Washington – Rep. Tom Tancredo missed nearly two dozen votes last week while in California for a presidential candidates’ debate, bringing to 39 the number he has skipped this year while seeking the Republican nomination.
“Even if I were not running for president, I cannot, I have not been able to, make every single vote,” Tancredo said. “I’m doing the best I can.”
The Littleton Republican has missed 13 percent of his votes this year, tops among Colorado’s congressional delegation.
But Tancredo doesn’t come close to leading the list of presidential candidates missing their congressional voting duties. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has failed to cast his vote 43 percent of the time, according to a Washington Post database that tracks legislative action.
McCain, a key supporter of the Bush administration’s Iraq war policy, drew criticism from some quarters when he missed a vote on a failed resolution that would have forced troop redeployment by March 2008.
In the House, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., leads the absence list among members with eyes on the White House, having missed 26 percent of his votes.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has the lowest missed-vote total among all candidates, having failed to vote 2 percent of the time. The worst of the Democratic candidates on Capitol Hill is Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, with nearly 31 percent of votes missed.
Tancredo joked that he could improve his attendance if he could afford to take charter flights. Clinton has reportedly spent more than $450,000 on charter flights.
The House normally votes starting Monday evening and wrapping up Thursday. Some weeks, voting lasts through Friday.
Tancredo, who spends weekends in either Iowa or New Hampshire, said he tries to leave as late as possible to avoid missing votes, then ends up sitting in airports. “You speed, speed, speed to the airport, and you could have maybe made another vote, who knows, if someone had told you that the plane was going to be late,” he said.
Controversial bill
Tancredo last week missed a vote on controversial House legislation making it a hate crime to injure someone because of sexual orientation. He also missed votes on three bills authorizing federal spending. And he didn’t vote on a bill making changes to Head Start, the early childhood education funding program.
Two constituents called his office Wednesday to complain about the missed vote on the hate-crimes legislation, Tancredo said. The five-term congressman said he was happy that people were paying attention to the votes, even if they were calling to complain.
Tancredo said he would have voted against the hate-crimes bill, voted against the bills authorizing federal programs and voted against the Head Start legislation. All of those bills passed.
Should his presidential bid fail, Tancredo hasn’t said whether he’ll run for re-election in 2008. If he does, Democrats will work to make his missed votes a campaign issue, said Patricia Waak, chair of the Colorado Democratic Party.
“His district has every right to expect that he’s going to be there attending to the business of Coloradans,” Waak said. “You need to think first about what you were elected to do. Clearly he’s not doing that. He needs to choose what he’s doing.”
“Degree of excitement”
But Douglas County Commissioner Steven Boand, a Republican, said he believes Tancredo’s constituents will give him some latitude.
“There’s some degree of excitement having a local running for president,” he said.
Even if Tancredo doesn’t win the nomination, Boand said, “it’s an opportunity to shape the issues that we all talk about. It’s a fairly important thing.”
Tancredo is running largely to push his position on stopping illegal immigration, which Boand said “is important locally.”
Tancredo said congressional voting is “extremely important,” but that “every single day that you’re here, you do things other than just vote,” including attending hearings and meeting with constituents.
“I’m hoping that I can accomplish a lot of things for my constituents,” he said.
