The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is US representative and Florida gubenatorial candidate Jim Davis. He gets the award for absolutely dreadful attendance record for congressional votes. Guess where he ranks out of 435 men and women?

Since he began running for governor 16 months ago, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Davis of Tampa has racked up the second-worst voting record in Congress.

Only one of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives has cast fewer votes than Davis: Lane Evans of Illinois, whose Parkinson's disease is forcing him to step down at the end of his term. Even Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, who has checked into drug rehabilitation twice since Christmas, has participated in more votes than Davis.

A vote database compiled by washingtonpost.com shows that Davis has missed 168 votes, or 18.8 percent, since the 109th Congress took office in January 2005. Among them were contentious votes on the federal budget and mundane votes on renaming government buildings.

Davis' presence would not have changed the outcome in any of the votes, a point he uses in his defense.

''I will be in Washington when I need to be there, particularly for a vote whose outcome is uncertain,'' Davis said in a telephone interview Tuesday from Washington. ``I have not missed any votes of that kind, nor do I intend to.''

Davis asked the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce to reschedule a debate that conflicted with Tuesday's vote on homeland security funding. He faces Democratic state Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua in the Sept. 5 primary.

Before Davis began running for governor in February 2005, his campaign says, he missed an average of only 3 percent of the votes each year since taking office in 1997.

The congressman's attendance record surfaced earlier this year when he skipped a vote in Congress reauthorizing the Patriot Act to go to Gov. Jeb Bush's State of the State speech in Tallahassee. Last week, after Davis criticized Bush's chief healthcare regulator, the governor retorted: ``He's on very very thin ice as a politician elected to go serve in Washington and misses vote after vote after vote so he can pursue his personal ambitions.''

Davis' record is both disgraceful and inexcusible. I know alot of votes are procedural but to get to the rank of 434th in attendance it is much more. Davis wants to be our governor when he takes his duties this lightly? For failing his constituents and citizens of the state of Florida, Jim Davis is today's knucklehead of the day.

Note- I've now given two knuckleheads to Florida's four major gubenatorial candidates. Republican Tom Gallagher got the other one. See I'm bi-partisan in these awards.

Open Post- Jo's Cafe, Bright & Early, Cao's Blog, Mudville Gazette, TMH's Bacon Bits,
Cross posted to- Bullwinkle Blog