The congressman from the 11th District is Republican Phil Gingrey, an obstetrician first elected in 2002. Gingrey grew up in Augusta, graduated from Georgia Tech, and returned home to attend the Medical College of Georgia. After training in Georgia hospitals, he settled in Marietta, where he set up an obstetrics and gynecology practice. He also chaired the local school board. In 1998, he was elected to the state Senate, where he had a reputation as a staunch social conservative who could work with Democrats on other issues. Gingrey says the book that most influenced his political thinking is Barry Goldwater’s classic The Conscience of a Conservative. In the contest for the U.S. House seat, Gingrey faced tough competition in both the primary and general election. The issue differences were small among the three candidates in the Republican primary. Gingrey styled himself as the only native Georgian. Cecil Staton, an ordained Baptist minister, vowed to view all legislation from the perspective of the traditional family. Gingrey won 40% of the vote to 32% for Staton and 28% for Bob Herriott, a pilot for Delta Airlines. Read More

The congressman from the 11th District is Republican Phil Gingrey, an obstetrician first elected in 2002. Gingrey grew up in Augusta, graduated from Georgia Tech, and returned home to attend the Medical College of Georgia. After training in Georgia hospitals, he settled in Marietta, where he set up an obstetrics and gynecology practice. He also chaired the local school board. In 1998, he was elected to the state Senate, where he had a reputation as a staunch social conservative who could work with Democrats on other issues. Gingrey says the book that most influenced his political thinking is Barry Goldwater’s classic The Conscience of a Conservative. In the contest for the U.S. House seat, Gingrey faced tough competition in both the primary and general election. The issue differences were small among the three candidates in the Republican primary. Gingrey styled himself as the only native Georgian. Cecil Staton, an ordained Baptist minister, vowed to view all legislation from the perspective of the traditional family. Gingrey won 40% of the vote to 32% for Staton and 28% for Bob Herriott, a pilot for Delta Airlines.

The bitter September runoff revolved around allegations by Staton that Gingrey supported homosexual causes. Voters who knew Gingrey from his state Senate tenure didn’t buy it. He won 64%-36%, carrying every county. The Democrats, meanwhile, nominated Roger Kahn, a millionaire beer distributor who spent $2.8 million from his own pocket. Gingrey spent $600,000 of his own money. With a boost from the Georgia Republican tide that year, Gingrey won 52%-48%.

In the House, Gingrey has a very conservative voting record and was among the first to join the Tea Party Caucus in 2010. But he is less rhetorically provocative than his Georgia GOP colleagues Tom Price and Paul Broun. So he quite unexpectedly found himself on the wrong side of some of the nation’s best known conservatives in 2009 when he told Politico in offhand remarks: “It’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw rocks.” His sentiments may have resonated with other office-holders, but he wound up apologizing to the pundits the next day, praising Limbaugh as a “conservative giant,” and adding, “I regret those stupid comments.” He drew more national notice in early 2011 when, after touring the U.S.-Mexico border, he said: “If I had to choose from immigrants across the globe, my favorite alien would be our Hispanic and Latino residents coming from across the Southern border.”

In 2005, Gingrey tried but failed to get a seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Instead, he got a seat on the Rules Committee, an influential panel that writes the rules for bringing bills to the floor. The following year, Gingrey lost a bid for the chairmanship of the Republican Policy Committee, part of the GOP leadership.

When Democrats took control of the House in 2007, he had to give up his seat on Rules, and he shifted his focus to the Armed Services Committee, where he has been an avid booster of Lockheed’s Marietta plant. In 2009, he got a seat on the influential Energy and Commerce Committee, where he can work more effectively on health care issues, including shifting the industry toward electronic record-keeping and limiting damages in malpractice lawsuits. During the panel’s drafting of the health care bill in 2009, he tried to address one of conservatives’ biggest concerns by offering an unsuccessful amendment to bar any federal worker or political appointee from interfering in relationships between doctors and patients. Gingrey has taken up the cause of business interests on other legislation before the committee. In October 2009, he unsuccessfully tried to amend a bill ending the use of mercury in the production of chlorine by giving plants until at least 2018 to abandon mercury. But he hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with other conservatives: He was among 92 House Republicans who voted with Democrats to reject an extra $22 billion in budget cuts.

Democrats claimed they would seriously contest Gingrey’s seat in 2004, but he had an easier than expected re-election. He raised $2.3 million, much of it from the medical community. His opponent, conservative Democrat Rick Crawford, failed to impress national Democrats. Gingrey won 57%-43%, and has not had a problem getting re-elected since. He was unopposed in 2010.