Loretta Sanchez has one of the worst voting records in the House | McClatchy Washington Bureau

California Rep. Loretta Sanchez has nearly the worst attendance record in the U.S. House of Representatives as she campaigns to replace Barbara Boxer in the Senate – missing more than 44 percent of the votes since July.

Sanchez, a Democrat, has missed more votes than all but two of the 431 other serving members of the House over the past three months, according to data from GovTrack, which tracks votes of every member of Congress. One of the two members who missed more, Texas Rep. Ted Poe, has leukemia.

Sanchez has been spending more time in California and less in Congress as she campaigns for the Senate. That is typical for lawmakers who are running for higher office and it’s not uncommon to miss votes while campaigning, particularly when a House member is trying to move up into the Senate.

Sanchez, though, has missed more votes since July than any of the other House members who are running for the Senate. She has missed 96 of 216 roll call votes in the House since July, the GovTrack data shows, a 44 percent absentee rate.

Other than Poe – who announced his cancer diagnosis in July – the only member of the House to miss more votes in the past three months is Florida Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings, who missed 138 of the 216 votes.

Sanchez faces fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, California’s attorney general, in November in the runoff to replace the retiring Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate.

The Sanchez campaign said that during her 20 years in Congress Sanchez has cast important votes such as opposing the invasion of Iraq, opposing the Patriot Act and voting to end the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy on gays.

“While campaigning for the U.S. Senate, Loretta Sanchez has spent more time in California. . . . Loretta has delivered for the people of California, including securing critical funding for California infrastructure, water and transportation projects worth billions of dollars that have created countless jobs,” said Sanchez spokesman Luis Vizcaino.

Sanchez is trailing in the polls and Vizcaino said “news organizations that write Loretta is not campaigning enough, now write she is campaigning too much.”

Sanchez has missed nearly 8 percent of House votes over her entire congressional career, GovTrack figures show, compared with a median 2.4 percent of missed votes for her congressional colleagues.

Among the other House members now running for Senate are Reps. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who has missed 15 percent of the votes since July; Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., who’s missed 13 percent; and Charles Boustany, R-La., who’s missed 6 percent.

Some House members running for the Senate have missed few or no votes since July. Those include Rep. John Fleming, R-La., who missed just two votes during that time, and Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Fla., who hasn’t missed any.

Murphy is running for the Senate against incumbent Marco Rubio, who faced severe criticism for the number of votes he missed while campaigning for president.

Rubio is an example of the risk that candidates such as Sanchez face when missing votes while on the campaign trail, said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.

“A candidate has to be able to offer a very compelling and easy-to-understand defense on something like this. Otherwise it’s the type of thing that voters really take to heart,” Schnur said.