The congresswoman from the 4th District is Betty McCollum, a Democrat first elected in 2000. McCollum grew up in North St. Paul and graduated from the College of St. Catherine. She was a substitute social studies teacher while working as a retail sales manager at a Sears department store. She was also raising two children. After her daughter suffered a fractured skull on a slide in a city park, McCollum worked with the city of North St. Paul to make repairs. She ran for the North St. Paul City Council and lost. In 1986, she ran again and was elected. McCollum served until 1992, when she was elected to the state House of Representatives after defeating incumbents in both the primary and general elections. Read More

The congresswoman from the 4th District is Betty McCollum, a Democrat first elected in 2000. McCollum grew up in North St. Paul and graduated from the College of St. Catherine. She was a substitute social studies teacher while working as a retail sales manager at a Sears department store. She was also raising two children. After her daughter suffered a fractured skull on a slide in a city park, McCollum worked with the city of North St. Paul to make repairs. She ran for the North St. Paul City Council and lost. In 1986, she ran again and was elected. McCollum served until 1992, when she was elected to the state House of Representatives after defeating incumbents in both the primary and general elections.

In February 2000, Democratic Rep. Bruce Vento announced that he had malignant mesothelioma and would not seek re-election. He died on October 10, 2000. McCollum was endorsed by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in the September primary. She faced three opponents, but with the DFL’s endorsement, McCollum won easily, with 50% to 23% for state Sen. Steve Novak. Republicans nominated state Sen. Linda Runbeck, a vigorously anti-abortion candidate. McCollum backed prescription drug coverage under Medicare and opposed tax cuts before Congress paid down the debt. Runbeck, who opposed gun control and took conservative positions on health care and education, attacked McCollum and her Democratic allies for running “hateful, vicious attack ads” that distorted her positions. This was a three-way race, thanks to the candidacy of former Ramsey County prosecutor Tom Foley, a longtime DFLer who ran on the ticket of Gov. Jesse Ventura’s Independence Party. Once again, McCollum won unexpectedly easily, 48%-31%, with 21% for Foley.

In the House, McCollum has a consistently liberal voting record. She is an ally of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, whom she calls a mentor, and delivered the speech formally nominating Pelosi as party whip in October 2001. With Pelosi’s help, McCollum has secured some plums, including a seat on the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee and in 2006, the Appropriations Committee seat that had been held by former Rep. Martin Sabo, a Minnesota Democrat. In the 111th Congress (2009-10), McCollum was given a seat on the Budget Committee. She is also one of three House members appointed to serve on the National Council on the Arts.

Recently McCollum has taken an interest in the role that charities play in the U.S. economy. She introduced a bill in 2010 to set up a national nonprofit council to delve into the issue, which attracted bipartisan support, but did not move. She also has led efforts to change lawmakers’ thinking about the World Bank, and founded a caucus advocating more dialogue with the global financier. She has noted that Congress and the bank are involved in many of the same overseas efforts, including fighting poverty and AIDS. Earlier, McCollum served as a member of the Education and the Workforce Committee. She supported sending the House version of the No Child Left Behind education bill to Conference Committee, but she joined the opposing camp because she said the administration had not put sufficient money into the program to make it work. She also sponsored legislation that would crack down on diploma mills that sell worthless degrees. On the Foreign Affairs Committee, McCollum was a vocal critic of the war in Iraq.

An important local project for McCollum has been the Central Corridor, an 11-mile, light-rail link between downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis. She had secured an initial $2 million for the project and was incensed when conservative Republicans targeted proposed additional funding as pork barrel spending. She and Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty clashed over her insistence that he sign a statement supporting congressional funding for the project. When Pawlenty vetoed a companion state funding plan in 2008, the project seemed dead; McCollum helped to keep it alive by securing $20 million in the omnibus fiscal 2009 spending bill to cover the final design work. An agreement was reached in 2011 for the project to move forward.

McCollum has been re-elected easily. She is sometimes mentioned as a possible statewide candidate but has declined opportunities to run.

In 2008, McCollum voiced unusually tough criticism of Democrat Al Franken in his campaign to unseat Republican Sen. Coleman. She called some of the comedian’s written work, which had appeared in Playboy and other publications, “pornographic writings that are indefensible.” Then after he won the DFL nomination, McCollum reverted to form as a party loyalist and campaigned with Franken.