The new congressman from the 1st District is Rick Crawford, the first Republican to win this northeastern Arkansas district since Reconstruction. In 2010, he soundly defeated Democrat Chad Causey, the former chief of staff for Rep. Marion Berry, whose retirement after seven terms sparked the battle for a successor. Read More
The new congressman from the 1st District is Rick Crawford, the first Republican to win this northeastern Arkansas district since Reconstruction. In 2010, he soundly defeated Democrat Chad Causey, the former chief of staff for Rep. Marion Berry, whose retirement after seven terms sparked the battle for a successor.
Crawford was born in Florida on the former Homestead Air Force Base, where his father, a munitions expert, was stationed. Growing up in a military family meant a lot of “bouncing around,” says Crawford, who attended a dozen schools as a child. The frequent uprooting provided a crash course in making friends quickly and adapting to new environments, skills that he says have become second nature. After graduating from high school in Hudson, N.H., enlisting in the military seemed a natural next step. Crawford’s older siblings had already signed up, one joining the Air Force and one the Navy. So he chose the Army. “I guess if there had been a fourth brother, he’d have gone into the Marine Corps,” he quipped.
In the service, Crawford was trained as a bomb-disposal technician, disabling suspected live explosive devices, a line of work that was introduced to a mass audience in the acclaimed 2008 film The Hurt Locker. Crawford achieved the rank of sergeant, did a tour of duty in Pakistan, and later served on U.S. Secret Service details for Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. When his military service ended, he moved to southern Missouri and enrolled at Arkansas State University, in Jonesboro, to study agribusiness and economics. He competed on the college rodeo circuit until injuries forced him to quit. At the time, he says, he was “grossly under-employed,” and his medical bills and other obligations piled up. In 1994, he declared personal bankruptcy, but he eventually found full-time employment—and discovered he had some skills—in rodeo announcing. He worked some 100 shows a year before returning to school to finish his degree. In 1995, he met his wife, Stacy, on a date orchestrated by their mothers, who were co-workers at the time. Stacy was then a fellow student at Arkansas State, and today is a licensed social worker and school-based therapist. The couple has two children, ages 4 and 2.
Working the rodeo-broadcasting gigs helped Crawford land a news-anchor job in Jonesboro after graduation. That eventually led him to agricultural broadcasting and to starting his own business called the AgWatch Network, a farm-news outlet that broadcasts on 39 radio stations in Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee, as well as on television stations in Little Rock and Jonesboro.
When Crawford decided to challenge Berry for the 1st District seat, national Republicans were at first cool to the idea, hoping to recruit a more seasoned candidate. But Crawford gained traction after Berry announced he wouldn’t run, which made the district ripe for a GOP takeover. Crawford coasted to an easy primary victory over 26-year-old congressional aide Princella Smith, and he launched a general election campaign with the theme that Democrats had lost touch with the region’s rural and small-town conservative voters.
In the general election campaign, Causey made an issue of Crawford’s personal bankruptcy, attacking the Republican for failing to release his financial records. Democratic ads also suggested that Crawford would privatize Social Security and Medicare. Crawford, meanwhile, sought to portray Causey as a Washington insider beholden to national Democrats. The national parties jumped in with independent expenditures for ads, and former President Clinton returned to his home state to help raise money for Causey to no avail. Crawford beat Causey, 52% to 44%.
National Journal’s rating system is an objective method of analyzing voting. The liberal score means that the lawmaker’s votes were more liberal than that percentage of his colleagues’ votes. The conservative score means his votes were more conservative than that percentage of his colleagues’ votes. The composite score is an average of a lawmaker’s six issue-based scores. See all NJ Voting
More Liberal
More Conservative
2012
2011
Economic
27
(L) : 71 (C)
10
(L) : 83 (C)
Social
32
(L) : 68 (C)
31
(L) : 65 (C)
Foreign
9
(L) : 86 (C)
27
(L) : 70 (C)
Composite
23.8
(L) : 76.2 (C)
25.0
(L) : 75.0 (C)
Interest Group Ratings
The vote ratings by 10 special interest groups provide insight into a lawmaker’s general ideology and the degree to which he or she agrees with the group’s point of view. Some organizations provide just one combined rating for 2009 and 2010, the two sessions of the 111th Congress. About the interest groups.
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The first Almanac of American Politics was published in 1971, and it hasn’t missed an election since.
The nation’s most authoritative source of information about members of Congress, their districts,
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Chris Christie Bombastic Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J. sometimes goes looking for controversy, but this week controversy found him. Following the death of New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, Christie was tasked with appointing a replacement and calling for a special Senate election. His decision to schedule the special election in October 2013—two weeks before Christie’s own gubernatorial reelection—has left both Republicans and Democrats unhappy.
Chris Christie Bombastic Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J. sometimes goes looking for controversy, but this week controversy found him. Following the death of New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, Christie was tasked with appointing a replacement and calling for a special Senate election. His decision to schedule the special election in October 2013—two weeks before Christie’s own gubernatorial reelection—has left both Republicans and Democrats unhappy.
