Sen. Jon Kyl (R) Elected 1994, 2d term 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)
Elected  Office:	U.S. House of Reps., 1986-94.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1966-86; Chmn., Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, 1984-85.
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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 that 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 missile defense, 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 the years running up to 1994. 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 Democratic primary by only 59 votes of 255,000 cast 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 Camelback Mountain "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 easily, 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 Helms, the Foreign Relations chairman, insisted that Kyl 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 continues to press forward on missile defense. He urged George W. Bush to abrogate the treaty, and when Senate Democrats on the Armed Services Committee tried to cut missile defense funds in May 2002 he was quick to respond, pointing out that Iran had just successfully tested an 800-mile-range missile.

Kyl serves on Judiciary and is sponsor, with Dianne Feinstein, of a constitutional amendment on victims' rights. It had 40 co-sponsors but was shelved in April 2000 because it lacked the necessary two-thirds. Before September 11 he and Feinstein co-sponsored a bill to prepare defenses for attacks by terrorists with chemical and biological weapons, and in November 2001 they introduced a bill to establish a comprehensive lookout database, which would combine information from the CIA, the FBI and the State Department and make it available to border and consular personnel. 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. He sponsored an amendment to the energy bill, defeated 58-40, to eliminate the requirement that utilities generate 10% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020 (it's now 2%). He has worked for more federal reimbursement of states and localities for the costs of hospitalizing and incarcerating illegal aliens.

Kyl 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 was the prime sponsor of a 1999 law setting up a semiautonomous division of the Energy Department to oversee nuclear weapons research and production. He has worked patiently to settle the water rights claims of Arizona Indian tribes. He and John McCain introduced a bill in September 2002 to codify an intricate compromise that would allow the Gila River Community and the Tohono O'odham Nation to nearly half the water running through the Central Arizona Project Canal and additional water from the Salt, Verde and Gila Rivers--enough water for more than 3.5 million people. The tribes are entitled, under a 1908 Supreme Court decision, to enough water to carry out the purposes of their reservations; this would extinguish the claims of tribes whose large reservations might give them greater claims and would authorize them to lease water to cities and communities, but only in Arizona. Kyl and McCain also introduced a bill codifying the water rights settlement between the Zuni Indian Tribe and the federal government. In 2002, after the vast Rodeo-Chediski fire, he pushed for legislation to increase short-term and long-term salvage operations and forest thinning.

Kyl is not an active seeker of publicity, and is far less well known in Arizona and Washington than his colleague McCain. He often volunteers to take on tasks--objecting, for example, to appropriations in summer 2001, in order to get Tom Daschle to bring more nominations to the floor--and promotes causes he believes in, like missile defense, behind the scenes. He is pleasant and unassuming, but can surprise: He is a big fan of race cars and has been seen driving the lead car around the track in a warm-up lap at the Phoenix International Raceway. He is the chairman of the Republican Steering Committee since 2001 and in November 2002 he was elected chairman of the Republican Policy Committee; he followed Idaho's Larry Craig in both posts.

In June 2000 Kyl was interviewed by Dick 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. In Arizona he had no difficulty winning reelection: No Democrat filed to run against him and he won 79% of the vote against an Independent, a Green Party candidate and a Libertarian. His seat comes up in 2006. In 1994 he said he probably would serve no more than two terms, and in July 2001 he said, "It was my intention then, and it's probably still my intention, although I'm not going to make any decisions for another three or four years."

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

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

Committees

• Republican Policy Committee Chairman
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• Energy & Natural Resources: National Parks; Public Lands & Forests; Water & Power.
• Finance: Health Care (Chmn.); Long-Term Growth & Debt Reduction; Social Security & Family Policy.
• Judiciary: Constitution, Civil Rights & Property Rights; Immigration, Border Security & Citizenship; Terrorism, Technology & Homeland Security (Chmn.).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	0	20	0	12	92	50	82	90	100	100	--
2001	5	--	0	0	--	--	88	100	100	--	100

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	7%	--	86%		0%	--	94%
Social	0%	--	79%		0%	--	62%
Foreign	7%	--	72%		0%	--	76%
For National Journal's complete 2002 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 107th Congress (More Info)
1. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 2. Expand Patients' Rights N 3. Campaign Finance Reform N 4. Permit ANWR Development Y 5. Confirm Ashcroft as AG Y 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts Y		7. $ for Hate Crime Prosecution N  8. Overseas Military Abortions N  9. Bar Coop. with Intl. Court Y 10. Trade Promotion Authority Y 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Homeland Sec. Dept. Union N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2000 general	Jon Kyl (R)	1,108,196	79%	$2,503,674
	William Toel (I)	109,230	8%	$21,491
	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%	$4,138,203
	Sam Coppersmith (D)	442,510	40%	$1,577,556
	Scott Grainger (Lib)	75,493	7%
Prior winning percentages: 1992 House (59%); 1990 House (61%); 1988 House (87%); 1986 House (65%)