Sen. Ted Budd
Senator for North Carolina
pronounced ted // bud
Budd is the junior senator from North Carolina and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 3, 2023. Budd is next up for reelection in 2028 and serves until Jan 3, 2029. He is 53 years old.
He was previously the representative for North Carolina’s 13th congressional district as a Republican from 2017 to 2022.
![Photo of Sen. Ted Budd [R-NC]](/https/www.govtrack.us/static/legislator-photos/412712-200px.jpeg)
Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his advisors and associates, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided by themselves rather than by voters through their attempts to suppress state-certified election results at both the state and national level.
Budd was among the Republican legislators who participated in this. Shortly after the election, Budd joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election. In the case, Republicans proffered lies and a novel legal theory which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.) Budd was a part of a coordinated campaign with the Trump Administration spreading conspiracy theories about the election. On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Budd voted to omit Arizona and/or Pennsylvania from the counting of presidential electors, which could have altered the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor.
In 2023, Trump associates and top advisors pleaded guilty to submitting a fraudulent slate of electors to Congress from Georgia, making false statements about purported widespread fraud in the election, and tampering with voting machines after the election, admitted in civil court to posing as fake electors in Wisconsin, and were convicted of contempt of Congress for withholding documents during its investigation and assaulting police officers at the Capitol. Trump associates and top advisors are also facing charges for submitting fraudulent slates of electors to Congress (in Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Wisconsin) and Trump himself faces related criminal charges in state court. (He was also convicted in 2024 of falsifying business records to cover up acts that he believed might have hurt him in the 2016 election.) The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups one member of which was convicted of sedition, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors.
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Budd is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the Senate positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills legislators have sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Nov 21, 2024. See full analysis methodology.
Committee Membership
Ted Budd sits on the following committees:
Enacted Legislation
Budd was the primary sponsor of 2 bills that were enacted:
- H.R. 2720 (117th): Make PPE in America Act
- H.R. 8202 (116th): To designate the airport traffic control tower located at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina, as the “Senator Kay Hagan Airport Traffic Control Tower”.
Does 2 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.
We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Budd sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Finance and Financial Sector (23%) Government Operations and Politics (22%) Health (13%) Labor and Employment (12%) Taxation (10%) International Affairs (8%) Crime and Law Enforcement (6%) Transportation and Public Works (6%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Budd recently introduced the following legislation:
- S. 5103: Food and Drug Administration Foods Accountability Act
- S. 4831: Families Care Act
- S. 4808: Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act
- S. 4670: Employer-Directed Skills Act
- S. 4570: Secure Payments Act of 2024
- S. 4526: Workforce Development Modernization Act
- S.J.Res. 79: A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, …
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Feb 2023 to Nov 2024, Budd missed 19 of 644 roll call votes, which is 3.0%. This is on par with the median of 3.0% among the lifetime records of senators currently serving. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- Office of Ted Budd for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
