Elected June 1993, seat up 2006 Born: July 22, 1943, Galveston Home: Dallas Education: U. of TX, B.A. 1992, J.D. 1967 Religion: Episcopalian Marital Status: married (Ray)

Career:

• Political: TX House of Reps., 1972-76; TX Treasurer, 1990-93.
• Professional: Political & legal corresp., KPRC-TV, 1967-70; Vice Chmn., Natl. Transp. Safety Bd., 1976-78; V.P. & Gen. Cnsl., RepublicBank Corp., 1978-82; Owner, McCraw Candies, 1984-88.

DC Office: 284 RSOB 20510, 202-224-5922; Fax: 202-224-0776; Web site: www.senate.gov/~hutchison

State Offices: Abilene, 915-676-2839; Austin,512-916-5834; Dallas,214-361-3500; Houston,713-653-3456; San Antonio,210-340-2885.

Committees:

• Republican Conference Vice Chair
.
• Appropriations: Commerce, Justice, State & Judiciary; Defense; District of Columbia; Labor, HHS & Education; Military Construction (RMM); Transportation.
• Commerce, Science & Transportation: Aviation (RMM); Communications; Oceans, Atmosphere & Fisheries; Science, Technology & Space; Surface Transportation & Merchant Marine.
• Rules & Administration.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, junior senator from Texas, is a Republican who won her seat in a June 1993 special election. She is of old Texas stock, the great-great-granddaughter of Charles S. Taylor, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, who was a friend and business partner of Senator Thomas Jefferson Rusk, the first person to hold this seat. She grew up in LaMarque, near the refinery town of Texas City, a prom queen who went to college and then law school at the University of Texas; unable to get a law job in 1967, she worked for a Houston TV station as a reporter. In 1972, she won a seat in the legislature, its first Republican woman. In 1976 she went to Washington to fill the number two position at the National Transportation Safety Board. She married, moved to Dallas and went into banking and became a small business owner in 1978. In 1982, she lost a House race to Steve Bartlett, later mayor of Dallas. But she stayed active in Republican politics and in 1990 was elected state treasurer, a breakthrough race for state Republicans. Hutchison began her political career when it was no advantage to be a woman and has been mocked by liberals for her tight-lipped good manners and by Washington conservatives as a "Texas pompom girl." Her response: "This is what I have faced all my life--the trivialization of me--which I have not ever let bother me. I have always been able to rise above the expectations." Indeed: She is Senator from the nation's second largest state, one of three senators in history (Dianne Feinstein and Daniel Patrick Moynihan are the others) to have been elected with 4 million votes.

Her big break came in January 1993 when Lloyd Bentsen resigned his Senate seat after 22 years to become secretary of the Treasury. To replace him, Governor Ann Richards appointed Bob Krueger, a two-term congressman in the 1970s who nearly beat Senator John Tower in 1978, then ran third in a three-way Senate primary in 1984 and was elected Railroad commissioner (actually, oil regulator) in 1990. Running against him in the May 1993 all-party primary were three Republicans, Hutchison and Congressmen Joe Barton and Jack Fields. Krueger opposed the Clinton budget and tax plan, but Democrats were so unpopular in Texas then--Clinton had a 73% negative job rating--that Krueger won only 29% of the total vote, just behind Hutchison, also with 29%; Barton and Fields won 14% each. Krueger's cause was obviously doomed, and his campaign flailed around, running absurd ads in which Krueger, dressed in an Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator outfit, claimed to be a lousy politician. Meanwhile, Hutchison kept the focus on Clinton. Hutchison won the June runoff by an astonishing 67%-33%, ahead of any Senate candidate here since the 1950s, when Republicans did not put up serious candidates.

Hutchison started her Senate career articulate and pleasant but willing to be partisan: pro-choice on abortion but opposing taxpayer funding and a Freedom of Choice Act that would wipe out state parental consent laws; opposing the Clinton tax increase and supporting NAFTA; and voting with two other women senators to deny Admiral Frank Kelso retirement with his four-star rank. But immediately after her win in 1993, Austin District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a liberal Democrat, sought to indict Hutchison for using office employees for political purposes and for destroying some records. It was a rotten prosecution from the start: The law imposes limits on state elected officials that at times seem absurd, and the destroyed records were mailing lists Hutchison had purged from her Texas computer on the advice of the Democratic attorney general. Then, in February 1994, Earle dropped the charges when the trial judge refused to rule on the admissibility of evidence seized in a June 1993 raid on Hutchison's office, in effect admitting he had no case.

Hutchison's job rating had declined, but not disastrously, as she entered the race for the full term in 1994. Three serious Democrats were running. The potentially strongest candidate, moderate Houston Congressman Mike Andrews, was eliminated in the March primary. In the April runoff, former Attorney General and bitter Richards enemy Jim Mattox lost 54%-46% to Richard Fisher, a free-spending moderate who campaigned extensively in the Border counties in Spanish. Fisher's credentials seemed a bit fishy--he claimed to have been an adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, though Thatcher said their acquaintance was minor--and Hutchison cruised to a solid 61%-38% victory.

Back in the Senate she worked on welfare reform, helping to write a funding formula helpful to Texas and getting funding for colonias and other border infrastructure. She supported the partial-birth abortion ban but was still the target of conservatives who wanted to keep her off the delegation to the Republican National Convention in San Diego. But as a delegate there she presented the toughest criticism of Bill Clinton, mocking his changing schedule for balancing the federal budget. She sponsored a federal anti-stalking bill and homemakers' IRAs. In a time of falling prices, she has worked to keep Texas's oil industry pumping. In May 1998 she put into the disaster relief bill an amendment to stop the government from increasing the fees oil companies pay for pumping oil on federal land. In 1999, she called for tax credits to keep marginal wells operating and a tax exemption for restarting plugged up wells; she applauded Energy Secretary Bill Richardson for diverting 100,000 barrels a day into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when prices were low. She beat a Democratic filibuster and inserted in a September 1999 appropriation a ban on Clinton administration plans to increase oil and gas royalties on federal land. In June 2000 she called for a "summer vacation" for the federal gas tax.

Hutchison has been one of the few senators elected in the 1990s who has taken a close interest in foreign policy. She has been wary of U.S. involvement in the former Yugoslavia, calling for an eventual pullout from Bosnia, and decrying Clinton administration policy in Kosovo. She commended the Clinton administration's decision not to send troops to East Timor in September 1999, but added, "We have seen the United States stumble into a series of regional crises--displacing local powers that share our objectives and are otherwise able to act on their own. This has led to strategic missteps--a hallmark of Clinton administration foreign policy." On Mexico issues, she called for a one-year waiver of the drug certification process in August 2000 and for examination of the Mexican policy requiring drivers of U.S.-registered vehicles to pay refundable deposits of up to $800 when they travel into the interior of Mexico.

Domestically, Hutchison was the Senate lead sponsor of measures to repeal the marriage penalty in the income tax since 1997. That bill was passed by the Senate 61-38 but was quietly vetoed by Bill Clinton. She brought it forward again in early 2001, when she went farther, with a proposal to relieve the tax burden not just on two-income families, but to give tax relief to homemakers too. "We want to help all married couples, not just those with a penalty." It passed the Senate 62-38 in May 2001 as part of President Bush's tax cut proposal. On other women's issues, Hutchison sponsored an anti-stalking law and has sought, with Dianne Feinstein, to extend the breast cancer stamp, with proceeds going to cancer research.

Hutchison's battle for re-election in 2000 turned out to be no contest. The winner of the March 2000 Democratic primary was a 74-year-old lawyer named Gene Kelly who was shunned by party leaders (the director of the state Democratic Party said, "The man has never called our office") and who spent all of $4,600 on his campaign. Hutchison, long since well-financed, spent $3.5 million and had $4.6 million cash on hand after November. Hutchison won 65%-32%, carrying 237 of 254 counties. After the election she was selected vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. Her ambitions have not always been limited to the Senate. Possibilities of running for president have been shut off by the candidacy and victory of George W. Bush. But in late 2000 and early 2001 she showed some interest in running for governor of Texas, at one point saying that she was running for her last term in the Senate and that she would run for governor if it were an open seat--i.e., if Bush lost the presidential race and did not seek re-election in 2002. Even when Bush won and Republican Lieutenant Governor Rick Perry became governor, she maintained that "There are major issues in Texas that I care about," and "I'm not going to close the door." There was speculation she was waiting to see how Perry would fare with the legislature scheduled to end in May 2001. But party leaders wanted no part of a primary, and in March 2001 Hutchison said she would not run. "The speculation has gotten out of control, and I wanted to put an end to it. It was hurting our ability to do what we needed to do in our respective offices."

Group Ratings
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2000	0	29	0	0	11	91	73	93	96	100	92
1999	0	--	0	0	26	--	72	94	88	--	--

National Journal Ratings
	1999 LIB	--	1999 CONS		2000 LIB	--	2000 CONS
Economic	40%	--	57%		32%	--	64%
Social	34%	--	64%		22%	--	73%
Foreign	16%	--	77%		27%	--	67%

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	Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)	4,082,091	(65%)
	Gene Kelly (D)	2,030,315	(32%)
	Others	164,246	(3%)
2000 primary	Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)	unopposed
1994 general	Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)	2,604,218	(61%)
	Richard Fisher (D)	1,639,615	(38%)

Campaign Finance
2000	Receipts	Receipts from PACs	Expenditures
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)	$3,410,444	$642,467	$3,518,862
Gene Kelly (D)	$4,654		$4,602