The congressman from the 1st District of Ohio is Republican Steve Chabot, who won his old House seat back by beating Democrat Steve Driehaus in 2010. Driehaus had ousted Chabot in 2008. Read More

The congressman from the 1st District of Ohio is Republican Steve Chabot, who won his old House seat back by beating Democrat Steve Driehaus in 2010. Driehaus had ousted Chabot in 2008.

Chabot grew up in the Cincinnati area and graduated from La Salle High School, where he says he “got the bug” for politics after serving on the student council. Then came the Watergate scandal. “A lot of people my age got turned off from politics because of all that,” Chabot said in an interview with National Journal. “I wasn’t that way. I thought we needed honest people in government.” He went on to earn a degree in history and physical education from the College of William & Mary. He then took night classes at Northern Kentucky University while teaching at an elementary school during the day. Chabot won a seat on the Cincinnati City Council, where he served for four years. He followed that with a four-year stint on the Hamilton County Commission. During that time, Chabot said, he tried to find innovative ways to reduce the cost of government, such as using jail inmates for public service.

In 1994, he was among the conservative Republicans who successfully ran for Congress and ended 40 years of Democratic control of the House. In his 14 years on Capitol Hill, Chabot took principled and politically risky stands opposing federal spending on projects in his district and was a conservative leader on social issues, particularly opposition to abortion rights. In 2003, he helped enact a ban on “partial-birth” abortions, and he also pushed a bill to prevent minors from crossing state lines to get abortions. Chabot was a House manager during the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton. In retrospect, Chabot said, he is most proud of his work in fighting wasteful spending.

Chabot lost his seat in 2008, when Driehaus defeated him by 5 percentage points. He had been spoiling for a rematch since. In the 2010 campaign, Chabot criticized the incumbent for voting with the Democratic majority on President Barack Obama’s health care initiative and the $787 billion economic-stimulus package. “I’m for less government, restraining the growth of government and spending. I’m for people having personal control of their own lives,” Chabot said. For his part, Driehaus defended the work that Democrats have done during the first two years of the Obama administration, including the health care overhaul, which he called “the right thing” to do. On the stump, he asked voters to give Obama and the Democrats more time to implement change. In one ad, he said: “People are going to work. We’re investing in jobs of the future.” But Driehaus had trouble generating much voter excitement for his re-election, and in October, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee pulled the plug on further spending on television ads for him. Both candidates raised about $2 million each. But Chabot won, 51.5% to 46% for Driehaus.