The congresswoman from the 9th District is Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat first elected in 1982. She is now the most-senior woman among Democrats in the House, a distinction not lost on her in her occasional clashes with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Kaptur grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood in Toledo, the daughter of Polish-American parents who worked at local auto plants. The family also operated a small grocery store, but her father sold it to get a job with health benefits. “It broke his heart,” she said. She has spent almost her entire career in public service. She and her brother, Steve, live in the house where they grew up. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin, the first in her family to attend college, got a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, then spent eight years as an urban planner in Toledo. She worked on urban revitalization in the Carter White House, returning home in 1980 with thoughts of running for elected office. That year, Republican Ed Weber defeated 26-year Democratic incumbent Thomas Ashley. In 1982, when no other Democrat would run against Weber, she did and won 58%-39% despite being outspent 3-to-1.

Kaptur is a plainspoken, old-fashioned Democrat and dedicated opponent of free trade. She has long been convinced that Toledo and places like it have lost jobs and industry because of unfair trade practices and low-wage competition from countries like Mexico and China. She pressured the Japanese to buy more American auto parts, but has been leery of Japanese investment in the United States. Kaptur was probably Congress’s most dedicated opponent of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement. She criticized Democratic President Bill Clinton for doing nothing for sagging U.S. industries and for ignoring Democrats opposed to NAFTA. She became something of a national figure in 1995, when she appeared before Texas businessman Ross Perot’s United We Stand party and made a rousing speech on trade that had delegates cheering. Perot, running as a third-party candidate for president in 1996, offered her the vice presidential nomination a year later, but she turned it down. She was a vocal opponent of normal trade relations with China and of expanded free-trade negotiating powers for President George W. Bush, and she predicted that the 2005 Central American Free Trade Agreement would destroy jobs in Ohio. She backed a resolution calling for the United States to withdraw from the World Trade Organization, citing “the $600 billion trade deficit and the fact that these trade agreements are hollowing out our country.”

Reflecting on those early trade wars years later, Kaptur criticized Pelosi’s support of NAFTA. “That’s where the real knife was put in the flesh,” she said. When Pelosi announced in May 2007 an agreement with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson on principles for international trade policy, an uninvited Kaptur glared from the back of the room. “It was quite disappointing to see that our leadership talked to the White House and Republican leadership before they talked to the Democratic Caucus,” Kaptur complained. In 2002, she ran a quixotic, one-day campaign for minority leader against Pelosi but, predictably, got nowhere against the powerful California Democrat. In 2008, Kaptur challenged Pelosi ally Xavier Becerra of California for the leadership post of Democratic Caucus vice chairman and lost badly, 175-67.

Kaptur has a liberal voting record but departs from party orthodoxy on abortion—she opposes funding for abortion and embryonic-stem-cell research, which uses excess cells from in vitro fertilizations. She is a strong advocate of alternative energy sources such as ethanol and biofuels for Ohio. Strongly opposed to the war in Iraq, Kaptur and Texas Republican Kay Granger in 2005 became the first women to serve on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Kaptur gave up the senior Democratic slot on the Agriculture Subcommittee to make the move.

She keeps close tabs on her district. A constituent gave her the idea to sponsor the legislation that authorized the World War II Memorial on the Washington Mall. On the Appropriations Committee, she has focused on improvements to bridges, roads, and rail and port facilities in her district. Kaptur is unabashed about working to secure spending earmarks in the appropriations bills for her district, a practice that has come under harsh criticism in recent years. In 2007, she earmarked $77 million for projects back home and ranked 25th among the top earmark recipients in the House, according to the group Taxpayers for Common Sense. She once challenged Republicans on the committee to limit farm payments, but when they threatened her favorite spending projects, she backed off. “I may be blockheaded sometimes, but I’m not stupid,” Kaptur said.

She is proud of her role as a successful woman in what is still a male-dominated realm and has pushed for more portraits and statues of women in the Capitol. She also wrote a book on women in Congress. She is exceedingly popular in Toledo and is rarely seriously challenged at election time. In 2004, her Republican opponent, Lucas County Auditor Larry Kaczala, criticized Kaptur for comparing terrorist Osama bin Laden to American revolutionaries. But Kaptur won 68%-32%.