Rep. John Rutherford
Representative for Florida’s 5th District
pronounced jon // RUH-ther-ferd
Rutherford is the representative for Florida’s 5th congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 3, 2023. Rutherford is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 71 years old.
He was previously the representative for Florida’s 4th congressional district as a Republican from 2017 to 2022.
![Photo of Rep. John Rutherford [R-FL5]](/static/legislator-photos/412692-200px.jpeg)
Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his senior government advisors, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided by themselves rather than by voters. Their attempts to suppress state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and by using lies and fraudulent documents was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.
Rutherford was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, Rutherford 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.) On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Rutherford 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.
The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors. In 2023 and 2024, Trump advisors and associates were charged and in some cases convicted of submitting fraudulent slates of electors to Congress (in AZ, NV, and AZ), abetting lies, assaulting police officers at the Capitol, tampering with voting machines after the election, and contempt of Congress for withholding documents during its investigation, and Trump faces criminal charges for soliciting the Vice President to subvert Congress’s certification of the election, his role in the fraudulent slates of electors, and the insurrection at the Capitol.
Earmarks
Rutherford proposed $13 million in earmarks for fiscal year 2024, including:
- $4 million to St. Johns County for “State Road 16 to North-South Corridor Initiative”
- $3.0 million to Jacksonville Transportation Authority for “Jacksonville Transportation Authority University Boulevard Complete Streets Project”
- $3.0 million to Jacksonville Transportation Authority for “Jacksonville Transportation Authority Park-N-Ride and Hub Improvements Project”
View all requests and justifications on Rutherford’s website »
View analysis and download spreadsheet from Demand Progress Education Fund »
These are earmark requests which may or may not survive the legislative process to becoming law. Most representatives from both parties requested earmarks for fiscal year 2024. Across representatives who requested earmarks, the median total amount requested for this fiscal year was $39 million.
Earmarks are federal expenditures, tax benefits, or tariff benefits requested by a legislator for a specific entity. Rather than being distributed through a formula or competitive process administered by the executive branch, earmarks may direct spending where it is most needed for the legislator's district. All earmark requests in the House of Representatives are published online for the public to review. We don’t have earmark requests for senators. The fiscal year begins on October 1 of the prior calendar year. Source: Appropriations.house.gov. Background: Earmark Disclosure Rules in the House
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Rutherford is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the House of Representatives 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 Rutherford has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to May 6, 2024. See full analysis methodology.
Committee Membership
John Rutherford sits on the following committees:
Enacted Legislation
Rutherford was the primary sponsor of 3 bills that were enacted:
- H.R. 2948 (116th): To designate the Department of Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinic in St. Augustine, Florida, as the “Leo C. Chase Jr. Department of Veterans Affairs Clinic”.
- H.R. 1599 (116th): Veterans Armed for Success Act
- H.R. 4132 (115th): Veterans Affairs Physician Recruitment Act of 2017
Does 3 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
Rutherford sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Crime and Law Enforcement (26%) Armed Forces and National Security (26%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (21%) Energy (16%) Housing and Community Development (11%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Rutherford recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.R. 6955: Investing in Uniformed Division Leadership Act
- H.R. 6613: PLAN for School Safety Act of 2023
- H.R. 6212: PROTECT Florida Act
- H.R. 4587: Red Snapper Act
- H.R. 3458: Reinstate Our Troops Act
- H.R. 3170: HELPER Act of 2023
- H.R. 2620: Federal Firearms Licensee Protection Act of 2023
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2017 to May 2024, Rutherford missed 165 of 4,063 roll call votes, which is 4.1%. This is much worse than the median of 2.0% among the lifetime records of representatives 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 John Rutherford for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
