The congressman from the 15th District is Steve Stivers, a Republican elected in 2010. He grew up in the Cincinnati suburbs, moved to Columbus to attend Ohio State University and never left, except for deployments with the Ohio Army National Guard. For most of his career, he has been associated with the Ohio Legislature. He was a staffer in the state Senate, and then in 1995 began working as a lobbyist for BankOne, which was based in Columbus but later absorbed into Bank of America. He was appointed by the Senate in 2003 to fill the seat of a retiring state senator. Soon afterward, he served tours in Kuwait and Iraq. When his seat came up for election in 2006, he ran his campaign from Iraq and won. Republicans have had large majorities in the Ohio Senate and Stivers was vice chairman of the Finance Committee, supporting state budgets that cut property taxes and froze tuition at state universities. Read More
The congressman from the 15th District is Steve Stivers, a Republican elected in 2010. He grew up in the Cincinnati suburbs, moved to Columbus to attend Ohio State University and never left, except for deployments with the Ohio Army National Guard. For most of his career, he has been associated with the Ohio Legislature. He was a staffer in the state Senate, and then in 1995 began working as a lobbyist for BankOne, which was based in Columbus but later absorbed into Bank of America. He was appointed by the Senate in 2003 to fill the seat of a retiring state senator. Soon afterward, he served tours in Kuwait and Iraq. When his seat came up for election in 2006, he ran his campaign from Iraq and won. Republicans have had large majorities in the Ohio Senate and Stivers was vice chairman of the Finance Committee, supporting state budgets that cut property taxes and froze tuition at state universities.
Republican Rep. Deborah Pryce decided against running for re-election in the 15th District in 2008. Democrats nominated Franklin County Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy, who had nearly defeated Pryce 50.2%-49.8% two years earlier. House Minority Leader John Boehner urged Stivers to run, and although he initially declined amid speculation that he wanted to be Ohio Senate president, he got into the contest. He campaigned as a moderate, favoring abortion rights but also emphasizing fiscal discipline and his military experience. The Columbus Dispatch lauded Stivers for supporting a two-year federal budget process similar to Ohio’s and favoring line-item veto power for the president. Kilroy emphasized her background as a former Columbus school board president, and slammed Stivers for his stint as a bank lobbyist. Stivers portrayed Kilroy as “way outside the mainstream,” too liberal for the district, and a captive of big labor. Kilroy won by a narrower than expected 46%-45%.
In her one term in office, Kilroy was a faithful supporter of the majority Democrats’ programs, including the economic stimulus bill, the cap-and-trade bill to reduce carbon emissions and the overhaul of the health care system in 2010. Stivers, who continued to run for the seat, called the health care law’s mandate to buy insurance “very dangerous” and said the legislation would be a heavy burden on small business. Kilroy portrayed him as a flip-flopper, arguing that he had supported an individual mandate and a carbon emissions bill in the past. She also charged that he had supported a national sales tax to replace the income tax, and she again ran ads attacking him as a lobbyist.
The Kilroy-Stivers rematch in 2010 turned out to be a great disappointment for national Democrats. Stivers and Kilroy raised roughly $2.7 million each, and although they were evenly matched in fundraising, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee abandoned the race in October as unwinnable. Stivers prevailed 54%-41%, with a solid majority in Franklin County and overwhelming margins in the other two counties.
In the House, he joined both the Tuesday Group of moderate Republicans and the Republican Study Committee of the most conservative Republicans. He got a seat on the Financial Services Committee.
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
36
(L) : 64 (C)
37
(L) : 63 (C)
Social
41
(L) : 58 (C)
39
(L) : 61 (C)
Foreign
52
(L) : 48 (C)
30
(L) : 70 (C)
Composite
43.2
(L) : 56.8 (C)
35.3
(L) : 64.7 (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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