What in the heck is going on with North Carolina’s new 9th District congressman, Dan Bishop? After spending vast sums of money to win a September special election, Bishop has been acting as if he has yet to find a reliable commuting route to the Capitol Building.
As we pointed out last week, Bishop was AWOL for one of the most important early votes since he took office — a bipartisan resolution condemning President Trump’s disastrous withdrawal from Syria — but, as it turns out, that was just one of many votes he’s missed.
This is from a post on the watchdog website GovTrack:
From Sep 2019 to Oct 2019, Bishop missed 26 of 78 roll call votes, which is 33.3%. This is much worse than the median of 2.1% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving.
It appears that Bishop missed more votes in October than any other member. While GovTrack goes on to point out that it doesn’t chart why members miss votes and that absences are often due to medical issues and other major life events, you’d think that Bishop could, at the least, either: (a) tell his constituents if he or another family member is ill and he is unable to do his job, or (b) hold off on any big life event celebrations or trips until he’s been in Congress for a while.
The bottom line: After being unrepresented for several months, it appears the people of the 9th District may still lack a consistent and reliable voice in Washington.
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