@PatriciaMazzei
No U.S. senator has missed more votes than Florida Republican Marco Rubio, according to a new analysis.
The analysis, by Vocativ using data from GovTrack.us, found Rubio has missed 99 of 1,198 votes -- an absentee rate of about 8.3 percent. For some context, the second-place finisher was Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, who missed 96 votes -- about 8 percent.
A similar analysis for House members did not include any members of the Florida delegation among the top 10 representatives who have missed votes.
Rubio, who has a wife and four children in West Miami, and whose mother has been ill, notably missed a vote last month to pass the Keystone XL pipeline because he was fundraising in California. He was the only GOP senator to miss that vote (though it ultimately didn't affect the bill's passage). His spokesman said at the time that it was not unusual for senators to miss votes. Unsaid: particularly when they're mulling a presidential run.
His office released this statement Wednesday:
Senator Rubio takes his responsibilities as both a senator and a father seriously. The vast majority of missed votes are when the latter duties take precedent, and he needs to be in Miami for family commitments. He is one of the only senators with young children who has not moved his family to D.C., and tries to spend as much time in Florida with them as possible. In addition to his parental responsibilities, in recent years he's also had to return to Florida and miss votes due to his mother's health and civic responsibilities like jury duty. Normally when he misses votes, his vote would not have been decisive, but in those instances he tries to submit statements for the record or write a blog post explaining how he would have voted.
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