The new congressman the 4th District is Republican Mike Pompeo, elected in 2010 to take the place of GOP Rep. Todd Tiahrt, who left to run for the Senate. Pompeo’s mother met his father over the phone while she was working as a purchasing clerk for Boeing in Wichita, Kan., and he was selling parts to the company from Southern California. They married in Wichita and moved to Santa Ana, Calif., in the heart of conservative Orange County, where Pompeo was born, raised, and attended high school. He graduated first in his class from West Point, and served as a tank platoon leader, cavalry troop executive officer, and squadron maintenance officer in Germany. Pompeo left the Army with the rank of captain. He went on to Harvard Law School, and after graduation, moved to Washington D.C. to join the prestigious Williams & Connolly firm, specializing in tax law. He also volunteered to represent a group of Arkansas residents who were enmeshed in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to uphold term limits for members of Congress. Read More
The new congressman the 4th District is Republican Mike Pompeo, elected in 2010 to take the place of GOP Rep. Todd Tiahrt, who left to run for the Senate. Pompeo’s mother met his father over the phone while she was working as a purchasing clerk for Boeing in Wichita, Kan., and he was selling parts to the company from Southern California. They married in Wichita and moved to Santa Ana, Calif., in the heart of conservative Orange County, where Pompeo was born, raised, and attended high school. He graduated first in his class from West Point, and served as a tank platoon leader, cavalry troop executive officer, and squadron maintenance officer in Germany. Pompeo left the Army with the rank of captain. He went on to Harvard Law School, and after graduation, moved to Washington D.C. to join the prestigious Williams & Connolly firm, specializing in tax law. He also volunteered to represent a group of Arkansas residents who were enmeshed in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to uphold term limits for members of Congress.
Pompeo moved to Kansas in 1996, at the invitation of a friend, to start the company Thayer Aerospace. The company later opened a factory in Mexicali, Mexico, which became an issue in the primary campaign. His opponents argued that it was evidence that he was willing to outsource jobs from Kansas. Pompeo said in response that a contract he won for the factory created 40 jobs at his Kansas site.
Pompeo had been active in Republican politics, working on Sen. Sam Brownback’s campaigns and ultimately serving as a GOP national committeeman. When Tiahrt decided to run for the Senate seat Brownback vacated to run for governor, Pompeo saw an opportunity to bring his pro-business, limited-government philosophy to Congress. The passage of the Democratic health care overhaul in March, he said, “proves political elites have lost their way.” In the Republican primary, Pompeo faced competition from state Sen. Jean Schodorf, as well as from businessmen Wink Hartman and Jim Anderson. Hartman was initially seen as the front-runner and spent more than $1.6 million on the race, but he ran into trouble after Pompeo’s campaign charged that he had taken up residency in Florida for tax purposes. The moderate Schodorf, meanwhile, faced a series of negative ads in the final days of the campaign from outside groups supporting Pompeo; one of them featured a man seeking a hunting license to “bag a RINO”—a reference to “Republican in Name Only,” a pejorative term conservatives often use to describe moderates.
Pompeo won the August primary with 39% of the vote, with Schodorf taking 24%, Hartman receiving 23%, and Anderson getting 13%. Both Schodorf and Hartman told The Wichita Eagle that they were dismayed by the campaign that Pompeo had run, and Hartman briefly considered running in the general election as a Libertarian before dropping the idea.
Pompeo’s Democratic opponent in the general election, state Rep. Raj Goyle, sought to emphasize his commitment to helping workers victimized by layoffs in Wichita’s aircraft industry. Pompeo took a commanding early lead in fundraising, although Goyle stayed competitive. He raised $1.9 million to Pompeo’s $2.2 million. Goyle also made an issue of a billboard ad erected by a Pompeo supporter that read, “Vote American. Vote for Pompeo.” Goyle, whose parents are from India, called the ad “bigoted,” and the Pompeo supporter took it down. Goyle could not overcome the district’s GOP leanings, however, and Pompeo won 59% to 36%.
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
7
(L) : 91 (C)
10
(L) : 83 (C)
Social
(L) : 91 (C)
(L) : 83 (C)
Foreign
-
(L) : 91 (C)
-
(L) : 91 (C)
Composite
5.7
(L) : 94.3 (C)
8.8
(L) : 91.2 (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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Jay Rockefeller Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia stunned political observers when he announced on Jan. 11 that he would not seek a sixth term in 2014. The Democrat is the state's senior senator, and chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
Jay Rockefeller Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia stunned political observers when he announced on Jan. 11 that he would not seek a sixth term in 2014. The Democrat is the state's senior senator, and chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
