March 29, 2008 04:00 PM UTC

Congress Bored Mercurial Schaffer?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Rocky Mountain News reports:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer didn’t win any gold stars for perfect attendance during his last year in Congress.

In 2002, when Schaffer’s self-imposed, six-year term limit was running out, he missed about one in every eight votes, starting with the first “quorum call” of the year.

Schaffer’s 13 percent absentee rate that year was more than two times his career average – about 5 percent…

Most of the votes were lopsided or unanimous. But there were weighty matters mixed in with the symbolic or procedural measures.

Among others, Schaffer missed final votes on legislation promoting peace in war-torn Sudan, a vote to make payments to the families of fallen soldiers exempt from taxes, an amendment to block some oil drilling off the coast of California and legislation that sought to replace the Immigration and Naturalization Service with a new agency.

The article goes on to point out that opponent Mark Udall has missed a number of votes this session, but that’s understandable since he’s running for Senate. Schaffer had no such excuse as a lame-duck congressman.

It’s common knowledge that as Schaffer’s self-imposed term limit approached in 2002, he was a little depressed about it. These missed votes are certainly a reflection of that, but also maybe an indicator of his how he deals with less-than-ideal situations generally: by mentally clocking out?