Rep. Ed Pastor (D) Elected Sept. 1991, 6th term
Born:	June 28, 1943, Claypool
Home:	Phoenix
Education:	AZ St. U., B.A. 1966, J.D. 1974
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Verma)
Elected  Office:	Maricopa Cnty. Bd. of Supervisors, 1976-91.
Professional Career:	High schl. teacher, 1966-69; Asst., AZ Gov. Castro, 1975.
Additional Info
Recent Articles · Offices · Committees · Ratings · Key Votes · Election Results District Demographics
More On Arizona
At A Glance · State Profile District Map Redistricting · Almanac Home

Phoenix is a new American metropolis, grown to huge metropolitan size within most Americans' lifetimes. Yet it is also an ancient city, or built on top of one. The Arizona Canal, several miles north of downtown Phoenix, runs along the route of a canal built about 600 years ago by the Hohokam people. They distributed irrigated water diverted from the Salt River in its wet moments to farmers in what Phoenicians today call the Valley of the Sun and made sophisticated astronomical observations from the mountains that jut up from the plains. This society disappeared, for reasons that are not known, less than half a century before the Spaniards arrived in North America. So today's Phoenix is the second civilization to grow in this desert. Its growth is recent. Phoenix and Maricopa County had 331,000 people in 1950 and 3.2 million in 2000. Half a century ago, Phoenix only spread half a dozen miles north, west and east of the downtown and only a few miles south. Downtown was its single office and main shopping district, and people blew fans over boxes of ice to keep cool. Today from Phoenix's downtown office towers the city seems to spread as far as the eye can see, and you can see other clumps of office towers to the north and northwest.

The 4th Congressional District is centered on downtown Phoenix. It includes downtown, the Capitol in a rundown neighborhood a couple of miles west and Sky Harbor International Airport in an industrial corridor several miles east. It includes most of southern Phoenix and its boundaries follow approximately the southern and western city limits; it extends as far north as Bethany Home Road and Northern Avenue. Geographically it covers most of the land between South Mountain and Camelback Mountain.

The 4th District was designed to be one of Arizona's two Hispanic districts; its population is 58% Hispanic. The typical Latino neighborhood here is a collection of 1940s and 1950s bungalows, spaced out by empty lots. Here Habitat for Humanity recently built South Ranch, the largest low-income subdivision the organization has ever built in the U.S.; the idea was to cluster poor homeowners together and encourage them to stave off neighborhood decline collectively. Politically this is a solidly Democratic district; George W. Bush won just 35% here in 2000, his poorest showing in the state.

The congressman from the 4th District is Ed Pastor, a Democrat who won a September 1991 special election to replace Morris Udall at a time when the district's boundaries were quite different. Pastor grew up in Claypool, a mining town in Gila County, where his parents "taught me the value of education, the need of tolerance and the responsibility of community service. But especially they taught me the reward of a hard day's work." Pastor is a career politician: After teaching high school, he got a law degree at Arizona State, worked as an assistant to Governor Raul Castro in 1975, then was elected in 1976 to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, where he served until elected to Congress. In the 1991 special, he beat Republican Pat Connor 56%-44%. He has not faced stiff competition since then.

From 1995 until January 2003 Pastor was the only Arizona Democrat in Congress; he has been a faithful follower of the Democratic leadership and has a mostly liberal voting record. He supported NAFTA, despite strong labor opposition, but he opposed PNTR with China. He vigorously opposed Arizona's English Only law and supports bilingual ballots, but says, "everyone acknowledges that English is the common language of our country." In June 2002 he sponsored legislation to provide amnesty to immigrants who have lived in the U.S. prior to January 2000. During the Clinton years, he proudly sponsored the nation's only Hispanic U.S. Attorney and Arizona's first Hispanic woman federal judge. In August 2002, after a trip to Cuba where he met with Fidel Castro for 3 hours, he urged the immediate end of the trade embargo.

Much of Pastor's work has been on the Appropriations Committee, where he often delivers projects of the kind that John McCain labels "pork." But home state demands on him and Republican Jim Kolbe have been great because neither Arizona senator is an appropriator. Now that he sits on the Energy and Water Development and the Transportation Subcommittees, he truly brings home the bacon--$10 million for a light-rail transit project in Phoenix, $26.3 million for air traffic control facilities at the city airport, $6.6 million for buses in Phoenix and $3 million for improvements to a visitors facility at the Grand Canyon. In 2000 he won enactment of his proposal to authorize a new international port of entry at the border in Yuma, with conveyance of 330 acres to the Greater Yuma Port Authority; the project was designed to relieve congestion that often caused delays of several hours for commercial vehicles at San Luis five miles to the west. Pastor is "not a headline maker," editorialized The Arizona Republic. "He is a congressman from the old school, congenial, collaborative, attuned to the needs of his district, with no grand ambitions other than helping his constituents."

Before 2001 redistricting, Pastor's district stretched from Phoenix to Tucson. Much of his old territory is in the 7th District now, but as an appropriator he will still probably look after its needs.

Recent News Coverage
Search the CongressDaily, Hotline, House Race Hotline, National Journal and Technology Daily archives using the form below:

DC Office
2465 RHOB 20515, 202-225-4065; Fax: 202-225-1655; Web site: www.house.gov/pastor

State Offices
Phoenix, 602-256-0551.

Committees

• Chief Deputy Minority Whip
.
• Appropriations (14th of 29 D): District of Columbia; Energy & Water Development; Transportation, Treasury & Independent Agencies.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	95	93	89	75	43	38	18	40	0	3	0
2001	100	--	100	86	--	--	12	39	8	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	72%	--	27%		82%	--	17%
Social	90%	--	0%		84%	--	8%
Foreign	77%	--	22%		77%	--	19%
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 N 2. Limit Patients' Bill of Rights N 3. Campaign Finance Reform Y 4. Ban ANWR Development Y 5. Faith-Based Charities N 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts N		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion N  8. Arm Commercial Pilots N  9. Trade Promotion Authority N 10. Bar Funds for Intl. Court N 11. Authorize Force in Iraq N 12. Deny Home. Sec. Dept. Union N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Ed Pastor (D)	44,517	67%	$679,772
	Jonathon Barnert (R)	18,381	28%	$3,112
	Amy Gibbons (Lib)	3,167	5%
2002 primary	Ed Pastor (D)	unopposed
2000 general	Ed Pastor (D)	84,034	69%	$569,648
	Bill Barenholtz (R)	32,990	27%	$80,566
	Other	5,581	5%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (68%); 1996 (65%); 1994 (62%); 1992 (66%); 1991 (56%)

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	57,198	63%
	Bush (R)	31,542	35%
	Other	2,598	3%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Fourth District, please see the Almanac 2000 online. Please note that these older returns reflect district lines as they existed prior to 2002 redistricting.

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: D +14
• District Size: 199 square miles
• Population in 2000: 641,329; 99.5% urban; 0.5% rural
• Median Household Income: $30,624; 25.6% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 35.7% blue collar; 43.8% white collar; 20.5% gray collar; 9.6% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 29.3% White, 7.5% Black, 1.3% Asian, 2.4% Amer. Indian, 0.1% Hawaiian, 1.5% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 58.0% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 5.8% German, 4.0% Irish, 3.4% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.