The new congressman from the 7th district is Pat Meehan, a Republican elected in 2010 and a former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia. Meehan grew up in Cheltenham Township, in Montgomery County, just north of Philadelphia. His father was a construction worker, his mother a secretary. Neither went to college, but Meehan began saving for college when he was 13, walking more than a mile to caddy at a golf course. He helped pay his tuition at Bowdoin College by working at a rubber factory, where he shoveled rubber pellets into an incinerator. He played hockey in college and between 1979 and 1982, worked as a referee in the National Hockey League, a job that he says was good training for politics. He learned to stand behind controversial calls, to be fair in the public spotlight, and to know when to break up a fight and when to let the players slug it out, Meehan told National Journal. And he said that standing up to angry hockey players also made going to law school seem less intimidating. Read More

The new congressman from the 7th district is Pat Meehan, a Republican elected in 2010 and a former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia. Meehan grew up in Cheltenham Township, in Montgomery County, just north of Philadelphia. His father was a construction worker, his mother a secretary. Neither went to college, but Meehan began saving for college when he was 13, walking more than a mile to caddy at a golf course. He helped pay his tuition at Bowdoin College by working at a rubber factory, where he shoveled rubber pellets into an incinerator. He played hockey in college and between 1979 and 1982, worked as a referee in the National Hockey League, a job that he says was good training for politics. He learned to stand behind controversial calls, to be fair in the public spotlight, and to know when to break up a fight and when to let the players slug it out, Meehan told National Journal. And he said that standing up to angry hockey players also made going to law school seem less intimidating.

Meehan graduated from Temple University law school, and then went to work for the large law firm founded by long ago Philadelphia Mayor Richardson Dilworth (1956-62). He left the firm in 1991 to become counsel to then-Republican Sen. Arlen Specter. In 1994, Meehan was the campaign manager for Republican Rick Santorum in his successful Senate race against incumbent Democrat Harris Wofford. With his solid Republican credentials, he was elected district attorney in Delaware County in 1995. In that role, he got substantial publicity for the successful prosecution of millionaire John Eleuthere du Pont for the murder of Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz. He also created a special victims unit that allowed domestic violence cases to be prosecuted without victims having to testify in open court. In 2001, on Specter’s recommendation, Meehan was appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He brought several high-profile corruption cases against Philadelphia-area politicians, Republicans as well as Democrats, some resulting from wiretaps in the office of Philadelphia Mayor John Street, who himself was not charged with any crime.

When Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak decided to challenge Specter in 2010, Meehan ran for Sestak’s House seat. Though the 7th District was trending Democratic, Meehan was a well-known prosecutor with moderate positions on cultural issues. Relying primarily on his Philadelphia-area contacts, he managed to raise $3 million, almost twice that raised by his Democratic opponent, Bryan Lentz, an Iraq war veteran and two-term state representative from Swarthmore. The two differed on economic issues, with Meehan favoring extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for all taxpayers, and Lentz saying he would carve out an exception for high-income earners. Meehan was endorsed by the United Aerospace Workers Local 1069, which represents workers at Boeing’s Ridley Park plant. But his campaign took a hit when local newspapers reported that a Republican activist had produced some 39 false signatures on Meehan’s candidacy petition.

Meehan criticized Lentz for casting ghost votes—having someone else vote for him—in Harrisburg. Lentz’s campaign manager vehemently denied it, but then backtracked when Meehan produced testimony from a witness in the spectator’s gallery at the state Capitol. Meehan also charged that Democratic volunteers helped place a third-party conservative on the general election ballot to try to draw votes from him.

Meehan won 55%-44%, carrying all three counties in the district. That was a pretty solid margin in a district that had voted 56%-43% for Democrat Barack Obama for president. In Washington, Meehan was one of three freshmen appointed to the Republican Steering Committee, a leadership-run panel that makes committee assignments.