Missouri at a Glance State Profile - Gov. Holden (D) - Sen. Bond (R) - Sen. Carnahan (D) Presidential Politics Congressional Districting - 01 - Clay (D) - 02 - Akin (R) - 03 - Gephardt (D) - 04 - Skelton (D) - 05 - McCarthy (D) - 06 - Graves (R) - 07 - Blunt (R) - 08 - Emerson (R) - 09 - Hulshof (R) Almanac 2002 Home States & Districts Elected Officials For district profiles and additional information on the elected officials of Missouri, please use the pull-down menu above.

One of the biggest tourist destinations in America today is Branson, Missouri--a fact almost no one predicted 20 years ago. Even today Branson has only 6,050 residents, is served by two-lane roads, is nowhere near a major airport; but it thrives, paralleling the surging popularity of country and western music. Branson was put on the map early in the century by Harold Bell Wright's novel, The Shepherd of the Hills, about the hardy people of the mountains, hills and meadows of southwest Missouri, just north of Arkansas. More tourists came in with completion of the Ozark Beach Dam that created Bull Shoals Lake in 1913, lured by the native bass and stocked trout. Then in the 1960s, new lakes were formed, a Shepherd of the Hills pageant and Silver Dollar City were started, and entertainers--the five Maybe brothers performing as "The Baldknobbers" and Box Car Willie from the Grand Ole Opry--started performing. They were followed by others--Roy Clark, Glen Campbell, Charlie Pride, Mel Tillis, Louise Mandrell and the violinist Shoji Tabuchi. Today Branson has 7 million visitors a year and more than two dozen theaters with 55,000 seats--more than Broadway. Workers come in from as far away as Springfield, the biggest city in southwest Missouri, and headquarters of such middle American institutions as the Mid-America Dairymen, the nation's largest milk producers' cooperative; the Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, probably the nation's largest fishing equipment store; and the Assemblies of God, one of the nation's and the world's largest and fastest-growing Protestant denominations. What do people like about Branson? The non-stop entertainment and fishing and boating; country music and family style entertainment; plenty of shopping and a safe atmosphere. These are also things that have made southwest Missouri the fastest growing part of the state in the last 20 years, generating new businesses and attracting retirees as well as vacationers.

The 7th Congressional District includes Branson and Springfield and most of southwest Missouri. Historically, this area has been Republican since it opposed secession in 1861: pro-Union Springfield changed hands several times as Missouri's staged its own civil war. Its conservative response to the big-spending government of the 1960s and cultural liberalism of the 1970s reinforced its allegiance, and now this is the most Republican part of Missouri.

The congressman from the 7th District is Roy Blunt, a Republican first elected in 1996. Blunt grew up on a dairy farm in southwest Missouri, in a political family; his father was a state representative from a district near Springfield. He taught high school and college history and government. Roy Blunt got his start in politics by volunteering for John Ashcroft's unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1972, and in 1973, at 23, he became Greene County (Springfield) clerk. In 1984, at 34, he was elected Missouri secretary of State and was re-elected with 60% in 1988. In 1992 he ran for governor and lost the Republican primary to William Webster, 44%-39%. (Webster was defeated and disgraced, sent to jail because of his improper administration of the Second Injury Fund.) Blunt became president of his alma mater, Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar. In 1996 Congressman Mel Hancock kept his pledge to serve only four terms and retired. In the primary Blunt faced Gary Nodler, businessman and one-time staffer to Congressman Gene Taylor. Nodler carried his home area around Joplin and Carthage, but Blunt carried everything else and won 56%-44%. There were 75,000 votes cast in the Republican primary and only 16,000 in the Democratic primary: a harbinger of the general election, which Blunt won 65%-32%, running ahead of the Republican ticket and carrying every county with at least 62% of the vote. He has been re-elected easily since.

Blunt has shown great political skills and has become part of the Republican House leadership. His political adeptness was first apparent in his committee assignments: Agriculture, International Relations, Transportation and Infrastructure. On Agriculture, he supported the Clinton administration's proposal to reduce the number of federal milk marketing orders from 31 to 11 and to include southern Missouri in the southeast region--a position also supported by Mid-America Dairymen--and he opposed food embargoes. On International Relations, he supported the bill to penalize countries that practice or allow religious persecution--a concern of denominations like the Assemblies of God, which has more members abroad than in the United States. He was on Transportation during passage of the 1998 transportation bill, which increased Missouri's funding $213 million. He and Asa Hutchinson from the adjoining Arkansas district made U.S. 71 from Kansas City to Shreveport a "high-priority corridor," a step on the way to upgrading it to interstate status. Blunt also took up important conservative causes. He co-sponsored the bill to zero out the tax code by December 2000. When tobacco became a headline issue, he proposed yanking the licenses of teenage drivers for 60 days if they were caught with tobacco, and with Hutchinson he moved to earmark tobacco settlement funds not used for anti-smoking programs for debt reduction and tax cuts. He was part of Majority Whip Tom DeLay's "free speech" team proposing bills to undermine the Shays-Meehan campaign finance bill. Blunt was not inattentive to fellow members. He supported a cost-of-living pay increase for House members in 1997, despite local flak. In the 1998 campaign cycle he raised and contributed $250,000 to other incumbent Republicans.

Three weeks after the 1998 election Blunt won a seat on the Commerce Committee. Then in January 1999 Tom DeLay plucked him from the ranks of 48 deputy whips and appointed him Chief Deputy Whip, the position Dennis Hastert held until his astonishing elevation to speaker. On a number of issues Blunt was given the job of making more palatable to core Republicans measures that were going through in any case. In September 1999 he brokered a deal to tie business tax cuts to the minimum wage increase. In September 2000 he brokered a deal on food sales to Cuba: Miami's two Cuban-Americans got a ban on U.S. credits for sales, but the export-minded George Nethercutt got third-party financing. In October 2000 Blunt helped orchestrate a 315-98 override of a Bill Clinton veto of a water projects bill; at issue was a Clinton proposal to allow spring rises (floods, said opponents) of the Missouri River to protect endangered species upstream. Blunt supported George W. Bush early, in March 1999, and was named the Bush campaign's liaison to House members, a busy position and a sensitive one given Bush's pointed criticisms of House Republicans in 1999. He also formed his own leadership PAC, Rely on Your Beliefs Fund, or the RoyB Fund. Blunt is the only House Republican who has served as a state chief elections officer, and in February 2001 Hastert named him the Republican chairman of a bipartisan select committee on elections. But it turned out to be neither bipartisan nor a committee, as Dick Gephardt and Hastert could not reach an agreement.

Blunt has also worked on local issues. He and Missouri colleague Ike Skelton co-sponsored the law that named the State Department building after Missouri's Harry Truman. And the political tradition in his family goes on. His son Matt Blunt in 1998 was elected, at 27, to the state House and in 2000 was elected to his father's old position as secretary of State.

Cook's Call:
Safe. Blunt should have no trouble winning a fourth term in this strongly Republican district that gave Bush 62% in 2000. This district has grown faster than any other in the state has.

The People:

• Pop. 2000: 695,069; Pop. 1990: 568,017, up 22.4% 1990-2000.
• 94.4% White, 1.2% Black, 0.6% Asian, 1% Amer. Indian, 0.1% Hawaiian, 1.7% Two+ races, 1% Other. 2.4% Hispanic origin.

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 173,741 (62%) Gore (D) 97,730 (35%) Nader (Green) 4,288 (2%)

1996 Presidential Vote Dole (R) 129,249 (51%) Clinton (D) 93,537 (37%) Perot (I) 27,580 (11%)