes to Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat who has missed all the votes due to a brain injury). McCain has missed a full third of the votes, the highest number of anyone in the House or Senate who has not had medical issues. McCain has said that he had not been able to conduct as many fundraising events in the first quarter of 2007 as he had hoped, due to official duties in the House and Senate.

The next highest vote-missers in the Senate are Joe Biden (D-DE) and Sam Brownback (R-KS), with 26% and 22% missed votes accordingly. Both are hoping to become the next President as well. Democrat Chris Dodd has skipped 17% of votes held this year, and Chuck Hagel has missed 8% of votes held, although since he is not officially running yet, he has not been holding any campaign events.

Candidates must release their first-quarter fundraising numbers to the FEC on March 31st. McCain has held 27 fundraising events in March– nine less than Giuliani according to The Politico.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whose schedules are said to be some of the most demanding of any Presidential candidates, have both missed only 3 votes each, or 2.4% of the votes held so far.

In the House, Duncan Hunter (R-CA) has missed 15% of the votes held in 2007, and Ron Paul 9%. Fellow Republican Tom Tancredo has skipped 6%, and Dennis Kucinich has missed under 5%, the lowest of any candidate in the House.

The House has held 212 votes so far this year, and the Senate has held 126.

Filed under: Z-Feature, Z-TDB Blog