The congressman from the 1st District is Jeff Miller, a Republican who won a special election in October 2001. The scion of a pioneer farm family that settled in central Florida in the mid-1800s, Miller grew up in Levy County, where his parents raised cattle. He graduated from the University of Florida and became an aide to the state’s longtime agriculture commissioner, Democrat Doyle Conner. In 1998, he moved to Santa Rosa County, his wife’s family’s home, and began to sell real estate. Also in 1998, a year after he switched to the Republican Party, he ran his first political campaign, challenging a Republican state representative who had received some negative press after an altercation with a state trooper. Miller won 53%-47%. Not long afterward, the 1st District seat came open following the resignation of Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough, who became a talk-show host on the MSNBC cable network. Miller quickly became the favorite of national party leaders. Sensitive to coastal interests, Miller and the other serious contenders all claimed to be ardent environmentalists, an unusual twist in a Republican primary. Miller’s best-known opponent was state Rep. Randy Knepper, chief of staff to the district’s former Democratic representative, Earl Hutto, who retired in 1994. Scarborough endorsed Miller as “a strong voice for northwest Florida.” In the six-candidate contest, Miller got 54% to only 15% for Knepper and 16% for businessman Michael Francisco, a decorated combat pilot. National Democrats made no major effort to win this seat that they had held less than seven years earlier, and Miller won the general election, 66%-28%. Read More

The congressman from the 1st District is Jeff Miller, a Republican who won a special election in October 2001. The scion of a pioneer farm family that settled in central Florida in the mid-1800s, Miller grew up in Levy County, where his parents raised cattle. He graduated from the University of Florida and became an aide to the state’s longtime agriculture commissioner, Democrat Doyle Conner. In 1998, he moved to Santa Rosa County, his wife’s family’s home, and began to sell real estate. Also in 1998, a year after he switched to the Republican Party, he ran his first political campaign, challenging a Republican state representative who had received some negative press after an altercation with a state trooper. Miller won 53%-47%. Not long afterward, the 1st District seat came open following the resignation of Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough, who became a talk-show host on the MSNBC cable network. Miller quickly became the favorite of national party leaders. Sensitive to coastal interests, Miller and the other serious contenders all claimed to be ardent environmentalists, an unusual twist in a Republican primary. Miller’s best-known opponent was state Rep. Randy Knepper, chief of staff to the district’s former Democratic representative, Earl Hutto, who retired in 1994. Scarborough endorsed Miller as “a strong voice for northwest Florida.” In the six-candidate contest, Miller got 54% to only 15% for Knepper and 16% for businessman Michael Francisco, a decorated combat pilot. National Democrats made no major effort to win this seat that they had held less than seven years earlier, and Miller won the general election, 66%-28%.

In the House, Miller has compiled a conservative record. His National Journal voting score in 2009 was the furthest to the right of any Florida Republican. In contrast to the voluble Scarborough, he gained a reputation for being soft-spoken and a good listener. But he also has a decidedly lower profile. When he arrived in Washington, Miller got seats on the Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs committees, obvious assignments for this district. He made multiple visits to U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and praised the conduct of the war. He worked to protect local military facilities in the base-closing process. In 2004, when Democrats were seeking to force a House vote on Miller’s bill to provide a 100% annuity to surviving military spouses, he persuaded Republican leaders to call up the bill and avoid a partisan conflict; the measure was passed into law. In 2008, he secured in 2008 $54 million for an in-patient center at Eglin Hospital and pushed for a new veterans’ hospital near the base to replace one destroyed by Katrina in 2005. A long-standing foe of oil and gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, he relented in 2006, accepting a deal that opened up some offshore drilling but included a ban on drilling rigs in a military training range that extends at least 200 miles south of Fort Walton Beach.

With the Republican takeover of the House in 2011, Miller rose to chairman of Veterans’ Affairs. He has vowed to press the Veterans Benefit Administration to reduce its significant backlog of benefit claims. Miller got two veterans bills signed into law in 2011. The House passed his Restoring GI Bill Fairness Act in May and the Senate passed a similar version in July. The bill, which President Obama signed into law in August 2011, authorizes the Veterans Affairs Department to help pay tuition costs for student veterans at private colleges and universities in seven states. Miller later worked with Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash. to find common ground on two separate bills aimed at helping unemployed veterans. The final bill, labeled the VOW to Hire Heroes Act and signed by President Obama in late November, would give companies a $2,400 tax credit to hire a veteran previously unemployed for one month and $5,600 to hire a veteran unemployed for at least six months. Businesses could receive up to $9,600 in tax credits for hiring unemployed veterans with service-connected disabilities.

With increasing focus on fiscal austerity in the fall of 2011, Miller fought to keep the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program off the chopping block. During an October House Armed Services Committee hearing, Miller argued that the F-35 program would directly or indirectly employ some 127,000 people. Pilots of the F-35s are expected to be trained at the Eglin Air Force Base in Miller's district.

When Democrats still controlled the House, Miller was the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on terrorism and unconventional threats. In that role, he worked with Democrats to increase money for the military’s Special Operations Command and for cybersecurity in fiscal 2011. After the BP oil spill disaster in 2010, he introduced a bill to protect affected homeowners from foreclosures and asked the company to provide up to $1 billion for local governments, businesses and residents along the Gulf Coast. An avid gun rights advocate, Miller sponsored a bill in 2007 to give hunters in the District of Columbia in-state rates for licenses in the more open spaces of Maryland or Virginia. He also has sponsored a bill to place the face of Ronald Reagan on the half-dollar coin.

In the 2002 primary, Miller faced a rematch with special election primary runner-up Francisco, who criticized his lack of military experience. Miller won 64%-36%. Since then, Democrats have run only token challengers against him.