The congressman from the 1st District is Steve Scalise, a Republican who won a special election in May 2008 to succeed GOP Rep. Bobby Jindal, who became governor. A native of New Orleans, Scalise (sca-LEEZ) grew up in Metairie. When his parents gave their son a battery-powered microphone, he played town crier on his neighborhood street, decorating his bicycle in red, white and blue and calling people to the polls—the start of a political career. He majored in computer science at Louisiana State University, where he was speaker of the student assembly. After college, he settled in Jefferson Parish as a systems engineer. In 1995, when he was 30, he was elected to the state House, where he served 12 years before winning a state Senate seat in 2007. He pushed legislation to give incentives to the motion picture industry to produce films in Louisiana, and he helped pass a bill that made Louisiana the first state to bar cities from suing gun manufacturers for the actions of criminals. Scalise had considered running for the open seat in the 1st District in 1999 and 2004, but deferred first to David Vitter, now a U.S. senator, then to Jindal. Read More

The congressman from the 1st District is Steve Scalise, a Republican who won a special election in May 2008 to succeed GOP Rep. Bobby Jindal, who became governor. A native of New Orleans, Scalise (sca-LEEZ) grew up in Metairie. When his parents gave their son a battery-powered microphone, he played town crier on his neighborhood street, decorating his bicycle in red, white and blue and calling people to the polls—the start of a political career. He majored in computer science at Louisiana State University, where he was speaker of the student assembly. After college, he settled in Jefferson Parish as a systems engineer. In 1995, when he was 30, he was elected to the state House, where he served 12 years before winning a state Senate seat in 2007. He pushed legislation to give incentives to the motion picture industry to produce films in Louisiana, and he helped pass a bill that made Louisiana the first state to bar cities from suing gun manufacturers for the actions of criminals. Scalise had considered running for the open seat in the 1st District in 1999 and 2004, but deferred first to David Vitter, now a U.S. senator, then to Jindal.

In the special election to replace Jindal, the key contest was the April 5 Republican runoff between Scalise and state Rep. Tim Burns of Mandeville in St. Tammany. Burns cited Scalise’s opposition to a bill banning smoking in restaurants and tried to tie him to special interests. Scalise called for limits on “out-of-control spending” and said he had “the experience to hit the ground running from Day One.” Scalise won 58%-42%, capturing 83% of the Jefferson Parish vote.

The May 3 contest against Democrat Gilda Reed, a college instructor and political neophyte, was never in doubt. Scalise won 75%-23%. But the following November, when Scalise had to defend the seat in regularly scheduled congressional election, he faced a bigger challenge. Democrat Jim Harlan, a venture capitalist, sank $1.8 million of his own money into the race and was not shy about throwing mud. In one television ad, he tried to tie Scalise to a local scandal involving a federal investigation of the abuse of tax credits by the Louisiana Institute of Film Technology because Scalise had been a sponsor of the tax credit program in the legislature. Scalise cited his opponent’s support of presidential candidate Barack Obama as evidence that Harlan was too liberal for the district. Scalise coasted to a 66%-34% win for a full two-year term, taking 71% in Jefferson Parish and 68% in St. Tammany, which together accounted for 71% of the total vote. He coasted to re-election in 2010 with 79%.

Scalise is a down-the-line Republican and “has emerged as one of the GOP’s most full-throttled conservatives,” The Times-Picayune said in 2010. His rhetorical edge is sharper than that of his predecessors, Republicans Jindal and former Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston. He has railed against what he calls Obama’s “radical agenda.” He joined the Tea Party Caucus and in 2011 became head of communications for the Republican Study Committee, a group of the House’s most conservative members. But Scalise is also known for his sense of humor, and is friendly with many Democrats. He and liberal Henry Waxman of California regularly talk about their children and grandchildren, and he plays basketball with 2nd District Democrat Cedric Richmond, an old friend from their days in Baton Rouge.

In 2009, Scalise joined the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, a useful assignment for this district. He called for more energy production, including offshore drilling. “Our country’s demand for energy increases every year,’’ he told Esquire in 2010. “How are you going to meet those needs? Domestic oil, natural gas, clean coal, solar, wind, nuclear power—let’s use everything.” After the BP spill, he shepherded colleagues down to the region to see the disaster for themselves and was incensed by Obama’s moratorium on offshore drilling, calling it “reckless.” He supports allowing other states to allow drilling without regulatory encumbrances.

He was a staunch opponent of the Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill to allow industries to trade emissions credits in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At an April 2009 committee hearing, he accused former Vice President Al Gore of standing to benefit financially from the bill. And Scalise got a provision into a committee-passed bill that year to require a Government Accountability Office study after implementation to assess the legislation’s impact on small businesses.