Jim McCrery

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jim McCrery

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana's 4th district
Incumbent
Assumed office April 16, 1988–
Preceded by	Cleo Fields
Succeeded by	Incumbent

Born	September 18, 1949 (age 57) Shreveport, Louisiana
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Johnette McCrery
Religion	Methodist

James Otis "Jim" McCrery, III, (born September 18, 1949, in Shreveport, Louisiana), is an American politician and has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 1988; he represents the 4th District of Louisiana (map). McCrery is the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican Main Street Partnership (a group of moderate Republicans). Had the Republicans maintained control of the U.S. House in 2007, he would have been in line to chair the Ways and Means Committee. Instead, the slot went to the veteran Democrat Charles Rangel of Harlem in New York City.

1 Before Congress
2 Congressional career
3 Subcommittees and laws
4 Family and personal life
5 External links

[edit] Before Congress

McCrery grew up in Leesville, the seat of Vernon Parish. He graduated from Leesville High School in 1967. In 1971, McCrery earned a bachelor of arts degree in both English and history from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston in Lincoln Parish. Thereafter, he obtained a law degree from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1975. McCrery joined the law firm of Jackson, Smith & Ford in Leesville, where he worked from 1975 to 1978, and served in Shreveport as an assistant city attorney from 1979 to 1980.

From 1981 to 1984, McCrery worked as a district manager and later as a legislative director for then Democratic Congressman Charles Elson "Buddy" Roemer, III. He returned to Louisiana in 1984 to work for Georgia Pacific Corporation, where he remained until his election to Congress four years later.

[edit] Congressional career

After Roemer resigned from Congress to become governor, McCrery ran for his former boss' seat as a Republican.

McCrery emerged from the special election in a runoff with Democratic State Senator Foster L. Campbell, Jr., of Elm Grove in Bossier Parish. A third contender, Shreveport journalist and then public relations man Stanley R. Tiner, was eliminated in the first round of voting. (As of 2006, Tiner was a Pulitzer Prize-winning executive editor and vice president of the Biloxi-Gulfport newspaper, the Sun Herald.) Tiner was considered the most liberal of the three major candidates. Campbell had also run for this House seat in 1980 but failed to make the general election. In 2002, Democrat Campbell vacated the state Senate after twenty-six years when he was elected to the Louisiana Public Service Commission. McCrery became only the sixth Republican to represent Louisiana in the House since the end of Reconstruction. In his bid for a full term in 1990, he handily defeated Adeline McDade Roemer (born 1923), the Democratic mother of his former benefactor Buddy Roemer.

In 1992, Louisiana lost a district as a result of sluggish population growth during the 1980s. Also, the state was ordered to draw a second black-majority district by the Justice Department. The legislature responded by shifting most of Shreveport and Bossier City's black voters into a new 4th District. Most of McCrery's former territory was merged with the 5th District, represented by 16-year incumbent Jerry Huckaby. On paper, McCrery was in serious danger, since Huckaby retained nearly all of his former territory. However, the old 4th was considerably more urbanized than the old 5th, and 60% of the new 5th's voters had been represented by McCrery. Also, the new 5th was only 5% black (compared with a 30% black population in the old 5th). McCrery was thus such a heavy favorite that national Democratic leaders wrote off the seat as a loss and urged Huckaby to retire. Huckaby chose to stay in the race, and was heavily defeated. To date, McCrery is the only Louisiana Republican to have unseated a Democratic incumbent at the federal level.

McCrery has not faced serious opposition since he defeated Huckaby. His district was renumbered as the 4th again in 1997, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the majority-black, Alexandria-to-Baton Rouge 4th was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

In the mid-term election of 2006, McCrery defeated Democratic challengers Patti Cox and Artis Cash and conservative Republican [1] Chester T. Kelley, a Shreveport businessman who advertises his catfish restaurant on the Rush Limbaugh radio program.

[edit] Subcommittees and laws

Congressman McCrery sits on the following House Ways and Means subcommittees:

McCrery has sponsored or co-sponsored six public bills in the 109th Congress which have been signed into law by the president, all of which involved disaster mitigation and assistance in response to 2005 hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.

[edit] Family and personal life

On August 3, 1991, McCrery married the former Johnette Hawkins (born 1966), a former television newswoman. They have two children, Scott and Clark. McCrery is a Methodist.