Rep. Mike Honda (D) Elected 2000, 2d term
Born:	June 27, 1941, Walnut Creek
Home:	San Jose
Education:	San Jose St. U., B.S. 1969, B.A. 1970, M.A. 1973
Religion:	Protestant
Marital Status:	widowed
Elected  Office:	San Jose Unified Sch. Bd., 1981-90; Santa Clara Cnty. Bd. of Supervisors, 1990-96; CA Assembly, 1996-2000.
Professional Career:	Peace Corps, 1965-67; Elem. sch. principal, 1978-90.
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The broad valley of Santa Clara County around San Jose a few decades ago was mostly orchards and vineyards. Sheltered by mountains from the chilly ocean fogs, with soil incredibly fertile once it was irrigated, this valley produced peaches, plums, prunes, apricots and grapes and made San Jose half a century ago the nation's biggest fruit-packing center. Today, subdivisions, shopping centers and office buildings have replaced almost all the orchards, and San Jose and Santa Clara County have a population of 1.7 million people. San Jose, with a growing downtown, an arena for its National Hockey League team, and a population of 895,000, has become a major American city. San Jose and some of the towns to the west like Santa Clara and Cupertino are part of Silicon Valley, which has no official boundaries.

The 15th Congressional District consists of the central slice of Santa Clara County. It includes 295,000 people in San Jose, about one-third of the city's population and nearly half of the district's; for the most part these are San Jose's affluent neighborhoods. West of San Jose, the district includes the city of Santa Clara and Cupertino, where Steve Jobs started Apple in a garage in the 1970s and where the company is still headquartered, Los Gatos and Campbell. The district also includes the salt flats of San Jose, site of the Great America theme park not far from where a huge Lockheed plant was once the nation's largest defense contractor, the working class town of Milpitas and, far to the south, connected by a swat of mountains, Gilroy, the garlic capital of the United States. Outside of Hawaii, this district has the highest percentage of Asians in the nation (29.2%). Politically, this area was once marginal territory but is now heavily Democratic. Al Gore got 60% of the vote here in 2000.

The congressman from the 15th District is Democrat Mike Honda, elected in 2000. A Japanese American, Honda was born in Walnut Creek, and he spent his early childhood in a World War II internment camp in Colorado. He received bachelor's and master's degrees from San Jose State University, as an undergraduate, and served two years in the Peace Corps in El Salvador. In 1971, San Jose Mayor Norm Mineta appointed him to the city Planning Commission. From 1978 to 1986, Honda was a principal at two area elementary schools; during these years he was elected to the San Jose Unified School Board and later to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. In 1996, he was elected to the first of two terms in the California Assembly. He worked to reduce classroom sizes and increase teacher benefits, and to secure an apology from Japan for its wartime atrocities against other Asian nations.

In 2000 iconoclastic Republican 15th District Congressman Tom Campbell decided to run against Senator Dianne Feinstein. At first Honda was reluctant to run for the House, even though California's term limits meant that a third term in the Assembly would be his last. Days before the filing deadline, he told supporters that he would not run for the open seat. But persuasive telephone calls from several leading House Democrats and, finally, from Bill Clinton changed his mind. One reason for his initial reluctance was the prospect of running against former Carter administration Pentagon official Bill Peacock, a venture capitalist who was ready to spend $1 million of his own money and had gotten significant endorsements, including that of the mayor of San Jose. But the primary was no contest: Honda won 67% to 24% for Peacock. His Republican opponent was Republican Assemblyman Jim Cunneen. Cunneen was a Campbell protege and was strongly supported by national Republican leaders; the contest shaped up as one of the year's most competitive. Cunneen favored liberal positions on cultural issues; as a former global corporate affairs manager for Applied Materials he was able to get support from many Silicon Valley capitalists. He tried to depict the contest as a referendum on the old economy versus the new economy. After the primary, despite his close ties to organized labor, Honda supported PNTR with China--a politically shrewd move to connect with the high-tech industry. Honda won 54%-42%.

Honda has been among the most liberal members of the House. With Senator John Ensign, he formed the Wireless Task Force to encourage better understanding of spectrum issues and support for innovative technologies. He publicized the cause of American POWs from World War Two who were taken on "hell ships" as slave laborers in Japan, and sought apologies from Japan and its companies that profited from them; the 1951 peace treaty with Japan waived the rights of Americans to file such suits. He signed on to an amendment with Dana Rohrabacher to prevent the State Department from opposing the POWs in court, but the amendment mysteriously disappeared in conference committee after it passed both the House and Senate. He helped to enact the Cyber Security Research and Development bill, which supports training and programs to protect computer data and networks. He was one of three votes against the resolution condemning the Ninth Circuit decision that found the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. He accused conservative commentator Anne Coulter of spreading "another form of terrorism" with her support for racial profiling of airline passengers.

Honda breezed to reelection in 2002. In February 2003, he demanded an apology from North Carolina's Howard Coble, who said the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II was necessary to protect them.

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DC Office
1713 LHOB 20515, 202-225-2631; Fax: 202-225-2699; Web site: www.house.gov/honda

State Offices
Campbell, 408-558-8085.

Committees

• Science (9th of 22 D): Energy; Research.
• Transportation & Infrastructure (25th of 34 D): Aviation; Highways, Transit & Pipelines.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	95	93	100	100	47	50	26	30	0	0	8
2001	95	--	100	100	--	--	13	39	0	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	86%	--	14%		92%	--	8%
Social	90%	--	0%		98%	--	0%
Foreign	91%	--	8%		94%	--	0%
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 * 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	Mike Honda (D)	87,482	66%	$840,384
	Linda Hermann (R)	41,251	31%	$30,470
	Other	4,289	3%
2002 primary	Mike Honda (D)	unopposed
2000 general	Mike Honda (D)	128,545	54%	$2,125,541
	Jim Cunneen (R)	99,866	42%	$1,429,904
	Other	8,493	4%

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	124,880	60%
	Bush (R)	74,974	36%
	Other	7,108	3%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Fifteenth 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 +12
• District Size: 289 square miles
• Population in 2000: 639,088; 99.3% urban; 0.7% rural
• Median Household Income: $74,947; 6.6% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 16.9% blue collar; 73.6% white collar; 9.6% gray collar; 8.4% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 47.1% White, 2.4% Black, 29.2% Asian, 0.3% Amer. Indian, 0.3% Hawaiian, 3.2% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 17.2% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 8.0% German, 6.3% Irish, 6.1% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.