The congressman from the 44th District is Ken Calvert, a Republican first elected in 1992. Calvert grew up in Corona. While in college, he was a congressional intern at the Senate Watergate hearings of 1973. Later, he ran the family restaurant back home and, in 1980, got into the commercial real estate business. In 1982, at age 29, he ran for Congress in a district that included almost all of Riverside County and lost a nine-candidate primary to Al McCandless by 868 votes. In 1992, he ran in a new district and won the primary with 28% of the vote. His Democratic opponent was Mark Takano, an eighth-grade teacher who had the support of teachers’ unions and Japanese-Americans. Calvert beat Takano by 519 votes. Calvert ran into trouble at home soon after he was elected, when the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported that he had been stopped by police with a prostitute in his car. Calvert apologized and said that he was upset because his wife had divorced him the month before and his father had recently committed suicide. His opponents in 1994 used the incident against him. Calvert won the primary 51%-49%, with only an 884-vote margin, against business Professor Joseph Khoury. Takano, running again in the general election, ran an ad that accused Calvert of “flagrant womanizing.” But with the Republican tide that year, Calvert won 55%-38%. Read More

The congressman from the 44th District is Ken Calvert, a Republican first elected in 1992. Calvert grew up in Corona. While in college, he was a congressional intern at the Senate Watergate hearings of 1973. Later, he ran the family restaurant back home and, in 1980, got into the commercial real estate business. In 1982, at age 29, he ran for Congress in a district that included almost all of Riverside County and lost a nine-candidate primary to Al McCandless by 868 votes. In 1992, he ran in a new district and won the primary with 28% of the vote. His Democratic opponent was Mark Takano, an eighth-grade teacher who had the support of teachers’ unions and Japanese-Americans. Calvert beat Takano by 519 votes. Calvert ran into trouble at home soon after he was elected, when the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported that he had been stopped by police with a prostitute in his car. Calvert apologized and said that he was upset because his wife had divorced him the month before and his father had recently committed suicide. His opponents in 1994 used the incident against him. Calvert won the primary 51%-49%, with only an 884-vote margin, against business Professor Joseph Khoury. Takano, running again in the general election, ran an ad that accused Calvert of “flagrant womanizing.” But with the Republican tide that year, Calvert won 55%-38%.

In the House, Calvert has compiled a moderate-to-conservative voting record. He broke with most GOP colleagues in 2008 by supporting housing finance legislation, citing his district’s high foreclosure rate. But he has usually been a Republican team player and is an ally of GOP Speaker John Boehner, who put him on the leadership-run Steering Committee charged with making committee assignments.

In 2001, Calvert took over as chairman of the Water and Power Subcommittee of the Resources Committee, where he focused intensively on building support for reauthorization of the vital water-supply program (CALFED) for California’s Central Valley. With the water issues largely resolved, Calvert in 2005 became chairman of the Science and Technology Committee’s Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee. That year, he enacted a reauthorization of NASA programs, which included the goal of returning an astronaut to the moon by 2020 and incentives for private entrepreneurs to develop space technologies.

Calvert left the two panels in 2007 after snagging a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee, where he aggressively sought spending earmarks for his district. In fiscal year 2010, taxpayer groups criticized him for more than $33 million in solo provisions, the third-largest amount in the California delegation behind then Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Appropriations ranking Republican Jerry Lewis. But he found fault with President Obama’s spending initiatives and in 2010, he signed on to Lewis’ bill to return billions of unspent economic stimulus dollars to the Treasury. Calvert has been a major backer of E-Verify, an online system he helped create that allows employers to confirm the eligibility of new hires. In 2009, he also worked to get a statue of Ronald Reagan placed in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

In 2003, Calvert abandoned his 1992 pledge to serve only 12 years. But he was re-elected easily anyway. In recent years, his ethics have been called into question, which could hamper his efforts to move up the ladder in the House. In 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported that he and his real estate partner had bought a four-acre tract for $550,000, then sold it less than a year later for $985,000, after Calvert secured an $8 million spending earmark for expansion of a nearby freeway interchange. Calvert denied wrongdoing, noting that it was not illegal for a member of Congress to make personal investments. A year later, when Calvert was tapped to replace the ethically tainted Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., on Appropriations, the story came back to haunt him. Conservative bloggers reacted angrily to his selection.

In 2008, Calvert had a close contest against Democrat Bill Hedrick, a Corona-Norco school board member who was poorly funded and had no national party help. Hedrick benefited not just from Calvert’s ethics problems, but also from Obama’s success in the district. Calvert won by only a little more than 6,000 votes, 51.2% to 48.8%. He was rescued by his nearly 15,000 vote-lead in the heavily Republican Orange County portion of the district.

Hedrick returned for a rematch in 2010. This time, he got help from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which ran ads slamming Calvert for voting against the economic stimulus bill, children’s health legislation and other initiatives. But the National Republican Congressional Committee stepped in to help Calvert, and the DCCC eventually turned its focus to more-winnable races. Calvert won 55%-45%, spending more than $1.5 million to Hedrick’s $493,000. Shifting demographics could make him a prime target for Democratic redistricters in 2012.