The congressman from the 48th District is John Campbell, a Republican who won a special election in December 2005. He has deep roots in Southern California. His great-grandfather was a Republican member of the state Assembly in the mid-1800s, and his grandfather was the managing editor of the now-defunct Herald-Examiner, W.R. Hearst’s rival to the Los Angeles Times. Campbell’s father was an oil field geologist and investor who later edited the Herald-Examiner’s financial pages. John Campbell graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles and got a master’s degree in business taxation from the University of Southern California. A certified public accountant, he did a stint with Ernst & Young, one of the big accounting firms, and then joined an Orange County automobile dealership group as controller in 1978. Reviewing the company’s books, Campbell discovered that the company’s management had diverted $500,000 toward personal expenses. He alerted shareholders, including his father. The chief executive officer was fired, and Campbell was given the job. In the 1990s, he sold off Campbell Automotive’s Mazda, Ford, and Nissan dealerships to focus on its remaining Saab franchises—and on politics. In 2000, Campbell won an Irvine-based seat in the California Assembly, and four years later was elected to the state Senate. Read More

The congressman from the 48th District is John Campbell, a Republican who won a special election in December 2005. He has deep roots in Southern California. His great-grandfather was a Republican member of the state Assembly in the mid-1800s, and his grandfather was the managing editor of the now-defunct Herald-Examiner, W.R. Hearst’s rival to the Los Angeles Times. Campbell’s father was an oil field geologist and investor who later edited the Herald-Examiner’s financial pages. John Campbell graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles and got a master’s degree in business taxation from the University of Southern California. A certified public accountant, he did a stint with Ernst & Young, one of the big accounting firms, and then joined an Orange County automobile dealership group as controller in 1978. Reviewing the company’s books, Campbell discovered that the company’s management had diverted $500,000 toward personal expenses. He alerted shareholders, including his father. The chief executive officer was fired, and Campbell was given the job. In the 1990s, he sold off Campbell Automotive’s Mazda, Ford, and Nissan dealerships to focus on its remaining Saab franchises—and on politics. In 2000, Campbell won an Irvine-based seat in the California Assembly, and four years later was elected to the state Senate.

Campbell got his opportunity to run for Congress when President Bush selected Rep. Christopher Cox to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2005. Campbell was instantly the front-runner. Also in the primary was Marilyn Brewer, a former state Assembly member who supported abortion rights, and drew support from the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership. Campbell was endorsed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom he had worked closely with in Sacramento, and by the state and Orange County Republican parties. With 19 candidates running for the seat in the all-party October 4 special primary, Campbell finished first with 45%, well above Brewer’s 17%, to win the Republican nomination. Steve Young was the Democratic nominee after winning 9%. Jim Gilchrist, founder of the anti-illegal-immigrant Minuteman Project, finished third with 15% and was the nominee of the American Independent Party.

In the campaign for the December 4 runoff, Gilchrist criticized Campbell for his votes in the Assembly, prompting Campbell to say that he made a mistake in 2001 when he voted to allow illegal immigrants to receive in-state college tuition. Gilchrist’s single-issue campaign caught Campbell off guard and turned the contest into a referendum on immigration. Campbell won, though, with a surprisingly modest 44% to 28% for Democrat Young and 25% for Gilchrist.

In the House, Campbell’s voting record is mostly conservative. He drew widespread scorn from liberals when he said on MSNBC at the height of the far-right controversy over President Obama’s birthplace that Obama is a U.S. citizen “as far as I know.” He moved quickly into a leadership role among conservatives as the chairman of the budget and spending task force of the Republican Study Committee. He led Republicans angry about Congress’ lack of spending restraint, offering a series of amendments designed to embarrass sponsors of questionable spending earmarks. Campbell rarely got many more than 100 votes, but made a point about wasteful spending. When he learned that Democrats planned to embarrass him by highlighting his support for a $2.5 million water project for his district, he withdrew his support for it. But he parted company with most fiscal conservatives in September 2008 when he backed the Troubled Assets Relief Program for the financial industry, which he said was vital to stop the rapid slide of the economy. With that shift, he abandoned his bid to chair the conservative Republican Study Committee.

But he remained an outspoken critic of big spending. Campbell came out against the Southern California-manufactured Air Force C-17 transport plane, and he touted “Project YouCut,” a 2010 effort by House Republicans to get citizens to vote for proposed spending votes. However, he raised eyebrows in 2009 when he amended a bill to exempt the lending practices of auto dealers from a new consumer protection financial watchdog agency. He justified the move by arguing that auto dealers already were struggling with the economic downturn and did not need additional regulation. He later joined an unsuccessful GOP effort to amend the bill on the floor to replace the new agency with a council of regulators. Meanwhile, he was one of a group of at least eight lawmakers who were informed in 2010 that the Office of Congressional Ethics was investigating them for attending fundraisers just before a vote on the financial overhaul legislation.

At home, Campbell has been re-elected easily.