WASHINGTON – How important is good attendance?

Rick Perry has made it a habit to ding Kay Bailey Hutchison each time she misses a vote in the Senate. He began back in February, months before she even had formally announced her campaign for governor, blasting her over a missed procedural vote on a stimulus plan.

"I don't think the election's going to be won or lost based on this specific attack," said Nathan Gonzales, political editor at The Rothenberg Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter. But "the Perry campaign strategy is, 'Attack anywhere and everywhere on anything.' "

History suggests that absenteeism, by itself, is rarely much of a factor to voters. It's more effective as a proxy for something else – say, political cowardice. Hutchison would be vulnerable if she skips a vote on anything as controversial and dear to hardcore GOP voters as abortion, or raising the federal debt limit, or immigration.

But most of the 20 Senate votes she's missed this year (out of 305) have been on noncontroversial or procedural issues. One of the bigger openings she gave Perry came last month, when she missed a vote to strip funding from ACORN, the community group Republicans love to hate.

Candidates for governor, Senate and president have all been stung by allegations of absenteeism – though most have easily brushed off such attacks.

In 1999, for instance, Sen. John McCain missed more than one of every three votes. Texas' governor at the time, George W. Bush, never attacked him directly for that. But he did make it a point to reject his own state salary – $316.01 per day – whenever he stumped out of state.

And absenteeism clearly didn't hurt President Barack Obama when he ran last year. But it was pivotal in a brutal 1998 New York Senate race, when Democrat Chuck Schumer –then a nine-term House member – ousted GOP incumbent Alfonse D'Amato. For months, D'Amato hammered Schumer for playing hooky from Congress even as he collected a full salary.

A week before Election Day, Schumer struck back decisively, gleefully sharing records showing in 1980, when D'Amato made the leap to senator from the Nassau County Board of Supervisors, he'd missed hundreds of votes on various Long Island ordinances.

Nothing like hypocrisy to fuel a meltdown.

In New York's 2000 Senate race, Hillary Rodham Clinton –who as first lady didn't have to worry about missing votes any more than Perry does – used the missing-in-action theme to knock her opponent off stride.

In the final month, she unleashed a TV spot noting that Rep. Rick Lazio had skipped 59 of 60 recent votes – "votes on adding 100,000 new teachers, on domestic violence, on home heating oil. ... But Lazio did manage to show up weeks ago ... to vote himself a pay raise."

The effectiveness of that ad, though, was in all the issues mentioned, not necessarily the missed votes.

Even as Perry and Hutchison slug it out, in Pennsylvania, Sen. Arlen Specter is calling his challenger in the Democratic primary "No Show Joe." U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, a retired admiral, has missed 125 votes this year – 15 percent. Only eight House members have worse records.

"If he were still in the military," Specter said recently, "he'd be court-martialed."

Pretty cheeky, considering that Specter has the 10th-worst record in the Senate, having missed 4.9 percent of votes.

Hutchison has done a little better. She's missed 6 percent of votes this year and ranks seventh-worst.

For Perry, pointing that out is a way to goad her into resigning sooner than she might like – and to remind voters that she's a creature of Washington.

"It has the potential to resonate on multiple levels. That's why they do it," said Gonzalez, the nonpartisan analyst.

Hutchison can cut off the attacks by quitting. But since vote-skipping isn't really the subject, that won't be the end of it.