Ted Strickland missed nearly 40 percent of votes in Congress as a Democratic representative for Ohio when running for the office of governor in 2006.
Strickland, now a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, represented the 6th district from 1993 to 1994 and 1997 to 2006, during which time he missed 364 roll-call votes, or over 5 percent of the total votes held throughout his career, according to GovTrack. The median percentage of roll-call votes missed by representatives serving in 2006 was 2.9 percent.
During the 109th Congress, Strickland missed more than 22 percent of roll call votes. His attendance declined further during his final year serving in the House of Representatives when he was also running to become governor of Ohio.
Strickland missed 21 percent of the votes between January and March of 2006, 24 percent of the votes between April and June, and 64 percent of the votes between July and September.
In his final two months in Congress, Strickland was not present for nearly 93 percent of the votes on the House floor. Overall, he skipped 39 percent of votes in 2006.
Strickland acknowledged his absence from Congress during the campaign season in an October 2006 interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, saying that he was present for votes on issues that were important to him, such as raising the minimum wage.
"I felt like it was important for me to make the choices that I made in order to spend time communicating with my constituents and trying to win this election," Strickland said before winning the Ohio gubernatorial election.
At the time, a now defunct database maintained by the Washington Post rated Strickland the third most absent member of Congress since 2005, after Reps. Lane Evans (D., Ill.), who was battling Parkinson’s disease, and Jim Davis (D., Fla.).
In Congress, Strickland was also frequently absent from his position on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs from 2003 to 2006, according to a review of available committee hearing records. The former Ohio congressman missed six of the 16 committee hearings recorded during the 108th Congress, meaning that he was absent 38 percent of the time.
Strickland also missed 16, or 64 percent, of the 25 Veterans’ Affairs committee hearings during the 109th Congress, which overlapped with his campaign for governor. Strickland missed 12 of the 17 committee hearings on record in 2006, meaning that he was absent over 70 percent of the time during the year he was running for governor. The Democratic congressman skipped the final five committee hearings on record between June and December of 2006.
The hearings Strickland missed covered a range of topics, including the elimination of VA waste, fraud, and abuse, veterans’ employment, disability claims processing, and the department’s budget.
Despite his absence from Congress, Strickland managed to sponsor 73 pieces of legislation during his 12 years on Capitol Hill. None of these became law.
Strickland’s ultimate competition for the Ohio Senate seat in 2016, the incumbent Sen. Rob Portman, has missed 1.8 percent of the roll-call votes in the Senate since 2011, according to GovTrack. The median percentage of roll-call votes missed by currently serving senators is 1.6 percent.
Before Strickland can compete against Portman in the general election, he will face P.G. Sittenfeld, a Cincinnati city councilman, in the Democratic primary.
According to a review of the 39 Cincinnati city council sessions on record for 2015, Sittenfeld has been absent three times, meaning he has missed 7 percent of meetings while campaigning for the Senate. Sittenfeld, 31, was elected to the city council in 2013.
The Ohio Democratic Party has formally endorsed Strickland.
A representative for Strickland’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.