Rep. Nancy Johnson (R) Elected 1982, 11th term
Born:	Jan. 5, 1935, Chicago, IL
Home:	New Britain
Education:	U. of Chicago, 1951-53, Radcliffe Col., B.A. 1957, U. of London, 1957-58
Religion:	Unitarian
Marital Status:	married (Theodore)
Elected  Office:	CT Senate, 1976-82.
Professional Career:	Pres., Sheldon Community Guidance Clinic; Adjunct Prof., Central CT St. Col., 1968-71.
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Over the years, Connecticut's stony soil has become the home of some of the most affluent people in the nation and the world. This is true even in the hills of northwest Connecticut, off the interstates and far from Connecticut's small urban capital of Hartford and its sometime booming edge city of Stamford. Here are exquisite Yankee towns like Washington and Kent, prosperous once in the post-Revolutionary era when Connecticut's ship owners accumulated capital and invested it in factories and mills, and now the "anti-Hamptons," a country-home mecca for ultra-rich New Yorkers seeking to avoid the glitz of Southampton and Easthampton. Not far away are small industrial cities like New Britain, America's ball bearing capital for years; Meriden, which turned from ivory combs, clocks, cutlery, and silver, to producing electrical signaling equipment, jewelry, biotech filters, and nuclear instruments; Waterbury, once the nation's largest producer of brass, where political corruption and economic malaise resulted in the state taking over its finances in 2001; and Danbury, once the nation's leading producer of hats, but now a growing corporate headquarters with an eclectic mix of recent immigrants from South America, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. Over the hills from Hartford are Avon and Simsbury, booming towns that have become comfortable bedroom communities and the home of champion international ice-skaters and facilities.

The 5th Congressional District covers much of the western side of the state, dipping down to include the northern towns of Fairfield County. It has two arms that reach into the hills of central Connecticut--one to Democratic Meriden, and the other to the affluent and Republican-leaning Farmington Valley suburbs of Hartford. This district merged the surviving pieces of the old 5th and 6th Districts, and was carefully drawn by a bipartisan redistricting commission to provide a "fair fight" between two incumbents forced into the same district because Connecticut lost a House seat in the 2000 Census. As measured by the 2000 presidential election, it was a bit more Republican than the old 6th and a bit more Democratic than the old 5th; in state elections, it has voted by wide margins for Republican Governor John Rowland and Democratic Senators Christopher Dodd and Joe Lieberman.

The congresswoman from the new 5th District is Nancy Johnson, a Republican first elected in 1982. She grew up in Chicago, the daughter of a Republican state legislator, came east to school, then lived in New Britain as a doctor's wife and a teacher, raising three children while active in charitable and community affairs. She was elected to the Connecticut Senate in 1976 from a heavily Democratic district. When 6th District Congressman Toby Moffett ran against Senator Lowell Weicker in 1982, Johnson won the House seat, defeating Bill Curry, then a 30-year-old nuclear freeze organizer and later a Clinton White House aide and unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor in 1994 and 2002.

Johnson is now a high-ranking member of Ways and Means and chair of its Health Subcommittee. Her record has been fairly liberal on cultural issues and consciously moderate elsewhere, but market-oriented on much of her committee work. For some years, she has been one of the most active and productive legislators in the House. She welcomed George W. Bush's initiative for Medicare reform as an opportunity to push her long-time priorities of a prescription drug benefit for seniors and making long-term care more affordable. She has worked on reshaping Medicare, sponsoring the first preventive health care benefits for seniors, measures to strengthen community hospitals, nursing homes and Medicare Choice plans. She helped to make premiums for long-term health insurance deductible from income taxes and sought a tax credit for families' spending on long-term care. She got funding to conduct training for children's health care and more mammograms to detect breast cancer. In June 2002, she worked with Ways and Means chairman Bill Thomas to craft the House Republicans' voluntary plan for prescription coverage, which would be financed through subsidies to the elderly and provided by private firms, not the government. Democrat John Dingell said that it was "not a drug benefit at all, [but] a host of subsidies to provide to private insurers in the hope that they will offer a drug-only benefit to seniors." The House passed the bill 221-208, with eight members from each party switching sides. Earlier, she opposed the Clinton health care plan, enduring gratuitous and sexist insults from then-Chairman Pete Stark in hearings, and her efforts contributed to its demise. She was the lead Republican sponsor of the 1997 CHIP program for health insurance for uninsured children.

Also on Ways and Means, Johnson worked to increase the Independent Living program for older foster care children and to help fathers on welfare get jobs and develop parental skills. In 2002, the House passed her resolution urging Major League Baseball to implement a mandatory program to test for steroid use. And she responded to constituent unhappiness over the decision of New Britain-based Stanley Works to reincorporate in Bermuda to save $30 million annually in federal taxes, by introducing a bill imposing a moratorium on such actions.

She has often bucked the House Republican leadership. She voted against the Contract with America crime package, has supported abortion rights (Johnson harshly criticized George W. Bush's executive order reimposing a ban on federal aid to international organizations that discuss abortion), was one of the first Republicans to sign a discharge petition for the Shays-Meehan campaign finance bill and introduced legislation to prevent oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But her cooperation with Speaker Newt Gingrich ended up causing her electoral trouble in 1996, when she chaired the House ethics committee during its investigation of charges brought by Democrats against him. Her opponent called her "an enabler and participant in the right-wing Republican agenda," and national liberal groups targeted the district. Johnson readily admitted that her role on the ethics committee "absolutely hurt me" in the election, which she won 50%-49%. After that election, the House voted 395-28 to reprimand and fine Gingrich an unprecedented $300,000; Johnson, her term up, immediately left the committee.

Governor John Rowland said just before the November 2000 election that he would appoint Johnson to the Senate if Joe Lieberman were elected vice president. But that became moot once the recount in Florida was finally completed. Instead, this senior lawmaker was faced with redistricting and the unpleasant task of running against her feisty Democratic colleague Jim Maloney. He had been elected three times in competitive contests and compiled a moderate voting record, but Maloney was dogged by campaign finance charges. Although the new district was drawn evenly--in both geographic and partisan terms--from the old districts, Johnson entered the contest with some clear-cut advantages: She was a more experienced legislator, with a longer record of performance; she was a better fundraiser, including the most funds received from the pharmaceutical and hospital industries by any House candidate. In addition, Maloney didn't help his cause by reaffirming a pledge not to seek another term in 2004. Neither contender held anything back, with The Hartford Courant describing Johnson as "a pit bull in pearls," and Maloney as "the bulky junkyard dog of Connecticut politics." Maloney depicted Johnson as an ally of the powerful who failed to defend the weak. Johnson stressed her ability to cross party lines and the respect accorded her in Washington. Although Maloney had the active endorsement of the AFL-CIO, Johnson picked up a few local unions.

Johnson came though this contest with a comfortable 54%-43% victory, winning 37 of the 41 cities and towns. So complete was Johnson's victory that she led Maloney 50%-48% in his old district; in her old district, she won 59%-39%, with 2-to-1 margins in Avon, Simsbury and many of the hill towns. She likely will hold this seat as long as she wants it, but it should be a competitive district if she does not run.

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DC Office
2113 RHOB 20515, 202-225-4476; Fax: 202-225-4488; Web site: www.house.gov/nancyjohnson

State Offices
New Britain, 860-223-8412; Waterbury, 203-573-1418.

Committees

• Ways & Means (4th of 24 R): Health (Chmn.); Human Resources.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	30	53	11	63	58	100	49	90	56	66	33
2001	30	--	10	79	--	--	52	87	32	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	49%	--	51%		51%	--	49%
Social	60%	--	40%		61%	--	39%
Foreign	54%	--	46%		51%	--	48%
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 Y 4. Ban ANWR Development Y 5. Faith-Based Charities Y 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts Y		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion N  8. Arm Commercial Pilots Y  9. Trade Promotion Authority Y 10. Bar Funds for Intl. Court N 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Deny Home. Sec. Dept. Union Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Nancy Johnson (R)	113,626	54%	$3,752,161
	Jim Maloney (D)	90,616	43%	$2,075,621
	Other	5,212	3%
2002 primary	Nancy Johnson (R)	unopposed
2000 general	Nancy Johnson (R)	143,698	63%	$1,163,610
	Paul Valenti (D)	75,471	33%	$11,142
	Other	10,374	5%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (58%); 1996 (50%); 1994 (64%); 1992 (70%); 1990 (74%); 1988 (66%); 1986 (64%); 1984 (64%); 1982 (52%)

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	146,599	52%
	Bush (R)	121,424	43%
	Other	13,887	5%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Fifth 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 + 4
• District Size: 1,282 square miles
• Population in 2000: 681,113; 85.9% urban; 14.1% rural
• Median Household Income: $53,118; 7.7% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 22.4% blue collar; 62.9% white collar; 14.6% gray collar; 11.9% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 80.2% White, 5.2% Black, 2.1% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.5% Two+ races, 0.3% Other, 10.5% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 14.5% Italian, 12.7% Irish, 8.2% German
• Click here for statewide demographic data.