cg_legislators: Search for legislators.

Description

Search for legislators.

Usage

cg_legislators(title = NULL, first_name = NULL, middle_name = NULL,
  last_name = NULL, name_suffix = NULL, nickname = NULL, party = NULL,
  state = NULL, state_name = NULL, state_rank = NULL, district = NULL,
  in_office = NULL, chamber = NULL, gender = NULL, phone = NULL,
  fax = NULL, office = NULL, website = NULL, contact_form = NULL,
  email = NULL, congress_office = NULL, bioguide_id = NULL,
  ocd_id = NULL, thomas_id = NULL, lis_id = NULL, crp_id = NULL,
  icpsr_id = NULL, votesmart_id = NULL, fec_ids = NULL,
  govtrack_id = NULL, congresspedia_url = NULL, twitter_id = NULL,
  youtube_id = NULL, facebook_id = NULL, senate_class = NULL,
  term_start = NULL, term_end = NULL, birthday = NULL, latitude = NULL,
  longitude = NULL, zip = NULL, query = NULL, fields = NULL, page = 1,
  per_page = 20, order = NULL, key = NULL, as = "table", ...)

Arguments

title

Title held by this legislator, either Sen or Rep

first_name

Legislator's first name

middle_name

Legislator's middle name or initial

last_name

Legislator's last name

name_suffix

Legislator's suffix (Jr., III, etc.)

nickname

Preferred nickname of legislator (if any)

party

Legislator's political party (D, I, or R)

state

two letter abbreviation of legislator's state

state_name

The full state name of the state this member represents.

state_rank

(Senate only) The seniority of that Senator for that state. "junior" or "senior".

district

If legislator is a representative, their district. 0 is used for At-Large districts

in_office

1 if legislator is currently serving, 0 if legislator is no longer in office due to defeat/resignation/death/etc.

chamber

Chamber the member is in. One of "senate" or "house".

gender

M or F

phone

Congressional office phone number

fax

Congressional office fax number

office

Office number for the member's DC office.

website

URL of Congressional website

contact_form

URL of web contact form

Legislator's email address (if known)

congress_office

Legislator's Washington DC Office Address

bioguide_id

Legislator ID assigned by http://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp Congressional Biographical Directory (also used by Washington Post/NY Times)

ocd_id

Identifier for this member across all countries and levels of government, as defined by the Open Civic Data project.

thomas_id

Identifier for this member as it appears on THOMAS.gov and Congress.gov.

lis_id

Identifier for this member as it appears on some of Congress' data systems (namely Senate votes).

crp_id

Identifier for this member as it appears on Center for Responsive Politics OpenSecrets (http://opensecrets.org)

icpsr_id

Identifier for this member as it is maintained by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

votesmart_id

Legislator ID assigned by http://votesmart.org Project Vote Smart

fec_ids

http://fec.gov Federal Election Commission ID

govtrack_id

ID assigned by http://govtrack.us Govtrack.us

congresspedia_url

URL of Legislator's entry on http://congresspedia.org Congresspedia

twitter_id

The Twitter username for a member's official legislative account. This field does not contain the handles of campaign accounts.

youtube_id

The YouTube username or channel for a member's official legislative account. This field does not contain the handles of campaign accounts. A few legislators use YouTube "channels" instead of regular accounts. These channels will be of the form channel/[id

facebook_id

The Facebook username or ID for a member's official legislative Facebook presence. ID numbers and usernames can be used interchangeably in Facebook's URLs and APIs. The referenced account may be either a Facebook Page or a user account.

senate_class

for senators I, II, or III depending on the Senator's election term

term_start

The date a member's current term started.

term_end

The date a member's current term will end.

birthday

YYYY-MM-DD formatted birth date

latitude

latitude of coordinate

longitude

longitude of coordinate

zip

zip code to search

query

(character) Return results the API thinks best match your query. Queries are interpreted as phrases.

fields

You can request specific fields by supplying a vector of fields names. Many fields are not returned unless requested. If you don't supply a fields parameter, you will get the most commonly used subset of fields only. To save on bandwidth, parsing time, an

page

Page to return. Default: 1. You can use this in combination with the per_page parameter to get more than the default or max number of results per page.

per_page

Number of records to return. Default: 20. Max: 50.

order

Sort results by one or more fields with the order parameter. order is optional, but if no order is provided, the order of results is not guaranteed to be predictable. Append __asc or __desc to the field names to control sort dire

key

your SunlightLabs API key; loads from environment variable from .Renviron or from an option from .Rprofile

(character) One of table (default), list, or response (httr response object). When table is requested, the default, a table is not always returned, but is returned almost always. You can then make a table yourself if you like.

...

Optional additional curl options (debugging tools mostly). See examples.

Value

List of output fields.

Details

Currently the Sunlight Labs API provides two methods for obtaining information about legislators: sll_cg_getlegislator and sll_cg_getlegislatorlist. Both of these methods operate in essentially the same way, the main difference being that sll_cg_getlegislator returns a single legislator (or an error if the query would have resulted in multiple legislators) and sll_cg_getlegislatorlist returns a list of legislators (a list of size one is allowed). In other words, sll_cg_getlegislator is purely a convenience method to avoid dealing with a list of values when only one value is needed.

All social media account values can be turned into URLs by preceding them with the domain name of the service in question:

http://twitter.com/[username]
http://youtube.com/[username or channel ID]
http://facebook.com/[username or ID]

Note about zip codes from Sunlight Foundation (a direct quote): "A zip code may intersect multiple Congressional districts, so locating by zip may return multiple representatives, and possibly more than 2 senators if the zip code crosses state borders. In general, we recommend against using zip codes to look up members of Congress. For one, it's imprecise: a zip code can intersect multiple congressional districts. More importantly, zip codes are not shapes. They are lines (delivery routes), and treating them as shapes leads to inaccuracies."

Examples

Run this code

cg_legislators(last_name = 'Pelosi')
cg_legislators(party = 'D')
cg_legislators(facebook_id = 'mitchmcconnell')
cg_legislators(latitude = 35.778788, longitude = -78.787805)
cg_legislators(zip = 77006)

# Output a list
cg_legislators(last_name = 'Pelosi', as='list')
# Output an httr response object, for debugging purposes
cg_legislators(last_name = 'Pelosi', as='response')

# Pagination
cg_legislators(party = 'D', per_page=2)

# Curl debugging
library('httr')
cg_legislators(party = 'D', config=verbose())
cg_legislators(party = 'D', config=timeout(0.1))

# most parameters are vectorized, pass in more than one value
cg_legislators(party = c('D', 'R'))

Run the code above in your browser using DataLab