The congressman from the 5th District is Jim Cooper, a Democrat elected in 2002 who also served from 1983 to 1995. A tart-tongued moderate, he seeks bipartisanship on fiscal matters and other issues in a polarized political climate. 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. In recent years, he has focused on being a leader of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition and a consensus-builder within the national Democratic Party. Read More

The congressman from the 5th District is Jim Cooper, a Democrat elected in 2002 who also served from 1983 to 1995. A tart-tongued moderate, he seeks bipartisanship on fiscal matters and other issues in a polarized political climate. 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. In recent years, he has focused on being a leader of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition and a consensus-builder within the national Democratic Party.

In 2011, he introduced a series of measures with GOP support. One, to impose an across-the-board spending cap, was advocated in the Senate by his Tennessee Republican colleague Bob Corker; another would create a bipartisan commission to abolish unnecessary federal programs. He also sponsored a bill to have the Internal Revenue Service fill out citizens’ tax returns with the income information that the agency gets from employers. He said finding Republicans to support him “is really not hard” but gets overlooked. “The press is only focused on the leaders,” he told National Journal. “They barely know the names of the backbenchers, and those are the people who can make things happen if they choose to.” It helps that Cooper eschews name-calling. When others in his party were savaging House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., for his budget-cutting proposals in 2011, Cooper defended Ryan as “genuinely smart and nice and humble and caring. I don’t agree with all of his proposals, but they are not out of bounds.” Cooper earlier had joined another conservative Republican, Virginia’s Frank Wolf, in calling for a panel to examine entitlement spending—an idea that became reality with President Obama’s creation of a commission on the national debt in 2010.

During the health care debate, Cooper was among the Blue Dogs who worked with Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., in 2009 to moderate some provisions that conservative Democrats considered government overreach. He has sought limits on spending earmarks—he has refused for years to seek such special-interest funding—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. One of his pet issues is changing the method of calculating the federal budget. He said in a January 2011 speech that the use of accrual accounting procedures that recognize statutory commitments to future spending would put the national debt about three times higher than its current $15 trillion.

Cooper was mentioned as a 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 liberal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying, “We’re just told how to vote. We are treated like mushrooms most of the time.” He supported fellow Blue Dog Heath Shuler of North Carolina over Pelosi in the caucus-wide vote for minority leader in 2011.

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 Waxman, who was pro-environmental regulation, on the Clean Air Act of 1990. When, years later, Waxman successfully challenged Dingell for the chairmanship of Energy and Commerce 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 Cooper 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 election easily.

In 2010, Cooper was re-elected with 56% of the vote.