The congressman from the 49th District is Darrell Issa (ICE-sah), a Republican first elected in 2000. He grew up in a working-class section of Cleveland, the son of an X-ray technician. Hampered by dyslexia, Issa found academics difficult, and he dropped out of high school to join the Army. After his service, the military paid for him to finish school, and he graduated from Siena Heights University in Michigan. A brother’s run-ins with the law for car theft spurred Issa’s idea for his first business venture. He invested all of his savings, some $7,000, in a car-alarm business in Cleveland, eventually taking it over with his wife, Kathy, and relocating the business to Vista, Calif., north of San Diego. Their Directed Electronics became the nation’s largest manufacturer of vehicle security systems, including the popular Viper system, and earned them a fortune estimated at $200 million. Issa became active in the high-technology industry, serving as chairman of the Consumer Electronics Association. Read More

The congressman from the 49th District is Darrell Issa (ICE-sah), a Republican first elected in 2000. He grew up in a working-class section of Cleveland, the son of an X-ray technician. Hampered by dyslexia, Issa found academics difficult, and he dropped out of high school to join the Army. After his service, the military paid for him to finish school, and he graduated from Siena Heights University in Michigan. A brother’s run-ins with the law for car theft spurred Issa’s idea for his first business venture. He invested all of his savings, some $7,000, in a car-alarm business in Cleveland, eventually taking it over with his wife, Kathy, and relocating the business to Vista, Calif., north of San Diego. Their Directed Electronics became the nation’s largest manufacturer of vehicle security systems, including the popular Viper system, and earned them a fortune estimated at $200 million. Issa became active in the high-technology industry, serving as chairman of the Consumer Electronics Association.

In the early 1990s, he turned to politics, contributing to Republicans and chairing the 1996 campaign to pass Proposition 209, which banned the use of racial quotas and preferences in California. In 1998, he ran for the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Barbara Boxer and spent $9.8 million of his own money. He lost the primary 45%-40% to Matt Fong. In November 1999, when Ron Packard of the heavily Republican 48th District announced his retirement, 10 candidates ran in the Republican primary. This turned into a contest between Issa and state Sen. Bill Morrow. Morrow questioned Issa’s business practices, and Issa raised questions about Morrow’s honesty. On most issues, the candidates took similar positions. Issa spent $1.5 million of his own money on the primary and beat Morrow 46%-30%. In the fall, the Democratic nominee abandoned his campaign after getting little national party support, and Issa won 61%-28%. He has been re-elected easily.

In the House, Issa’s voting record has been relatively moderate, especially on the foreign affairs issues that capture his attention. Of Lebanese descent, Issa has been vocal in condemning the sponsorship of terrorism by Arab nations while also urging the United States to reach out to build coalitions with friendly Arab nations. That earned him enemies among pro-Israel groups, including extremists on that side of the conflict. Two members of the militant Jewish Defense League were charged with plotting to blow up Issa’s office in San Clemente, a Culver City mosque, and a Muslim public affairs building. One of them died in 2002 and the other pleaded guilty to civil rights and weapons violations in 2005.

Issa also has been active on patent reform issues. Drawing on his experience as a patent holder (he holds 37 of them), he sponsored a bipartisan bill that became law in 2011 giving district court judges hearing patent cases access to clerks trained in patent law. With Democrat Howard Berman of California he co-sponsored legislation to create a review process of already-issued patents and to tighten rules for calculating damages in patent lawsuits. The technology industry had led the charge for patent reform, contending it is being held hostage by “patent trolls” who obtain patents solely for the purpose of launching infringement suits to cash in on multibillion-dollar damage awards. Issa also supported requiring radio stations to pay royalties to record companies and performers as well as to composers of music, and he joined in a Democratic amendment to allow low-income stations to pay a small, fixed yearly fee.

After the 2008 election, Republican leaders chose Issa over several more senior Republicans to be the ranking member on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, with broad jurisdiction over the federal government. The Democratic majority was reluctant to launch investigations of an incoming Democratic administration, so Issa hired staff capable of conducting investigations. Inevitably, Issa sought investigations and subpoenas that Chairman Edolphus Towns of New York declined to grant. The two disagreed sharply on opening an investigation of Countrywide Financial, a bank that had given favorable treatment to Democratic Sens. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Kent Conrad of North Dakota. In October 2009, Republicans filmed Democrats leaving the hearing room after they canceled a hearing on Countrywide. In retaliation, Towns ordered the locks changed and barred the Republicans from the room. In March 2010, Issa called, to no avail, for a special prosecutor to investigate whether White House aides violated the law when they tried to induce Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., not to run against Sen. Arlen Specter after Specter changed his party affiliation to Democrat. But Issa and Towns found agreement in some areas, including Issa’s 2009 bill requiring agencies to standardize information in their reports to create more transparency and another bill giving the Government Accountability Office authority to probe the inner workings of the Federal Reserve.

Gradually, Issa worked to increase the size of his staff, expanding his power and making it possible for him to leap into investigative mode when Republicans won majority control of the House in 2010 and he moved up to chairman of the committee. He suggested that he would follow the aggressive tactics of Democrat Henry Waxman of California, who chaired the panel in 2007 and 2008 during the Bush administration. He pointed out that he had worked with Towns on some matters that reflected negatively on the Bush White House and that there was sufficient corruption and inefficiency to be ferreted out in government without regard for partisan blame. But in the early days of the Republican Congress, he called the Obama administration “one of the most corrupt administrations ever.” He later said that he meant it was guilty of overspending and inefficiency.

Issa has harbored ambitions for statewide office. In early 2003, he spent $1.7 million of his own money to get the signatures needed for a recall election of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. His hopes of getting unified support as a replacement candidate foundered when others stayed in the race and then were utterly dashed when Arnold Schwarzenegger got in. Issa tearfully announced that he would not run. He has been re-elected easily to his House seat.