Elected 1994, seat up 2006 Born: Apr. 25, 1942, Oakland, NE Home: Phoenix Education: U. of AZ, B.A. 1964, L.L.B. 1966 Religion: Presbyterian Marital Status: married (Caryll)

Career:

• Political: U.S. House of Reps., 1986-94.
• Professional: Practicing atty., 1966-86; Chmn., Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, 1984-85.

DC Office: 730 HSOB 20510, 202-224-4521; Fax: 202-224-2207; Web site: www.senate.gov/~kyl

State Offices: Phoenix, 602-840-1891; Tucson,520-575-8633.

Committees:

• Energy & Natural Resources: Energy; Public Lands & Forests; Water & Power.
• Finance: Health Care; Long-Term Growth & Debt Reduction; Social Security & Family Policy (RMM).
• Intelligence (Select).
• Judiciary: Constitution, Federalism & Property Rights; Immigration; Technology, Terrorism & Government Information (RMM).

Jon Kyl is a Republican first elected in 1994. His father John Kyl was a Republican congressman from Iowa (1959-65, 1967-73), who eventually lost his seat in redistricting; Jon Kyl moved to a state that, in effect, was gaining the Republican seats Great Plains states like Iowa were losing. Kyl went to college and law school in Arizona, practiced law in Phoenix, worked on Republican campaigns and headed the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce; he won the heavily Republican 4th District seat in 1986 by beating former (1973-77) Congressman John Conlan, who had support from the religious right, 60%-28%.

In the House, Kyl was a leader among Republicans on the Strategic Defense Initiative, the balanced budget amendment, and for disclosing the names of House members with overdrafts on the House bank--one of the causes that destabilized Democrats' control of the House in 1993 and 1994. But by that time Kyl was running for the Senate seat held for three terms by Democrat Dennis DeConcini, whose reputation was stained by his involvement in the Keating Five scandal. Kyl had no primary opposition and the further good fortune that one-term Congressman Sam Coppersmith won the September 13 primary by only 59 votes of 255,000 cast and after a two-week recount. Kyl, with far more money, ran ads with home movie texture showing him traveling through the desert countryside, dressed in jeans and working on ranches, while talking about how he and his wife first fell in love with the state (he has climbed Mount Camelback "more than 1,000 times"). Coppersmith stressed his pro-choice stand on abortion and said he would welcome a campaign visit from President Clinton. Kyl won solidly, 54%-40%.

Kyl has a solidly conservative record. Quietly, he has become a major force on defense policy. He is perhaps the Senate's biggest champion of a missile defense system. A 1996 speech he made in Europe on the future of NATO impressed Margaret Thatcher and Henry Kissinger, who accepted his invitation to a conference at the Arizona Biltmore. In 1997 he led with Jesse Helms the losing fight against the Chemical Weapons Convention. Learning from that experience, he organized the winning fight to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, submitted by Bill Clinton to the Senate in September 1997. Starting in 1998, Kyl studied the details and worked to persuade Republican colleagues to oppose the treaty. In May 1999 he told Majority Leader Trent Lott that he had 34 solid votes against, enough to prevent ratification, but Foreign Relations Chairman Jesse Helms insisted that he get more before he would let the treaty come to the floor. All 45 Democrats, unaware in the increasingly partisan Senate of Kyl's efforts, wrote Helms in July demanding the treaty be brought forward by September. Helms replied dismissively that he would not do so until he got action on the Kyoto treaty and amendments to the ABM treaty. In September North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan promised to "plant myself on the floor like a potted plant" until the CTBT was considered. The ranking Foreign Relations Democrat still thought that 25 Republicans could be persuaded to vote for the treaty, and concurred when Lott promised to bring it up in October. Only then did Senate Democrats and the Clinton White House begin to discover that they had conspired to defeat their own treaty. Kyl had done his work well: the CTBT did not even get a majority, much less the required two-thirds, as it was defeated 48-51. "Our success," Kyl said, "depended on being quiet about what we did."

Kyl serves on Judiciary and is sponsor, with Dianne Feinstein, of a constitutional amendment on victims' rights. It would give victims of crime a right to be informed, to be present and to be heard at critical stages in the judicial process, a right to speedy trial and final conclusion free from unreasonable delay, full restitution from the criminal, and protection from violence or intimidation. It had 40 co-sponsors but was shelved in April 2000 because it lacked the necessary two-thirds. Kyl has also co-sponsored with Feinstein a bill to prepare defenses for attacks by terrorists with chemical and biological weapons. He has introduced bills outlawing identity theft, Internet gambling and on-line casinos. He was a lead Senate sponsor of the bill to ban racial quotas and preferences. He has worked to beef up the Border Patrol and to track legal immigrants who overstay their visas. He supports cuts in legal immigration and new rules for family-based immigration--the kind of measures that have cost Republicans Hispanic votes. He worked with Congressman Ed Pastor, the only Democrat in the Arizona delegation, to create three new federal judgeships and to confirm the Democratic appointees in October 2000 after Democrats put a hold on them. Alarmed by increasing numbers of illegal border crossings in Arizona, and by occasional violence by local farmers against illegal immigrants, he has worked to increase the number of Border Patrol agents in Arizona, nearly doubling the Tucson office and getting $3 million for new facilities in Douglas, Tucson, Yuma and Florence.

On other issues, Kyl is prime sponsor of the bill, vetoed by Bill Clinton, to phase out the estate tax. He was the Senate leader on the move to change the Clinton administration's barring of doctors who take Medicare patients from contracting with patients for more services or higher fees. He has worked patiently to settle the water rights claims of Arizona Indian tribes. He was the prime sponsor of a 1999 law setting up a semiautonomous division of the Energy Department to oversee nuclear weapons research and production. In June 2000, after security lapses were discovered at the Los Alamos labs, Kyl called for Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's resignation.

Kyl is not an active seeker of publicity, and is far less well known in Arizona and Washington than his colleague John McCain. But in June 2000 he was interviewed by Richard Cheney, whom he had chosen as a kind of model when he came to the House, as a possible vice-presidential candidate; he was interviewed a second time in July but recommended against his own selection. Kyl came up for re-election in 2000, and in July 1999 the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee called him "the most vulnerable Republican incumbent." But Democrats were not able to get anyone to run, and Kyl became the only senator without major party opposition that year. He won 79% of the vote against an independent, a Green Party candidate and a Libertarian.

Group Ratings
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2000	0	14	0	0	67	85	83	85	100	100	100
1999	0	--	0	0	58	--	83	82	100	--	--

National Journal Ratings
	1999 LIB	--	1999 CONS		2000 LIB	--	2000 CONS
Economic	0%	--	83%		32%	--	64%
Social	29%	--	69%		22%	--	73%
Foreign	37%	--	60%		0%	--	95%

Key Votes of the 106th Congress
1. Educ. Savings Accts. Y 2. Prescrip. Drug Benefit N 3. Delay Ergonomic Standards Y 4. Phase Out Estate Tax Y 5. Review Movie Violence Y 6. Gun Show Bckgrnd. Checks N		7. Ban Part.-Birth Abortion	Y
8. Broaden Hate Crimes List	N
9. NATO War in Serbia	N
10. Table Cuba Travel Ban	Y
11. Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty	N
12. Perm. Trade with China	Y

Election Results
2000 general	Jon Kyl (R)	1,108,196	(79%)
	William Toel (I)	109,230	(8%)
	Vance Hansen (Green)	108,926	(8%)
	Barry J. Hess, II (Lib)	70,724	(5%)
2000 primary	Jon Kyl (R)	unopposed
1994 general	Jon Kyl (R)	600,999	(54%)
	Sam Coppersmith (D)	442,510	(40%)
	Scott Grainger (Lib)	75,493	(7%)

Campaign Finance
2000	Receipts	Receipts from PACs	Expenditures
Jon Kyl (R)	$2,985,612	$880,280	$2,503,674
William Toel (I)	$14,996		$21,491