James E. Clyburn (D-SC6), a House member since 1993 and former Majority Whip, has a relatively clean self-dealing profile by available public records. He is not a notable individual-stock trader; trackers and disclosures show modest holdings concentrated in real estate, book income, and funds rather than active securities trading, and his estimated net worth (roughly $2-3M) is consistent with a long tenure including leadership stipends and authored books rather than anomalous enrichment. As a senior appropriator and leadership figure he raises substantial PAC money and runs a leadership PAC (BRIDGE PAC), creating standard influence-of-money correlations but no documented quid pro quo or personal-use scandal. His daughter Mignon Clyburn's post-FCC telecom lobbying is a revolving-door data point but stems from her own regulatory career, not a contract or lobbying tie to his House office; his vote-attendance and fundraising profile show no red flags.
Public record
In Congress since
1993
Committees
Appropriations
Missed votes, 119th Congress
1.3% (9 of 674; median member 1.9%)
Campaign money, 2025–26 cycle
$1.2M raised · 59% from PACs & committees · $1.6M cash on hand FEC ↗
The stock-trading ban
H.R. 7008 passage, Jul 22, 2026
No
Cosponsored a ban bill
None
H.R. 7008 bans new stock purchases by members, spouses and dependents; it doesn't force sales of existing holdings. The Senate vote was on the version paired with the SAVE Act, which is why no Democrat voted yes. Full breakdown →
Disclosed stock trades
No periodic transaction reports on file since 2024. That's the norm: most members don't trade individual stocks, or hold them in blind trusts and diversified funds.
Amounts are the ranges members must report, not exact values. The STOCK Act requires a report within 45 days of a trade; "late" counts days past that deadline, measured to the filing date.
How the score breaks down
Stock self-trading
25% weight
8
No evidence Clyburn is an active individual-stock trader. Trackers list only modest tracked holdings (~$233K) with no populated buy/sell transaction history; reporting describes his finances as dominated by real estate, book royalties, and funds rather than securities trading. No committee-sector-overlap or timing concerns identified.
Net worth rose from roughly $189K (2017 OpenSecrets estimate) to an estimated $2-3M, but the gain is plausibly explained by leadership pay, real-estate appreciation, and multiple published books (a memoir and others) rather than office-derived enrichment beyond salary/market. Disclosure ranges are wide and no specific anomaly is documented.
Money → action alignmentcorrelation, not proof of any quid-pro-quo
20% weight
30
Correlation, not proof. As a senior appropriator and former Whip, Clyburn raises substantial PAC and lobbyist money and runs BRIDGE PAC, giving industry donors routine access. OpenSecrets documents PAC/lobbyist contributions, but no documented vote-for-money quid pro quo exists; influence here is the structural norm for a senior leader, not evidence of specific self-dealing.
No documented FEC complaint or reporting alleging personal use of campaign or leadership-PAC funds by Clyburn. General reporting notes the FEC broadly under-enforces leadership-PAC personal-use rules, but no specific Clyburn finding exists.
His daughter Mignon Clyburn lobbies/consults for telecom (e.g., T-Mobile-Sprint merger) via her firm after FCC service, a revolving-door data point. However, this derives from her own regulatory career, not a contract or lobbying engagement tied to her father's House office; no documented staff-to-lobbyist pipeline exploiting his office was found.
Clyburn missed 3.5% of roll-call votes from 1993-2026 (739 of 20,916), modestly above the ~2.1% median for sitting members, with some absences attributed to family caregiving/bereavement. He fundraises actively as a leader, but the missed-vote rate is not extreme and shows no pattern of skipping votes for paid events.
Sources behind this score: 1 data aggregator · 2 news reporting · 5 reference database. Score = weighted average of the components that have data; the 1 without sourced evidence are excluded, never counted against the member. Methodology →
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