Ten Most Dominant Liberal Leaders in the 2009 House of Representatives
Today That’s My Congress publishes “Call and Response,” a new report regarding the give and take of legislating in the U.S. Congress in 2009. For the report’s analysis, we tabulated patterns of sponsorship and cosponsorship for the 4,412 substantive “H.R.” bills introduced to the House that year. For each of the 435 Representatives in the House, we counted up the number of times he or she has cosponsored someone else’s bills and also the number of cosponsorships registered for the bills s/he has introduced. We subtract the first number from the second to index a member’s tendency toward leading others in legislating or following in others’ legislative tracks. The larger that index is, the more dominant a member of Congress has been in 2009.
Among liberals in the House (those who earned at least a rating of 50 out of 100 in our progressive action index in 2009), the following are the ten most dominant in their legislative relations with other members of the House. These are the liberal legislators who have gathered far more cosponsors for the bills they’ve written than the number of cosponsorships they’ve offered to the bills written by others. They are the Top Ten Dominant Liberal Leaders in the House of Representatives, 2009:
1. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Connecticut District 3)
2. Rep. Howard Berman (California District 28)
3. Rep. Anna Eshoo (California District 14)
4. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (New York District 14)
5. Rep. George Miller (California District 7)
6. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Maryland District 
7. Rep. Barney Frank (Massachusetts District 4)
8. Rep. John Conyers (Michigan District 14)
9. Rep. Bob Filner (California District 51)
10. Rep. Bill Delahunt (Massachusetts District 10)
