Gov.-elect Tim Walz (D-MN), still a U.S. congressman until January, has missed 45 votes on the House floor since winning August’s Democratic gubernatorial primary in Minnesota.
Between the days of September 4 and December 13, the U.S. House of Representatives has voted on 56 different measures, but Walz has been present for just 11 of them, according to the Clerk of the House.
This means that Walz voted just 19.6 percent of the time, and missed the remaining 80.4 percent of the votes. He’s missed every vote since November 14, totaling 17 skipped votes in a row.
But his longest streak of missed votes came between September 5 and September 25, when he missed 18 straight votes. Inversely, the most consecutive votes he was present for was just eight—a period of two days.
On Thursday, he missed the vote on the House’s controversial $867 billion farm bill, which will have a significant impact on the agriculture-heavy First Congressional District that he still currently represents.
He also skipped a meeting called by President Donald Trump with the nation’s newly elected governors Thursday, which his Democratic colleagues from Michigan and Wisconsin attended.
“The governor-elect is in Minnesota building his incoming administration and is unable to attend the meeting at the White House,” Walz spokeswoman Kayla Castaneda said. “He’s not going because he’s in Minnesota conducting interviews and doing transition business…he’s busy building the executive branch.”
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Tim Walz” by Tim Walz. Background Photo “Minnesota House Floor” by Chris Gaukel. CC BY-SA 2.0.
