Rep. Jim Cooper (D)

The congressman from the 5th District is Jim Cooper, a Democrat elected in 2002. His father, Prentice Cooper, was governor for six years. Jim Cooper, educated at the University of North Carolina, Oxford and Harvard Law School, won the 4th District seat in 1982 by beating the bearer of another famous name, Republican Cissy Baker, the daughter of then-Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. When he first took office at age 28, he was the youngest member of the U.S. House. Notable for his frankness, he spoke out against tobacco use and opposed the National Rifle Association in a state where both were popular. He participated actively in the “Group of Nine” Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee that produced a compromise between Michigan Democrat John Dingell, an ally of the auto industry, and California Democrat Henry Waxman of California, who was pro-environmental regulation, on the Clean Air Act of 1990. When, years later, Waxman successfully challenged Dingell for the chairmanship of the influential Energy and Commerce Committee in 2009, Cooper was a key ally of Waxman’s. In 1994, Cooper ran against Republican Fred Thompson for the Senate seat Gore vacated when he was elected vice president and lost.

Cooper then went to work as an investment banker in Nashville and as a teacher at Vanderbilt University’s business school. In 2002, when Democratic U.S. Rep. Bob Clement jumped into a Senate race, Cooper joined a flurry of Democratic candidates for his seat. His toughest opponent was Davidson County Sheriff Gayle Ray, the first female sheriff in Tennessee, who had support from the national fundraising group EMILY’s List. Ray attacked Cooper’s voting record on women’s health issues. An abortion-rights supporter, Cooper said that Ray’s charges were inaccurate and ran positive ads showing his children describing what he does well—banjo playing, helping with homework, getting health care for senior citizens—and what he doesn’t do well—cooking, playing basketball. The AFL-CIO and The Tennessean endorsed Ray. Cooper had support from the Sierra Club environmental group and several smaller newspapers, and raised twice as much money as Ray, including $700,000 of his own money. He won the primary with 47%. Ray got 23% in the seven-candidate field. Cooper won the general easily and has not been seriously challenged since.

Once back in the House, Cooper joined the Armed Services, Budget, and Government Reform committees and joined the Blue Dogs, a group of fiscally conservative Democrats, in seeking limits on spending earmarks and enforcement of pay-as-you-go rules that require tax cuts or spending increases to be offset elsewhere in the budget. Cooper also urged expanded powers for the president to veto specific items in the budget. A longtime proponent of increased government oversight, his bill to strengthen the independence of federal inspectors passed Congress and, despite a veto threat from President George W. Bush, became law in October 2008.

Still relatively young, Cooper seems to have abandoned his interest in statewide office and is focused on being a leader of the Blue Dogs and a consensus-builder within the national Democratic party. He has proposed closing tax loopholes and spending cuts. He was mentioned as candidate to head the White House budget office, but he fell out of favor with the Obama administration after an incident during Congress’ work on the $787 billion economic stimulus bill in 2009. Cooper was one of 11 Democrats to vote against the initial version of the bill and told a Nashville radio station he had gotten “quiet encouragement” from the White House to oppose it because Obama disagreed with changes in the legislation made by the House Democratic leadership. The White House denied urging Cooper to vote against the leadership-backed bill. Cooper also took at shot at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying, “We’re just told how to vote. We are treated like mushrooms most of the time.”

Cooper urged Obama to convene a “fiscal responsibility summit” to focus on entitlements, which the president did in February 2009, but Cooper was not invited to attend. The liberal The Nation magazine suggested Cooper is reprising his role as the “dissident in chief among House Democrats” that he once played during the Clinton health care talks in 1993.