The congressman from the 4th District is Tom Cole, a Republican first elected in 2002 after a long career working for other politicians. With the retirement of Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado in 2004, Cole became the only American Indian in Congress and a leading defender of Indian interests in Washington. Read More

The congressman from the 4th District is Tom Cole, a Republican first elected in 2002 after a long career working for other politicians. With the retirement of Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado in 2004, Cole became the only American Indian in Congress and a leading defender of Indian interests in Washington.

Cole grew up in Moore, south of Oklahoma City. He is a fifth-generation Oklahoman, and his mother was a state representative and senator. He’s also a member of the Chickasaw Nation tribe; more than half of the nation’s Chickasaw Indians live in the district. Cole’s father served in the Air Force and later worked at Tinker Air Force Base. Cole graduated from Grinnell College, got a master’s degree at Yale University and a Ph.D. in British history at the University of Oklahoma, studying for a year at the University of London. From 1985 to 1989, he was the Oklahoma Republican Party chairman. In 1988, he was elected to the state Senate. He moved to Washington in 1991 to become executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, then returned to Oklahoma and was appointed secretary of state, becoming the first Republican to hold that office. He went back to Washington to serve as the chief of staff for the Republican National Committee during the 2000 presidential campaign. During much of that period, he was also the president of a polling and political consulting firm in Oklahoma City.

In 2002, when Rep. J.C. Watts announced that he would not seek re-election, Cole moved quickly to run. Despite his party connections and an endorsement from Watts, he faced formidable opposition from attorney Marc Nuttle. The two shared positions on most issues and extensive party connections. Nuttle had been Cole’s predecessor at the NRCC, and had worked on Republican Pat Robertson’s 1988 presidential campaign. Nuttle and Cole also had worked together to pass an Oklahoma right-to-work law in a 2001 referendum. But in the showdown between the strategists, Cole won 60%-33%. He had tough competition in the general election from former state Senate Majority Leader Darryl Roberts, who appealed to the “yellow dog” Democratic tradition that is particularly strong in the Red River counties. Cole countered by linking Roberts to all of the past Democratic presidential nominees he had supported, and described him as “pro-tax,” “pro-abortion” and “pro-lawsuit.” Cole won 54%-46%.

In the House, Cole has a mostly conservative voting record. He is a member of the GOP whip team and sits on the Republican Steering Committee, which makes committee assignments.

Cole differs from his younger conservative colleagues in being generally supportive of government spending. From his plum seat on the Appropriations Committee, he tends to the needs of his district’s installations and supports federal programs that help his constituents. Among them is the Education Department’s Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP), which helps disadvantaged students prepare for college and which Cole said has served more than 31,000 Oklahoma students. He joined Oklahoma Republicans John Sullivan and Frank Lucas in defeating an unsuccessful move by Republican Study Committee members in February 2011 to slash $100 billion from the fiscal 2011 budget. A month later, he warned that a government shutdown could “cause panic” in the financial markets.

Cole began his House career on the Armed Services Committee, a seat of obvious importance to the district, before leaving the panel in 2005 to serve on the Rules Committee, which launched him on a career in leadership. He has been actively involved in issues related to American Indians. In the wake of an influence-peddling scandal involving Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who represented several tribes, Cole strongly opposed proposed limits on the right of tribes to contribute to political campaigns. He and Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., denounced a call in May 2009 to have the Justice Department investigate whether Oklahoma tribes took steps to strip the descendants of slaves once owned by tribal members of full citizen rights. “The idea of using the Justice Department as a weapon to beat tribes into submission is abhorrent and unfair,” he said.

Following the dismal 2006 election for Republicans, Cole was elected by his peers to be chairman of the NRCC, the fifth-ranking GOP leadership job and one that put him in charge of national Republican efforts to regain the party’s majority in the House in 2008. Cole defeated Texan Pete Sessions, 102 to 81, to take over the committee, where he’d cut his teeth as a political strategist years before. He vowed to expand the playing field of competitive seats. But his two-year chairmanship was dismal. The party had had a rough transition to the minority after a dozen years in control, the committee was $19 million in debt, and there were an inordinate number of GOP retirements. Cole and the Republicans raised $116 million for 2008 contests, compared to $171 million for the Democrats. On top of all that, the committee had internal problems, notably the discovery that its longtime treasurer had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars. Retiring Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, a former NRCC chairman himself, circulated a memo warning that the party’s campaign apparatus was badly broken and its message “stale” and “obsolete.” But the biggest obstacle was largely out of Cole’s control: President George W. Bush’s abysmal public approval ratings, which made re-election an uphill climb for most Republicans, despite their efforts to distance themselves from the president.

Before long, the relationship between Cole and then-Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio deteriorated, with public sniping and second-guessing over who was to blame for the party’s failure to make gains that year. Boehner believed that Cole’s top staffers at the NRCC were not sufficiently aggressive at fundraising and candidate recruitment, and created an advisory group to look over Cole’s shoulder at the committee. The two had started out with a cool relationship. Cole had defeated Sessions, a Boehner ally, for the post, and earlier, Cole had publicly backed Republican Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri over Boehner in the bitterly contested race for majority leader in 2006.

The results of the 2008 election were disappointing for Cole, to say the least. Republicans lost rather than gained seats in the House, winding up at a 257-178 disadvantage. Nevertheless, after the election, Cole decided to seek re-election to another two years as NRCC chairman. Once again, Sessions was seeking the post, with the active support of Boehner. Sensing he could well lose the showdown this time when the decision went to a vote by all House Republicans, Cole withdrew. In a gesture of conciliation, Boehner gave Cole a seat on Appropriations in 2009. And Cole subsequently worked himself back into Boehner’s good graces through voracious fundraising. Without a general election opponent to divert his attention in 2010, he brought in more than $270,000 through his political action committee and more than $148,000 from his campaign committee on behalf of other Republicans.