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Rep. Robert Latta

Representative for Ohio’s 5th District

pronounced RAH-bert // LA-tuh

Latta is the representative for Ohio’s 5th congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Dec 13, 2007. Latta is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 68 years old.

Photo of Rep. Robert Latta [R-OH5]
Elections must be decided by counting votes

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.

Latta was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, Latta 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.)
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

Latta proposed $35 million in earmarks for fiscal year 2024, including:

  • $7 million to Lorain County Commissioners for “Baumhart Road Sewer Infrastructure and Side Readiness Support Project”
  • $7 million to City of Lorain for “Lorain Waterfront Revitalization”
  • $3.3 million to Village of Grafton for “Beacon Park Easterly Sewer Connector and System Project”

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

Latta 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 Latta has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to May 10, 2024. See full analysis methodology.

Committee Membership

Robert Latta sits on the following committees:

Enacted Legislation

Latta was the primary sponsor of 15 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

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Does 15 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

Latta sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Energy (25%) Health (23%) Science, Technology, Communications (20%) Armed Forces and National Security (11%) Crime and Law Enforcement (7%) Taxation (7%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (4%) Commerce (4%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Latta recently introduced the following legislation:

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

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Voting Record

Key Votes

Latta voted Yea

Passed 254/175 on Jul 27, 2022.

Latta voted Yea

Latta voted Nay

Latta voted Aye

Latta voted Nay

Latta voted Aye

Passed 304/117 on Jun 23, 2011.
The Leahy–Smith America Invents Act (AIA) is a United States federal statute that was passed by Congress and was signed into law by President Barack …

Latta voted Yea

Passed 310/106 on Oct 22, 2009.

Latta voted Nay

Missed Votes

From Dec 2007 to May 2024, Latta missed 39 of 10,586 roll call votes, which is 0.4%. This is better 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.

Show the numbers...

Primary Sources

The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including: