Policy discussion
The text of this post is on X; follow the source link to read it.
Oct 26, 2026 · Posts on X (state legislators) · policy discussion; Transportation and Public Works · Source
$1.3M
in itemized contributions in the 2026 cycle, in the top 5% of State House Democrats
The median for State House Democrats is $40.4K. Ranks 32nd of 2,082, where 1st raised the most. 278 itemized donors.
Itemized contributions reported to the state in the 2026 cycle, ranked among State House Democrats. State filings leave small gifts out, and totals depend on whether the seat is up this cycle.
At a glance
6 measures against State House Democrats. 18% of the 49 bills Coughlin sponsored got out of committee, in the top 5% of the New Jersey House. 34% of Coughlin’s statements claim credit, 2.3 times the State House Democrat average of 14%.
The measures on which Coughlin sits furthest from the middle of State House Democrats, each against the same group, with the CSIP score when there is one. Every number is explained in its own section below.
Itemized, 2026
$1.3M
State House Democrats’ median $40.4K · ranks 32nd of 2,082
Out of committee
18%
New Jersey House average 7.2% · ranks 3rd of 80
Credit claiming
34%
State House Democrats average 14% · ranks 57th of 764
Policy discussion
63%
State House Democrats average 39% · ranks 84th of 764
Talk-to-bills agreement
0.64
State House Democrats average 0.54 · ranks 101st of 503
CSIP ideology
−0.71
Left of 0, the centre of the scale · ± 0.06
Peer group: State House Democrats. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; the thick bar is Coughlin, the thin grey bar the peer average. The headline is the measure on which Coughlin is most unusual among peers (Methods, §08).
What Coughlin says
Coughlin attacks opponents personally about as often as the median State House Democrat. Personal attacks in 0.3% of 294 statements, against 2.5% for the average State House Democrat; 383rd of 764.
An AI model reads each of Coughlin’s 294 statements in the NJ 2026–27 session (294 posts on X) and marks the kinds of statement it contains: a personal attack, criticism of a policy, discussion of policy, bipartisanship, credit claiming, and extreme labels. A statement can carry several. Every rate is compared with the average for State House Democrats and ranked among them.
Kinds of statement
Share of statements carrying each label, the NJ 2026–27 session
0%80%
Coughlin
Peers
Rank
Policy discussion185 statements
63%
39%
84th of 764
Credit claiming99 statements
34%
14%
57th of 764
Policy criticism20 statements
7%
10%
421st of 764
Bipartisanship8 statements
3%
3%
282nd of 764
Personal attacks1 statements
0%
3%
383rd of 764
Show the data
| Row | Coughlin | Peers |
|---|---|---|
| Policy discussion | 63% | 39% |
| Credit claiming | 34% | 14% |
| Policy criticism | 7% | 10% |
| Bipartisanship | 3% | 3% |
| Personal attacks | 0% | 3% |
294
statements classified
294 posts on X.
Show the data
| Part | Value |
|---|---|
| posts on X | 294 |
How to read the bars
The thick bar is Coughlin; the thin grey bar is the average State House Democrats. A longer thick bar means Coughlin does this more than peers. Rank 1 is the highest rate in the group.
Extreme labels
Coughlin used no extreme labels in 294 statements. The peer average is 1.0%.
No extreme labels in this window.
Who gets the labels
Targets named alongside an extreme label, by number of statements
No targets recorded.
What an extreme label is
Calls a politician, a party or a policy “far left”, “far right”, “MAGA”, “extreme”, “radical”, “woke”, “fascist” or “communist”. The target is who or what the label was aimed at. The lists show the five most used labels and targets; the toggle shows the rest.
Month by month
Share of statements per month, the NJ 2026–27 session
Show the data
| Column | Statements | Personal attacks | Policy criticism | Policy discussion | Bipartisanship | Credit claiming | Extreme labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan ’26 | 16 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 62.5% | 0.0% | 31.3% | 0.0% |
| Feb ’26 | 24 | 0.0% | 25.0% | 45.8% | 8.3% | 16.7% | 0.0% |
| Mar ’26 | 16 | 0.0% | 6.3% | 43.8% | 12.5% | 18.8% | 0.0% |
| Apr ’26 | 19 | 0.0% | 5.3% | 79.0% | 0.0% | 36.8% | 0.0% |
| May ’26 | 37 | 2.7% | 5.4% | 64.9% | 2.7% | 18.9% | 0.0% |
| Jun ’26 | 78 | 0.0% | 11.5% | 56.4% | 2.6% | 38.5% | 0.0% |
| Jul ’26 | 59 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 67.8% | 1.7% | 42.4% | 0.0% |
| Aug ’26 | 12 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 91.7% | 0.0% | 75.0% | 0.0% |
| Sep ’26 | 16 | 0.0% | 6.3% | 56.3% | 0.0% | 18.8% | 0.0% |
| Oct ’26 | 17 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 82.3% | 0.0% | 35.3% | 0.0% |
How to read the strips
Each row is one kind of statement; each cell is a month, shaded against that row’s own peak (darker = closer to the peak), with the peak and the latest value written at the right. The top row counts statements. The strip covers every month of the NJ 2026–27 session, the same span as the rates above, including months with no statements. A month with fewer than 10 statements is hatched, not shaded: one or two posts would swing its rate to 0% or 100%.
In Coughlin’s words
Real statements from the classifier’s example set, with the labels it assigned
Credit claiming
The text of this post is on X; follow the source link to read it.
Oct 26, 2026 · Posts on X (state legislators) · policy discussion; credit claiming; Transportation and Public Works · Source
Personal attacks
The text of this post is on X; follow the source link to read it.
May 5, 2026 · Posts on X (state legislators) · personal attacks; policy discussion; Economics and Public Finance; Government Operations and Politics; target: Donald Trump · Source
Examples by category
Up to five recent statements in each category
Overtly questions a named person’s character, integrity or loyalty, or calls them names. Criticising a record or a policy does not count.
Posts on X (state legislators)
The text of this post is on X; follow the source link to read it.
personal attacks · policy discussion · Economics and Public Finance · Government Operations and Politics · target: Donald TrumpSource
All 294 statements
Newest first, the NJ 2026–27 session
The full feed
Five statements at a time, newest first; filters apply to the statements loaded so far. Export saves the statements that match. Sources: 294 posts on X.
Policy
Agriculture and Food is what Coughlin talks about most: 25% of policy statements, 5.5 times the peer share. Talk and legislation agree at 0.64 on a 0–1 scale (State House Democrats average 0.54; 101st of 503).
Each policy statement is tagged by the AI model with one or more of 25 policy areas from the Congressional Research Service list, so the shares say what Coughlin talks about. The bills Coughlin sponsors and cosponsors carry the same areas, so the two can be compared.
What Coughlin talks about
Share of policy statements by area, the NJ 2026–27 session
0%35%
Coughlin
Peers
Agriculture and Food47 statements
25%
5%
Economics and Public Finance28 statements
15%
11%
Housing and Community Development25 statements
14%
6%
Labor and Employment22 statements
12%
6%
Education21 statements
11%
15%
Show the data
| Row | Coughlin | Peers |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture and Food | 25% | 5% |
| Economics and Public Finance | 15% | 11% |
| Housing and Community Development | 14% | 6% |
| Labor and Employment | 12% | 6% |
| Education | 11% | 15% |
How to read the bars
The thick bar is the share of Coughlin’s policy statements in an area; the thin grey bar is the average share for State House Democrats. A statement counts once in each of its areas, so shares can add to more than 100%. The five largest areas are shown; the toggle shows the rest.
Talks about · legislates on
Left: share of statements by policy area. Right: share of bills. Areas in order of their share of statements; both sides run from 0 to 35%. Grey ticks are the State House Democrats averages.
Show the data
| Area | Talks about | State House Democrats, talks about | Legislates on | State House Democrats, legislates on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture and Food | 25% | 5% | 10% | 3% |
| Economics and Public Finance | 15% | 11% | 7% | 2% |
| Housing and Community Development | 14% | 6% | 4% | 5% |
| Labor and Employment | 12% | 6% | 7% | 6% |
| Education | 11% | 15% | 11% | 10% |
0.64
talk-to-bills agreement, 0 to 1
State House Democrats average 0.54. Ranks 101st of 503.
What agreement means, and what it doesn’t
Agreement is 1 minus the distance between the two distributions (Jensen–Shannon): 1 means Coughlin legislates on exactly the areas Coughlin talks about, in the same proportions; 0 means no overlap. It does not say whether the bills match the positions in the statements, only the subjects. Bills Coughlin sponsored count fully, cosponsored bills a quarter. Shown with at least 20 policy statements and 5 bills.
Ideology
Coughlin sits at −0.71 on the CSIP scale, left of 0, more liberal than 64% of State House Democrats. Approximate range −0.77 to −0.65, which understates the uncertainty; from 629 donors and 986 roll calls.
CSIP, the lab’s Common-Space Ideal Point, places every official, federal and state, on one left–right scale, estimated from roll-call votes, who gives money to whom, and the text of statements. Negative is left of 0, positive right of it; 0 is the centre of the scale, not a definition of “moderate”.
−0.71
CSIP ideal point
Approximate range −0.77 to −0.65. From 629 donors and 986 roll calls. Run 2026-10-25T215945. Blue is left of 0, red right of 0.
The outlined dot is Coughlin, coloured by its side of 0 (blue left, red right, deeper further out); the bar through it is the approximate range (±1.96 standard errors), which understates the uncertainty; the grey ticks below are the medians of Coughlin’s groups. 0 is the centre of the scale, not “moderate” by definition.
What this means, and what it doesn’t
The score summarises how an official votes, who funds them and how they talk, relative to everyone else. It does not grade positions as good or bad, and two officials with the same score can differ on any single issue. The ± range is 1.96 standard errors, which understates the uncertainty: scores whose ranges overlap may not differ at all, and even scores whose ranges do not overlap may not differ.
Where Coughlin sits
Every official in each group, on the CSIP scale
State House Democrats2,392 · median −0.6
New Jersey House80 · median −0.6
All State House5,324 · median +0.1
Show the data
| Group | Officials | Median | Share left of Coughlin |
|---|---|---|---|
| State House Democrats | 2392 | −0.6 | 36% |
| New Jersey House | 80 | −0.6 | 10% |
| All State House | 5324 | +0.1 | 16% |
How to read the strips
Every small dot is one official on the same scale, coloured by its own score (blue left of 0, red right of 0, grey at 0, deeper further out) and spread up and down only to keep dots apart; where a group is crowded the dots overlap, and darker patches mean more officials. The large outlined dot is Coughlin in every row; the rule is each group’s median. The table under the figure gives the share of each group to the left of Coughlin.
Money
Coughlin reported $1.3M in the 2026 cycle, 31.8 times the State House Democrats’ median of $40.4K. State filings report no small-donation total. 79% of itemized individual money came from New Jersey.
Campaign money from state campaign-finance filings, as aggregates only; the lab never shows an individual donor. Campaigns must report by name every person who gives them more than $200 in a cycle (“itemized”); smaller gifts are reported only as one total (“unitemized”), so donor counts, donor states, employers and occupations describe itemized donors only. State filings report no small-gift total, so these figures add up itemized contributions only.
$1.3M
itemized in the 2026 cycle
From 278 itemized donors. State House Democrats’ median $40.4K.
Where the money came from
Each square is one percent of itemized contributions in the 2026 cycle.
- Individuals (itemized)28 squares$362.5K
- PACs and other committees71 squares$905.8K
- Party committees1 squares$18.0K
Show the data
| Source | Amount | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Individuals (itemized) | $362.5K | 28.2% |
| PACs and other committees | $905.8K | 70.4% |
| Party committees | $18.0K | 1.4% |
What this means, and what it doesn’t
Totals say how much a campaign took in, not how it was spent, and they rise sharply when a seat is up for election; compare cycles with that in mind.
Receipts by cycle
Itemized contributions, 2020 to 2026. The grey line is the State House Democrats’ median for 2026.
Show the data
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2020 cycle | $720.6K |
| 2022 cycle | $892.4K |
| 2024 cycle | $1.3M |
| 2026 cycle | $1.3M |
Top donor states, 2026
Itemized contributions by donor state. 79% came from New Jersey.
- New Jersey$286.8K
- New York$27.9K
- Pennsylvania$16.8K
- California$11.0K
- Maryland$5,000
Small donations
State filings report no total for small gifts.
Not reported in state filings.
Where itemized donors live
Individuals who gave more than $200, by donor state
Show the data
| State | Value |
|---|---|
| New Jersey | $286.8K |
| New York | $27.9K |
| Pennsylvania | $16.8K |
| California | $11.0K |
| Maryland | $5,000 |
| Massachusetts | $3,500 |
| Illinois | $3,000 |
| Michigan | $2,500 |
| Connecticut | $1,800 |
| Kentucky | $1,500 |
| Minnesota | $1,000 |
| Delaware | $750 |
| Alaska | No data |
| Maine | No data |
| Vermont | No data |
| New Hampshire | No data |
| Washington | No data |
| Idaho | No data |
| Montana | No data |
| North Dakota | No data |
| Wisconsin | No data |
| Rhode Island | No data |
| Oregon | No data |
| Nevada | No data |
| Wyoming | No data |
| South Dakota | No data |
| Iowa | No data |
| Indiana | No data |
| Ohio | No data |
| Utah | No data |
| Colorado | No data |
| Nebraska | No data |
| Missouri | No data |
| West Virginia | No data |
| Virginia | No data |
| Arizona | No data |
| New Mexico | No data |
| Kansas | No data |
| Arkansas | No data |
| Tennessee | No data |
| North Carolina | No data |
| South Carolina | No data |
| District of Columbia | No data |
| Oklahoma | No data |
| Louisiana | No data |
| Mississippi | No data |
| Alabama | No data |
| Georgia | No data |
| Hawaii | No data |
| Texas | No data |
| Florida | No data |
278
itemized donors
People who gave more than $200
79%
from New Jersey
Of itemized individual dollars
How to read the map
Every state the same size. Darker states gave more itemized money; hatched states had no itemized donors; the outlined state is New Jersey. Gifts of $200 or less carry no address and are left out.
Top donor occupations
Itemized, 2026 cycle.
- MANAGEMENT/ADMINISTRATOR/EXECUTIVE$166.3K 73 donors
- ATTORNEY$95.1K 153 donors
- ENGINEER$15.7K 8 donors
- LOBBYISTS/GOVERNMENT RELATIONS$12.5K 7 donors
- MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL (NOT PHYSICIAN)$12.0K 5 donors
Top committees
PAC and committee contributions, 2026 cycle.
- NEW JERSEY ASSOCIATION FOR JUSTICE POLITICAL ACTIO N COMMITTEE$31.3K
- NJSPBA PAC$24.4K
- NEW JERSEY HEALTHCARE PAC$22.3K
- NEW JERSEY STATE LABORERS POLITICAL ACTION COMMITT EE$22.3K
- NJ FUEL MERCHANTS PAC$22.0K
Top employers
Itemized, 2026 cycle.
- COMPLETE CARE MANAGEMENT LLC$11.7K 3 donors
- CLB PARTNERS LLC$9,500 4 donors
- MCCARTER & ENGLISH LLP$8,150 36 donors
- NJM INSURANCE GROUP$8,000 3 donors
- CME ASSOCIATES$7,700 4 donors
Aggregates only. Individual donors are never named.
Votes
No roll-call votes for the NJ 2026–27 session.No roll-call votes are recorded for this official in this time window.
Legislation
Coughlin sponsored 49 bills in the NJ 2026–27 session; none became law. Cosponsored 15 others. 18% of sponsored bills got out of committee (New Jersey House average 7.2%; 3rd of 80).
The bills Coughlin sponsored and cosponsored in the NJ 2026–27 session, from the official bill records, and how far each got: introduced, referred to or acted on in committee, passed one chamber, passed both, became law. A bill counts at every stage it has reached, so the blocks only shrink to the right.
Bills by stage
Counts for the NJ 2026–27 session
Show the data
| Role | Introduced | In committee | Passed one chamber | Passed both chambers | Became law |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sponsored | 49 | 49 | 9 | 6 | 0 |
| Cosponsored | 15 | 15 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
How to read the blocks
Ink blocks are bills Coughlin sponsored, ochre blocks bills Coughlin cosponsored; the figure above each block is the count. Most bills in any legislature never leave committee, so a short staircase is the norm.
18%
of sponsored bills got out of committee
New Jersey House average 7.2%. Ranks 3rd of 80.
Cosponsorship partners
Colleagues who most often cosponsor with Coughlin, by number of shared bills in the NJ 2026–27 session; the square shows their party.
- Verlina Reynolds-Jackson21
- Shanique Speight14
- Shama Haider13
- Sterley Stanley12
- Robert Karabinchak9
What this means, and what it doesn’t
The score is the share of sponsored bills that a committee reported out or a chamber passed, with at least 5 sponsored bills, ranked within the peer group. Members of the majority party and committee chairs move more bills, so the rank reflects position in the chamber as well as effort. Cosponsorship partners are the five colleagues who share the most of Coughlin’s bills; the toggle shows more.
Bill list
Sponsored and cosponsored, with status and policy area; five are shown, the toggle shows the rest
| A 5658 | Requires schools to serve free breakfast to all students in public schools. | Sponsor | Oct 19, 2026 | In committee | Agriculture and Food(model) | Introduced, Referred to Assembly Children, Families and Food Security Committee Oct 19, 2026 |
| A 5702 | "Efficient Income Verification Act." | Sponsor | Oct 19, 2026 | In committee | Government Operations and Politics(model) | Introduced, Referred to Assembly Children, Families and Food Security Committee Oct 19, 2026 |
| A 5441 | Revises certain deadlines and State funding regarding support provided by DHS, DOLWD, and Office of Volunteerism to NJ FamilyCare and SNAP recipients to meet federal eligibility requirements via volunteering. | Sponsor | Oct 5, 2026 | In committee | Health(model) | Reported out of Assembly Committee, 2nd Reading Oct 22, 2026 |
| A 5439 | Amends Fiscal Year 2027 annual appropriations act to require portion of funding for Working Class Families State Supplement to be used for outreach purposes. | Sponsor | Sep 14, 2026 | Passed both chambers | Economics and Public Finance(model) | Passed Senate (Passed Both Houses) (36-2) Oct 22, 2026 |
| A 5336 | Establishes surtax on certain incomes derived from operation of prediction markets.* | Sponsor | Jun 28, 2026 | In committee | Taxation(model) | Reported from Assembly Comm. as a Substitute, 2nd Reading Jun 28, 2026 |
Online
A site that has not changed in 90 days. Coughlin’s official site had 1 page when last crawled on Oct 1, 2026.
The lab crawls Coughlin’s official and campaign websites (weekly for Congress, monthly for the states) and keeps every page’s text, so changes can be read later; it also records social accounts and describes the images Coughlin posts with a vision model.
Websites
Official site
www.njleg.state.nj.us/legislative-roster/319/assemblyman-coughlinLast crawled Oct 1, 2026
1pages crawled
0changes in 90 days
How to read the counts
“Pages crawled” is the size of the site at the last crawl; “changes in 90 days” counts pages whose text differed from the previous crawl. Sites change for many routine reasons, such as new press releases, so a high count is not by itself notable.
Social accounts
Images Coughlin posted
No images from Coughlin’s posts have been described.
About the descriptions
Written by a vision model and may be wrong. Open the post to see the original. Five are shown; the toggle shows the rest.
State floor speeches
No transcribed state floor speeches are matched to this legislator yet.
Floor speeches
Transcribed from chamber video or captions by the lab. They are not classified for kinds of statement.
Methods and sources
How this page was made. Profile built Oct 28, 2026; site last built Oct 28, 2026. Every number on the page is computed from the sources listed here, by the same rules for every official; nothing is written by hand.
The headline
The headline is the measure on which Coughlin is most unusual among State House Democrats, chosen by one rule for every official of every party. The candidates are the rate of each kind of statement and of extreme labels, party unity, attendance, the small-donor share, the in-state share and total receipts of the latest cycle, the share of sponsored bills that got out of committee, talk-to-bills agreement, and the CSIP score’s place within the party group.
The builder ranks every measure within the same peer group the page compares it with, and writes each official’s percentile: the share of the group below the value, ties counting half, so 0.5 is the median and a value shared by many never ranks first. A measure’s score is how far that percentile sits from the median (0 in the middle, 0.5 at either end), and the highest score leads if it is above 0.25, outside the middle half of the group. Scores within 0.03 of each other are a tie, broken in this order: votes against the party majority, kinds of statement, ideology, roll calls missed, small donations, in-state money, legislation, agreement, extreme labels, receipts.
A measure counts only with at least 200 statements, 100 roll calls or 5 sponsored bills behind it and a peer group of at least 10. Two things never lead: high party unity or attendance, where most members sit, and a high rate of a kind of statement backed by fewer than 10 statements. When nothing qualifies, the headline is a neutral fact instead: statements classified, or years in office. The wording always names the direction (“in the bottom 5% of …”, “votes against the majority of …”).
Identifiers
- Profile id
- 9d1ae08a-66b3-4d68-bafe-956d4eaeb57f
- Open States
- ocd-person/9d1ae08a-66b3-4d68-bafe-956d4eaeb57f
Bulk files with the same data for every official:
Freshness of this profile’s data
- What politicians sayOct 27, 20261 days agoMembers of Congress: tweets since 2017; press releases, newsletters and floor speeches since 2022. State legislators: tweets since May 2024. Governors: tweets since January 2025. Labels from an LLM classifier.
- Roll calls (state)Oct 21, 20267 days agoOpen States floor roll calls, 2019 on (none for AK and MO).
- Bills (state)Oct 28, 2026todayOpen States bills and sponsors, 2019 on; stages from roll calls.
- Campaign money (state)no dateState campaign-finance agencies, 2019 on; aggregates only.
- Ideology (CSIP)Oct 25, 20263 days agoCommon-Space Ideal Points (CSIP), current validated run.
- WebsitesOct 25, 20263 days agoWeekly crawls of federal sites since April 2026; monthly state crawls since June 2026.
- State floor speechesOct 21, 20267 days agoState floor speech turns (published transcripts and captions), 2020 on; not LLM-classified.
How the measures work
- What politicians say
- Every post, press release, newsletter and congressional floor speech is read by a language model and marked for personal attacks, policy criticism, policy discussion, bipartisanship and credit claiming. A statement can be in several. Rates are shares of statements in the window. The methods paper.
- Extreme labels
- A statement has an extreme label when it calls a politician, party or policy “far left”, “far right”, “MAGA”, “extreme”, “radical”, “woke”, “fascist” or “communist”. The target is who the label is aimed at.
- Policy areas and agreement
- Statements and bills share 25 Congressional Research Service policy areas (state bills are assigned by a language model). Agreement is 1 − Jensen–Shannon distance between the two distributions, shown with at least 20 policy statements and 5 bills.
- Ideology (CSIP)
- Common-Space Ideal Points place federal and state officials on one left–right scale, estimated jointly from roll calls, campaign contributions and the text of statements, with standard errors. Only a validated run is shown. The methods paper.
- Campaign money
- Campaigns report by name only donors who give more than $200 in a cycle; smaller gifts are reported as one total. Federal totals and the small-donor share come from the FEC’s financial summaries of each campaign committee. Donor counts, donor states, employers and occupations cover itemized donors only. State filings report no small-gift totals, so state figures are itemized only. The lab never publishes donor names.
- Votes and key votes
- Attendance, party unity and the count of votes against the majority of an official’s own party come from roll calls (Voteview for Congress, chamber records for the states). Key votes are final-passage or override votes that became law, were decided by under 10%, saw at least 10% of a party vote against its majority, or concerned one of the 25 bills most mentioned in officials’ statements.
- Peers and ranks
- Comparisons are with the same party, chamber and level (for example House Democrats); state legislators are compared within their state and chamber for votes. Every comparison names its group. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; tied values share the average of their ranks, and the percentile is the share of the group below the value, ties counting half.
America’s Political Pulse · Polarization Research Lab