The congresswoman from the 9th District is Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat first elected in 1982. She is now the most senior woman among Democrats in the House, a distinction not lost on her in her occasional clashes with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Kaptur is a plainspoken, old-fashioned Democrat and a dedicated opponent of free trade who does not always toe the party line. Read More
The congresswoman from the 9th District is Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat first elected in 1982. She is now the most senior woman among Democrats in the House, a distinction not lost on her in her occasional clashes with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Kaptur is a plainspoken, old-fashioned Democrat and a dedicated opponent of free trade who does not always toe the party line.
Kaptur grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood in Toledo, the daughter of Polish-American parents who worked at local auto plants. The family also operated a small grocery store, but her father sold it to get a job with health benefits. “It broke his heart,” she said. She has spent almost her entire career in public service. She and her brother, Steve, live in the house where they grew up. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin, the first in her family to attend college, got a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, and then spent eight years as an urban planner in Toledo. She worked on urban revitalization in the Jimmy Carter White House, returning home in 1980 with thoughts of running for elected office. That year, Republican Ed Weber defeated 26-year Democratic Rep. Thomas Ashley. In 1982, when no other Democrat would run against Weber for the U.S. House seat, she did and won 58%-39%, despite being outspent 3-to-1.
Kaptur has long been convinced that Toledo and places like it have lost jobs and industry because of unfair trade practices and low-wage competition from countries like Mexico and China. She pressured the Japanese to buy more American auto parts, but has been leery of Japanese investment in the United States. She was featured prominently in controversial liberal filmmaker Michael Moore’s 2009 movie Capitalism: A Love Story. “I have always said there’s a great injustice being done here, because the power rests with a handful of megabanks and millions of Americans are being affected,” she told The Toledo Blade when the film opened. In May 2011, Kaptur advocated for President Barack Obama’s proposal to end $4 billion in tax benefits to the oil industry.
Kaptur strongly opposed three trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea that passed the House and were later signed into law by President Obama in October 2011. Kaptur took to the House floor during the debate to point out that the number of cars that the U.S. imported from South Korea dwarfed the number of American cars bought by people in the Northeast Asian nation. “These unfair, unbalanced agreements will not have a demonstrable, positive impact on job creation. We have lost six million manufacturing jobs in the past decade. Enough is enough,” she said in a statement.
In earlier decades, Kaptur was probably the most dedicated opponent of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement in Congress. She criticized Democratic President Bill Clinton for doing nothing for sagging U.S. industries and for ignoring Democrats opposed to NAFTA. She became something of a national figure in 1995, when she appeared before Texas businessman Ross Perot’s United We Stand Party and made a rousing speech on trade that had delegates cheering. Perot, running as a third-party candidate for president in 1996, offered her the vice presidential nomination a year later, but she turned it down. She was a vocal opponent of normal trade relations with China and the 2005 Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Reflecting on those early trade wars years later, Kaptur criticized Pelosi’s support of NAFTA. “That’s where the real knife was put in the flesh,” she said. When Pelosi announced in May 2007 an agreement with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson on principles for international trade policy, an uninvited Kaptur glared from the back of the room. In 2002, she ran a quixotic, one-day campaign for minority leader against Pelosi but, predictably, got nowhere against the powerful California Democrat. In 2008, Kaptur challenged Pelosi ally Xavier Becerra of California for the leadership post of Democratic Caucus vice chairman and lost badly, 175-67. However, unlike some Democrats who have had issues with Pelosi, Kaptur backed her for minority leader in 2011 when her hold on power within the caucus was at its most tenuous. One of the dissenting Democrats, Daniel Lipinski of Illinois, cast his vote for Kaptur in a symbolic tribute to her as a “strong voice for American workers.”
Kaptur has a liberal voting record, but departs from party orthodoxy on abortion—she opposes federal funding for abortion. Kaptur opposed an April 2011 House amendment that would have denied federal money to Planned Parenthood. Kaptur said she was confident that federal funds were not being used to pay for abortions, and she argued that Planned Parenthood should still receive federal support because it has provided valuable medical care for women. She is a strong advocate of alternative energy sources such as ethanol and biofuels for Ohio. But again, she made Democrats work to win her vote on energy and climate change legislation in 2009. Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., agreed to her demand to establish a new federal power authority with up to $3.5 billion available to lend to alternative energy projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states. Kaptur has recently sought to promote solar energy, an industry that has been growing in her Toledo-based district. Her amendment to shift $10 million from the administrative Energy Department budget to solar energy research and development passed the House, 212-210, in July 2011. It was included in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill that had not been enacted as of early November 2011.
Strongly opposed to the war in Iraq, Kaptur and Texas Republican Kay Granger in 2005 became the first women to serve on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.
Kaptur keeps close tabs on her district. A constituent gave her the idea to sponsor the legislation that created the World War II Memorial on the Washington Mall. On the Appropriations Committee, she has focused on improvements to bridges, roads, and rail and port facilities in her district. Kaptur is unabashed about working to secure spending earmarks in the appropriations bills for her district, a practice that has come under harsh criticism in recent years. In 2010, she ranked 24th among the top earmark recipients in the House, according to the group Taxpayers for Common Sense. She once challenged Republicans on the committee to limit farm payments, but when they threatened her favorite spending projects, she backed off. “I may be blockheaded sometimes, but I’m not stupid,” Kaptur said.
She is proud of her role as a successful woman in what is still a male-dominated realm and wrote a book on women in Congress. She is exceedingly popular in Toledo and has rarely been seriously challenged at election time. Her 2010 race made national headlines, but not because she was in grave political danger. Her Republican opponent, Rich Iott, a wealthy supermarket chain executive, came under a barrage of criticism when it was revealed that for years he had worn a German SS uniform and participated in Nazi re-enactments. Kaptur prevailed 59%-41%.
Due to a Republican-controlled redistricting process, Kaptur will likely have to battle with fellow progressive Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. in a newly drawn 9th Congressional District. This could be a fierce primary battle between two veterans: Kaptur is serving in her 15th term and Kucinich is in his 8th term. With his quirky personality, Kucinich has more national name recognition. But the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported in October 2011 that Kaptur had about six times more campaign cash on hand than Kucinich. If Kaptur wins, she could possibly face another national figure in the general election: Republican Joe Wurzelbacher. More commonly known as “Joe the Plumber” for being famously injected into a 2008 presidential debate by Republican nominee John McCain, R-Ariz., Wurzelbacher announced he will run against Kaptur or Kucinich in 2012.
