Walter Capps
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Walter Holden Capps was born in Omaha, Nebraska on May 5, 1934. He died October 28, 1997) as a Democratic Party member of the United States House of Representatives. Capps had lost an election to Andrea Seastrand for the 22nd district in California in 1994, which had been a landslide year for the Republicans. Seastrand, a conservative, was targeted for defeat by a coalition of labor unions. The Capps campaign was an indirect beneficiary of an 18-month campaign to defeat Seastrand that saw the labor unions spend an estimated $3.2 million, an amount that exceeded the warchests of the Capps and Seastrand campaigns combined. While driving home from a campaign event during the summer of 1996, Capps' vehicle was struck by a drunk driver — who was one of his supporters. Capps was seriously injured and was unable to actively campaign until the final few weeks of the campaign. Despite his absence from the campaign trail, the sympathy generated by his accident and the strong national Democratic tide carried Capps victory in November.
Capps' mental and physical health began to decline after the car accident. He died of a heart attack at Dulles Airport only nine months into his term. The Reverend Jesse Jackson attended his funeral. Capps was succeeded by his widow, Lois Capps, who won in a special election in the Spring of 1998.
Before entering politics, Capps taught for more than thirty years at the University of California in Santa Barbara. As a Professor in the Religious Studies department he helped define the field, and catalogued the growth and changes in his 1995 book Religious Studies: The Making of a Discipline. An anti-war activist during the 1960s, he later initiated a nationally-renowned course entitled "Religion and the Impact of Vietnam" in 1979.
His name lives on in the Walter Capps Center for Study of Ethics, Religion and Public Life at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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