Virginia at a Glance State Profile - Gov. Warner (D) - Sen. Warner (R) - Sen. Allen (R) Presidential Politics Congressional Districting - 01 - Davis (R) - 02 - Schrock (R) - 03 - Scott (D) - 04 - Forbes (R) - 05 - Goode Jr. (I) - 06 - Goodlatte (R) - 07 - Cantor (R) - 08 - Moran Jr. (D) - 09 - Boucher (D) - 10 - Wolf (R) - 11 - Davis (R) Almanac 2002 Home States & Districts Elected Officials For district profiles and additional information on the elected officials of Virginia, please use the pull-down menu above.

One of the first areas to be settled from the seacoast to the great American interior was what is now southwest Virginia. As early as 1765, settlements were carved out of the great Valley of Virginia, which bends westward and south toward Tennessee and the Cumberland Gap. Most settlers were of Scots-Irish lineage, and the mountainous area where they moved developed almost apart from the rest of Virginia. The fiercely independent settlers were first farmers, later often coal miners, as in West Virginia, which wasn't a separate state until 1863. Politically, this virtually all-white area opposed slavery and was skeptical if not hostile to the Confederacy. Out of the crucible of struggle between secessionists and unionists, southwest Virginia developed a robust two-party politics after the Civil War, with both parties resembling their national counterparts more closely than in the rest of Virginia.

The 9th Congressional District covers all of southwest Virginia west of Roanoke. Over the years, the district became known as the ''Fighting Ninth,'' because of its taste for raucous politics, culturally conservative and economically populist. It has become somewhat more like the rest of Virginia, as development has moved down Interstate 81 to, and even past, Blacksburg, home of Virginia Tech. But mountain counties farther west continue to depend on coal and to lose population. The Fighting Ninth voted for Republican Governors George Allen and James Gilmore and for 1994 Republican Senate candidate Oliver North. It voted narrowly for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and for 1996 Democratic Senate candidate Mark Warner and by a much wider margin for George W. Bush in 2000. No other Virginia district voted for that combination.

The congressman from the 9th is Rick Boucher, a Democrat first elected in 1982. Boucher grew up in the antique town of Abingdon, went to Roanoke College and then the University of Virginia law school; he practiced law in Abingdon and was elected to the Virginia Senate in 1975, at 29. Politics runs in the family: his father was the Republican commonwealth's attorney in Washington County, while his mother was county Democratic chairwoman; his grandfather and great-grandfather were Democratic members of the House of Delegates. In 1982 Boucher ran for the U.S. House against veteran incumbent William Wampler and won with big margins in coal counties on the Kentucky border. Boucher tends to vote with House Democrats most but not all the time.

Boucher says that he has devoted 80% of his legislative time to technology issues, including his work on the Commerce Committee's Telecommunications Subcommittee. Back in 1988 he co-sponsored with Al Gore a bill to allow phone companies to offer cable TV and sponsored the Satellite Home Viewers Act, so viewers without over-the-air network reception could subscribe to satellite services carrying network channels: the beginning of the now booming satellite TV business. Cable TV had its start in mountainous areas where network TV signals were weak, and Boucher sees new technologies, from satellite TV to the Internet, as a means for out-of-the-way places like the 9th to compete on an equal commercial basis with urban areas. On the 1996 Telecommunications Act he helped write provisions intended to open up competition in the local telephone and cable TV markets. He has gotten Appalachian Regional Commission grant money to create an electronic classroom in Floyd County which will allow communication and instruction in all the schools in southwest Virginia. He has set up "electronic villages" in Blacksburg and Abingdon, with entire communities online. He convinced Colorado-based EchoStar Communications Corp. to establish a presence in southwest Virginia. "I think the arrival of the Internet as a revolutionary communications medium provides a breakthrough opportunity for economic improvements in rural areas because it spells the death of distance," he said in 2000. Network Computing magazine called him one of the 10 most important people of the 1990s.

Boucher was a co-founder of the House Internet Caucus in April 1996 with Rick White of Washington; he is now co-chair with Bob Goodlatte of the next-door 6th District. He worked on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property with Goodlatte to update copyright laws for the digital age and for a consensus on a National Information Infrastructure. He sponsored the law which permitted messages with commercial content to traverse the Internet backbone. With Goodlatte, he established a loan-guarantee program for private businesses to deliver television signals to satellite TV viewers in rural areas.

Boucher also has worked for binding arbitration to settle Superfund suits, for allowing state and local governments to engage in interstate shipment of municipal waste and for electricity deregulation, which he hopes will benefit the coal industry and stimulate investment in mine facilities. He opposed permanent normal trade relations with China, voicing concern about the impact on jobs in his district. In 1993 he set up a Commission on the Future of Southwest Virginia, which has called for a venture capital fund, a joint state legislative agenda and winterizing state parks. In 1998 he announced a $500,000 TVA grant to set up a Nature Conservancy Timber Bank, to which landholders can sell their timber rights. He conducts an active constituency service operation in an area where many people have problems with Social Security, veterans' benefits and black lung payments. He won approval for a $177 million Army Corps of Engineers project to move part of the often-flooded town of Grundy to higher ground from the Levisa River.

Boucher came into the national spotlight in the hearings on Clinton's impeachment. Far less strident than most other Judiciary Committee Democrats, speaking with old-fashioned formality in a businesslike manner, he pressed Kenneth Starr on whether a president can be prosecuted after leaving office. He was the author of the Democratic resolution to conduct a limited impeachment inquiry in October 1998. In December he was the author of the Democrats' censure resolution.

In this usually partisan district Boucher has become highly popular. His Commerce Committee seat helps him to raise large sums of money and he usually wins comfortably. In 2000 he spent $676,000 and had $585,000 cash on hand afterwards, following his 70%-30% victory over a Christian bookstore owner. Republicans control redistricting, and this corner-of-the-state district must add territory. To protect Virgil Goode in the next-door 5th District, redistricters will probably add territory in Roanoke County. That would make the district more Republican should Boucher not run but will not be much of a threat to his tenure.

Cook's Call:
Safe. Though this conservative district has been quite competitive in presidential races, Boucher has continued to post impressive margins of victory since 1984. Republicans may make some changes in redistricting but acknowledge that they might not win this seat until Boucher decides to step down.

The People:

• Pop. 2000: 582,943; Pop. 1990: 562,508, up 3.6% 1990-2000.
• 95.1% White, 2.8% Black, 0.8% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.8% Two+ races, 0.4% Other. 1% Hispanic origin.

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 116,851 (55%) Gore (D) 90,916 (42%) Nader (Green) 3,866 (2%)

1996 Presidential Vote Clinton (D) 91,469 (46%) Dole (R) 85,531 (43%) Perot (I) 20,603 (10%)