The congressman from the 6th District is Sam Graves, a Republican first elected in 2000 and the chairman of the Small Business Committee. He is a lifelong resident of Tarkio in the northwest corner of the state. He graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in agronomy, farmed with his father and brother, and joined the Farm Bureau. He ran for the state House in 1992 and beat a longtime Democratic incumbent. Two years later, he was elected to the state Senate. He attracted attention in 1998 with a five-hour filibuster against a school desegregation bill that he said put rural areas at a disadvantage, but the bill eventually passed. Read More

The congressman from the 6th District is Sam Graves, a Republican first elected in 2000 and the chairman of the Small Business Committee. He is a lifelong resident of Tarkio in the northwest corner of the state. He graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in agronomy, farmed with his father and brother, and joined the Farm Bureau. He ran for the state House in 1992 and beat a longtime Democratic incumbent. Two years later, he was elected to the state Senate. He attracted attention in 1998 with a five-hour filibuster against a school desegregation bill that he said put rural areas at a disadvantage, but the bill eventually passed.

Graves got his opportunity to run for the U.S. House when Democratic Rep. Pat Danner withdrew from her race for re-election just minutes before the filing deadline. Not by accident, the immediate favorite to succeed her was her son, state Sen. Steve Danner, also a Democrat. Graves entered the race within the short window provided by state law and drew support from national Republicans. Teresa Loar, a moderate Republican on the Kansas City Council, attacked Graves as the darling of extremist and sexist party leaders, but Graves beat her 68%-17%.

In the general election, Danner billed himself as a conservative Democrat and switched from being pro-abortion rights to opposing abortion. In an editorial endorsing Graves, the Kansas City Star said that Danner’s campaign switch on abortion showed that he “engaged in raw opportunism at the slightest opportunity.” Graves won 51%-47%.

In the House, Graves has usually been a party loyalist. He has tended mostly to local issues. In 2005, the House passed his amendment to the transportation bill to preempt state laws governing liability for damages involving rental cars, a measure of interest to St. Louis-based Enterprise Rent-A-Car. In 2007, the House passed his amendment to the farm bill banning anyone found cheating federal farm programs from participating in the future.

He also is known for his hard-line stance against illegal immigration, introducing a bill in 2010 to build an additional 150 miles of border fencing. In 2009, he vociferously opposed the Democrats’ cap-and-trade energy legislation to limit carbon emissions, joining two other Republicans in passing out documents purporting to detail how the measure would unfairly target rural Americans. The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said the information in the documents came directly from Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company.

On the Small Business Committee, Graves has been a critic of the Obama administration’s initiatives. He joined most Republicans in opposing the 2010 Small Business Jobs and Credit Act, which he said represented too much government interference in the private sector. He also has backed allowing venture capitalists to tap into two research grant programs that have been reserved for small businesses. Upon taking the chairmanship in 2011, he said he would look for ways to slash spending at the Small Business Administration while overseeing the regulatory burden imposed on private firms by other agencies as well as the impact of health care reform on those businesses.

Graves was the subject of an ethics investigation for allegedly violating House rules for his role in arranging testimony to his committee by a family friend. The matter touched off a rare public squabble between the new Office of Congressional Ethics and the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct; while OCE recommended that the case merited further consideration, the ethics panel found deficiencies in the office’s handling of the matter and voted unanimously in October 2009 to clear Graves.

In 2008, national Democrats were excited when former Kansas City Mayor and St. Joseph native Kay Barnes announced she would challenge Graves. But Graves attacked Barnes for “San Francisco values” and supporting “a homosexual agenda” because her picture had appeared in a gay magazine and he won easily, 59%-37%. In February 2011, after much consideration, he declined the opportunity to take on Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in 2012. He said his goal instead was to eventually chair the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.