Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.
WASHINGTON - Sometimes it's all about showing up.
Members of Congress are judged by the number votes they miss on the House floor, as Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons found out the hard way this summer.
After saying he was too busy to participate in primary debates in the race for governor because he was doing his job in Washington, Gibbons was confronted with voting records showing he had missed more votes than most of his peers.
A Sun review of the career voting records of Nevada's U.S. House incumbents shows that Gibbons' once-stellar attendance record has declined steadily over the decade he has been in office.
His attendance at votes was in the top 10 percent in the beginning. In the current session, he is near the bottom, tied for 391st in the House, according to www.hillmonitor.com . The House has 435 members, but the ranking includes representatives who serve partial terms, so the number is above 435 each session.
Gibbons noted that despite the decline, his overall record showed that he voted 97 percent of the time. "I would give myself an A," he said. "You cannot please all of the people all the time, but I've done my very best."
Among Nevada's House delegation, Rep. Shelley Berkley had an even worse record during a single two-year session. In 2003-04, Berkley's mother died and she missed 123 votes, which tied her for 396th place.
Republican Rep. Jon Porter missed just one vote this session - on an amendment proposing that Congress ask President Bush to submit a plan for beginning to withdraw troops from Iraq. Porter was ill.
Experts say absenteeism can bruise a congressional career. They point to Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell's now textbook TV ad more than 20 years ago. It showed a bloodhound searching for the Democratic incumbent. McConnell won.
Absenteeism counts because it resonates with those voters who think that because taxpayers are paying the $165,200 salaries earned by members of Congress, their representatives should show up for votes.
But John Pitney, political science professor at Claremont McKenna College in California, said missed votes should also come with an asterisk. Sometimes the alternative activity, say a crucial committee hearing, is a better use of the Congress members' time.
"While it's not a perfect measure of a lawmakers' productivity, it is something they pay attention to, and most of them make sure to keep it very high," Pitney said.
So high, in fact, that missing just two votes out of more than 1,000 this session drops a representative out of the top 10 ranking. Pitney said a representative would be "pretty safe if your attendance record is above 95 percent."
Gibbons' record dropped to 92 percent in the current Congress, his lowest in eight years as he increasingly focused on his campaign for Nevada governor.
Members of Congress typically miss votes while they're on the campaign trail, and Sen. John Kerry's attendance record ranked last among the 100 senators when he made his failed bid for the White House in 2004.
Gibbons said his increased absenteeism over his five terms in Congress comes because of his additional responsibilities - including a trip to Iraq and the Middle East in 2003, which records show came at the expense of casting 19 votes.
But he and others in the Nevada delegation say sometimes personal issues take priority. During a two-week period that Berkley took off for her mother's death, she missed 83 of the 123 votes she missed in the 108th Congress.
"I just decided the world will continue without me," Berkley said last week.
Porter tied for fifth-best record this session, his second term in office.
In the same period, Gibbons missed 85 votes, including a March vote on the Terry Schiavo case and 32 others during the week he was gone to attend his son Jimmy's high school graduation. Gibbons' father died on his graduation day, and as a young man he attended his commencement alone. "For those people who want to criticize me for that, let them," he said in an interview last week.
The previous term, 2003-04, Gibbons missed 56 votes, including Defense and Labor department spending bills, and a water development act. He earned a 95 percent attendance rate, but ranked 276th.
In his third term, 2001-02, he missed 31 votes, and tied for 213th. During his second term in 1999-2000, Gibbons missed just 10 votes, earned a 99 percent attendance rate and tied for 35th place among his peers. Records were not immediately available for his first term, 1997-98.
Congressional scholars say absenteeism has been an issue ever since the congressional record began being published at the turn of the last century.
Western members of Congress have long complained of their disadvantage at having to travel so far back to their districts, which gave rise to the three-day Washington work week with most votes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
John Haskell, a senior fellow at Georgetown Government Affairs Institute, said voters will cut some slack for missed votes. But once a candidate is under attack for absences, there's little chance of winning in the realm of public opinion.
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