Rep. David Dreier (R) Elected 1980, 12th term
Born:	July 5, 1952, Kansas City, MO
Home:	San Dimas
Education:	Claremont McKenna Col., B.A. 1975, Claremont Grad. Schl., M.A. 1976
Religion:	Christian Scientist
Marital Status:	single
Professional Career:	Corp. Relations Dir., Claremont McKenna Col., 1976-78; Mktg. Dir., Industrial Hydrocarbons, 1978-80; V.P., Dreier Development Co., 1985-present.
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It was the great route west to California in the first half of the 20th century: Passengers on the Santa Fe railroad's Super Chief or motorists on U.S. 66 (John Steinbeck's "Mother Road"), after hours and days in barren desert, descended through the Cajon Pass into the Los Angeles Basin, moving in a stately procession beneath the 10,000-foot snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains, marveling at orange groves and exotic plants. The railroad and highway ran through a line of towns built by Midwestern Protestants as independent communities and now mostly high-income suburbs with their own civic institutions: Claremont, home of the academically strong Claremont Colleges; La Verne and Glendora; Monrovia and Arcadia, site of the Santa Anita race track and the Los Angeles County Arboretum; and, a few miles from the tracks, luxurious San Marino, home of the Huntington Library, one of the world's great museums and scholarly institutions. Today, the traveler arriving in Los Angeles can see the same sights, if the air is clear, much more quickly as the jet glides down the flight path to LAX.

The 26th Congressional District covers this territory in the San Gabriel Valley. It includes, east of Claremont, the newer San Bernardino cities of Upland, Montclair and Rancho Cucamonga, home of the minor league baseball team the Quakes who play at a stadium called the Epicenter. It also includes the new suburb of Walnut to the south and, far to the west, connected by the San Gabriel Mountains, the mountain-enclosed suburb of La Canada-Flintridge, home of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Historically, the towns running east from Los Angeles have been heavily Republican. But many of these towns now have large Hispanic and Asian populations--Arcadia, San Dimas and Walnut have sizable Chinese populations--and have become Democratic. The communities in the 26th District, however, have remained pretty heavily Republican, even San Marino, whose population was 49% Asian in 2000. The 2001 redistricting increased the Bush 2000 percentage in the district from 47% to 53%.

The congressman from the 26th District is David Dreier, a Republican first elected in 1980 and chairman of the House Rules Committee. Dreier grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, then spent a decade mostly on the Claremont McKenna campus, as a student and administrator, before he was elected to Congress in 1980. Dreier first ran in 1978, at 25, and lost to Democratic incumbent Jim Lloyd. He beat Lloyd in 1980 and in 1982 beat fellow Republican Wayne Grisham after they were redistricted together. At that point, Dreier evidently decided never to be pressed for funds again; he raised plenty and spent little, which takes more self-discipline than one might think. After the 2002 campaign he had $2.5 million cash on hand, the highest in the House.

Dreier personifies the intellectually rigorous conservatism and free market economics that has thrived at Claremont and maintains a California cheerfulness and good humor characteristic of California--even after serving for 14 years in the minority, chiefly on the Rules Committee, where Republicans were outnumbered 9-4 and lost almost every vote. Now Dreier is on the long end of the 9-4 split, and the complaints are coming from the Democrats.

The Rules chairman, once upon a time an independent operator, has become an operating member of the House leadership since Democrats instituted election of committee chairmen in 1974. Rules sets the terms for debate and limits the amendments that can be offered--an essential procedural function in a legislature with 435 members, and one which can be and often is used to shape substantive outcome. The 9-4 ratio and the careful selection of members guarantee the chairman control over committee votes, but over time it must be tempered by a sense of fairness: An outraged minority party can store up grievances and wait for a chance to overturn a rule on the floor. In 1999 and 2000, Dreier's Rules Committee produced 229 rules, and not one was defeated on the floor; in 2001 and 2002, the committee produced 155 rules, only two of which were defeated on the floor, one on campaign finance in July 2001, one on bankruptcy reform in November 2002. He also led a bipartisan process that reduced the number of standing House rules from 51 to 27, and expanded the Subcommittee on Technology and the House. After September 11, he opposed conducting congressional sessions electronically and helped establish the Select Committee on Homeland Security for the 108th Congress.

Dreier also has a policy agenda: free trade, high-tech and San Gabriel Valley water. He was one of the leading advocates of PNTR with China, and led the fight for many months when it seemed short of votes. Days before the vote, to counter complaints about China's suppression of religious freedom, he circulated a carefully worded letter from Billy Graham seeming to favor open trade ties; PNTR passed 237-197 in May 2000. In 2001 and 2002 he worked to pass trade promotion authority, which had lapsed in 1994. On high-tech, he was one of the chief sponsors, with the Silicon Valley's Zoe Lofgren, of increasing the number of H1-B visas. He has pushed for changing the Export Administration Act by changing the standard that determines whether high-performance computers can be exported; he argues that the MTOPS standard is obsolete. Dreier has threatened to use his chairmanship to strip from bills measures he opposes, such as an Internet gambling ban (he is against all Internet regulation) and the Northeast Dairy Compact. In January 2003 he announced his own tax cut proposal: a cut in the capital gains tax to 10% on investments made in the next two years; he got support from Majority Leader Tom DeLay and several members of the Ways and Means Committee. In March 2003 he and Anna Eshoo sponsored a bill to provide transparency and information about corporations' issuance of stock options but which did not require expensing of options. In response to France's opposition to the United States on Iraq, Dreier in March 2003 suggested increasing the number of immigration slots to citizens of France, so that more of its most talented citizens can come to the United States.

The San Gabriel Valley's water supply is threatened by perchlorates that have contaminated the groundwater; apparently they came from emissions from defense plants in the 1950s and 1960s. In March 2000 Dreier got the House to authorize an $85 million, multi-year cleanup, plus $25 million more for research on perchlorates; since then the House has appropriated more than $20 million a year for the project. He led the bipartisan California delegation to get full funding of the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. He worked with Democrat Howard Berman in 2001 and 2002 for a tax credit for TV and movie production to limit runaway production in other countries which subsidize the activity; in 2001 Fox filmed the script for Pasadena in Vancouver, British Columbia. He discouraged unions from filing a countervailing duty petition against Canada.

Dreier has taken a role in Republican party politics. He serves on the Republican Steering Committee and was Parliamentarian at the 2000 Republican National Convention, in which capacity he produced the rationale for the three-day "rolling roll call." He supported George W. Bush early in the 2000 race for president; they have been acquainted since Dreier sat next to Bush at a training school for Republican congressional candidates in 1978. That year neither won; 22 years later they were elected and became Rules Committee Chairman and President. He took the lead for the Republican delegation on redistricting in 2001, and played a part in reaching agreement with Democratic redistricter Michael Berman under which 19 of the 20 Republican incumbents got safe districts in return for Republican support in the California legislature. That helped Dreier, whose district was becoming more Hispanic and more Democratic; he was reelected by 57%-40% in 2000, his closest margin since 1980. He has often been mentioned as a candidate for senator, but has never run. In July 2002 he said that he would be unlikely to run for the Senate unless Republicans lost control of the House in November. "Running for statewide office in California is the closest thing to running for president. You almost have to be obsessed." In early 2003 he showed little interest in running against Senator Barbara Boxer in 2004. But under the six-year term limit he pushed through, he must give up the Rules Committee chairmanship after the 2004 election. He won reelection easily in 2002.

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DC Office
237 CHOB 20515, 202-225-2305; Fax: 202-225-7018; Web site: www.house.gov/dreier

State Offices
Glendora, 626-852-2626.

Committees

• Chairman, Committee on Rules
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• Rules (Chmn. of 9 R): Technology & the House; The Legislative & Budget Process.
• Select Committee on Homeland Security (7th of 27 R): Rules.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	5	27	0	13	34	100	52	100	84	89	92
2001	10	--	0	0	--	--	63	100	84	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	28%	--	69%		40%	--	59%
Social	46%	--	54%		39%	--	57%
Foreign	4%	--	87%		35%	--	60%
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. Limit Patients' Bill of Rights Y 3. Campaign Finance Reform N 4. Ban ANWR Development N 5. Faith-Based Charities Y 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts Y		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  8. Arm Commercial Pilots Y  9. Trade Promotion Authority Y 10. Bar Funds for Intl. Court Y 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Deny Home. Sec. Dept. Union Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	David Dreier (R)	95,360	64%	$637,925
	Marjorie Mikels (D)	50,081	33%	$64,363
	Other	4,089	3%
2002 primary	David Dreier (R)	unopposed
2000 general	David Dreier (R)	116,557	57%	$1,130,755
	Janice M. Nelson (D)	81,804	40%	$188,122
	Other	6,838	3%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (58%); 1996 (61%); 1994 (67%); 1992 (58%); 1990 (64%); 1988 (69%); 1986 (72%); 1984 (71%); 1982 (65%); 1980 (52%)

2000 presidential
	Bush (R)	127,468	53%
	Gore (D)	105,023	44%
	Other	7,044	3%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Twenty-Sixth 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: R + 5
• District Size: 755 square miles
• Population in 2000: 639,088; 98.8% urban; 1.2% rural
• Median Household Income: $58,968; 8.4% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 17.3% blue collar; 70.7% white collar; 12.0% gray collar; 10.5% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 52.7% White, 4.4% Black, 15.2% Asian, 0.3% Amer. Indian, 0.1% Hawaiian, 2.6% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 24.4% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 9.6% German, 7.5% English, 6.9% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.