Rep. Clay Shaw (R) Elected 1980, 12th term
Born:	Apr. 19, 1939, Miami
Home:	Ft. Lauderdale
Education:	Stetson U., B.S. 1961, U. of AL, M.B.A. 1963, Stetson U., J.D. 1966
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Emilie)
Elected  Office:	Ft. Lauderdale City Commissioner., 1971-73; Ft. Lauderdale Vice Mayor, 1973-75, Mayor, 1975-80.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1966-68; Ft. Lauderdale Chief Prosecutor, 1968-69; Assoc. Municipal Judge, 1969-71.
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The barrier islands of Florida's Gold Coast have been developed in spasms of speculative frenzy, not just as vacation places and retirement homes but as embodiments of dreams and fantasies. Consider Palm Beach, the great beach resort of the 1920s, where rich WASPs would leave their snow-covered Tudor or Georgian mansions and live in Addison Mizner's pseudo-Mediterranean confections. Or think of the 1970s and 1980s, as high-rise condos sprouted all along the coastline of Broward and Palm Beach counties--a promised land for retirees, free from winter frost and state and city income taxes. South Florida has been so transient for so long that people hardly gave its fluidity a second thought, until it was revealed that the suicide terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11 had used this part of Florida as their base of operations: Several hijackers lived in Delray Beach, they exercised in a Boynton Beach gym, and they practiced flying at a Lantana airport.

The 22d Congressional District covers most of the Atlantic oceanfront in Palm Beach and Broward counties, from Juno Beach in Palm Beach County to Fort Lauderdale in Broward County. It is rarely more than a few miles wide and in some places it is not much wider than the barrier islands separated from the mainland by the Indian River and Lake Worth. But it also has jagged salients that extend several miles inland. The district, a testament to the advances made in redistricting software, was drawn by Republican redistricters to provide a safe seat for Republican Congressman Clay Shaw after he barely won reelection in 2000. The Miami-Dade County portion of the district was removed, as was heavily Democratic Hollywood in Broward County. Inland salients in Broward County brought in Republican precincts in Plantation and Coral Springs. Much new territory was added in Palm Beach County--an inland finger in wealthy Boca Raton, a long strand parallel to the oceanfront of affluent areas from Delray Beach to Glen Ridge (here the 22d surrounds the heavily black 23d district on three sides) and an inland slice in north Palm Beach County including parts of Palm Beach Gardens and Jupiter. Redistricting raised the Bush 2000 percentage in the 22d District from 39% to 48%--the biggest increase in any Florida district. The resulting district is affluent, elderly, with a large Jewish population politically very active in condominium groups.

The congressman from the 22d District is Clay Shaw, first elected in 1980. Shaw grew up in Fort Lauderdale, practiced law and served as a judge and councilman; in 1975, at 36, he became the city's mayor. In 1980 he ran for the House in a very differently shaped district, and had the good fortune of seeing the Democratic incumbent lose his primary. Shaw won the seat handily and held it despite the Fort Lauderdale area's increasing Democratic tilt. For eight years he served on the Judiciary Committee, working on drug and crime bills. In July 1988 he switched to Ways and Means.

In the Republican Congress Shaw has taken on the really big issues--first welfare, then Social Security. After Republicans won control in 1994, Shaw became chairman of the Way and Means subcommittee handling welfare. His little-noticed 1993 bill, to end the federal entitlement to welfare and take most recipients off the rolls and require them to work after two years, was part of the Contract with America and became one of House Republicans' major priorities. Shaw's bills were passed twice in 1995, in somewhat different form, and vetoed twice by Bill Clinton. In early 1996 House Republicans hoped that Bob Dole could use the welfare issue against Clinton. By July 1996 they decided that Dole was likely to lose anyway, and so decided to pass welfare reform a third time, giving Dole an issue if Clinton vetoed it again and giving House Republicans an accomplishment if Clinton signed it. They had no idea what he would do, but in the end he signed, and a major change in American public policy was made.

After the 1998 election, Shaw, then representing the House district with the nation's highest percentage of those 65 and over, became chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee. He said he wanted to reform the system and preserve it for baby boomers' retirements. In April 1999, Shaw and Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer introduced a bill to give workers income tax credits to fund personal retirement accounts. But the Republican leadership did not want to go forward, and the effort foundered in summer 1999. In the next year Shaw focused on the earnings tax on Social Security recipients; he managed to pass a bill repealing it for Social Security recipients age 65 to 69. Shaw had other accomplishments in that Congress. Shaw had worked for many years on restoring the Everglades, and was lauded as the $7.8 billion Everglades Restoration Act was passed just before the November 2000 election.

This could not have hurt politically, for in 2000 Shaw had the strongest opposition since he first won the seat. It came from state Representative Elaine Bloom, who had a base in the condominiums and raised large sums from national liberal and feminist groups. Bloom ran an ad saying that Shaw had "voted" for privatization of Social Security, though he never had (there were no votes on the issue), and she had to pull the spot. With both candidates buying Miami and West Palm Beach television, this was one of the most expensive House races in the country: Bloom spent $2.4 million and Shaw $3 million. Bloom campaigned on her support for abortion and gun control, and on her support of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, who were running far ahead in the district. Bloom called for lower prescription drug prices for seniors. In mid-October Shaw attacked Bloom for keeping seniors from buying drugs at lower prices; she owned $5 million of stock in and served on the board of generic drugmaker Andrx, which in June 2000 had been found guilty in federal court of violating the antitrust laws by taking $89 million from the maker of Cardizem CD in return for keeping its cheaper generic drug, Cartia XT off the market. She was further embarrassed when it was revealed that her personal physician wrote a prescription to her campaign manager for Cardizem CD and Cartia XT so the candidate could use them as props in a debate--a prescription that could under Florida law trigger disciplinary action. This turned out to be one of the closest races in the country. The initial count showed Shaw ahead by 599 votes; the mechanical recount required by Florida law didn't change the margin. Bloom sought a hand count, but the three county boards of canvassers, willing to order hand counts for Al Gore, declined to do so in this race (Miami-Dade did hand count six precincts, three chosen by each candidate). Shaw ran far ahead, 58%-42%, in Palm Beach County and carried his home base in Broward County by 55%-45%. He lost in the Miami-Dade County portion 67%-33%.

It was against this background that the Republican redistricters removed portions of the district and added interior territory to balance off some of the Democratic oceanfront condominiums. In February 2002, a month before the redistricting plan was unveiled, Shaw got a well-known opponent in Palm Beach County Commissioner Carol Roberts. Roberts had served 16 years on the County Commission and had also been mayor of West Palm Beach, but she was chiefly known as one of the three members of the board of canvassers in November and December 2000 who sought to count dimpled chads as votes for Al Gore. Roberts was a heroine to many local and national Democrats and managed to raise $1.1 million. With her trademark combat boots, she attacked Shaw fiercely. Her chief issue was prescription drugs for seniors; she set up a toll-free hotline for voters to obtain prescription drugs from foreign countries--which, the Palm Beach Post pointed out, is illegal. When Shaw voted for the Republican prescription drug bill that passed the House in June 2002, she said, "I believe that what he voted for today is really a payoff to the pharmaceutical industry for over $100,000 in contributions, including more than $50,000 since the 2000 campaign." She also criticized him for supporting "privatization" of Social Security. He continued to support individual investment accounts in Social Security and called his bill Social Security Guarantee Plus Act. Shaw ran ads attacking Roberts as developer-friendly; the Palm Beach Post chided her for changing the rules for a housing development in the Agricultural Reserve Area for a developer who gave her campaign $7,000.

The Roberts candidacy turned out to be less successful than national Democrats hoped. She had not had serious electoral competition since 1990, and anger over the Florida controversy worked both ways. Shaw campaigned more vigorously than in 2000, calling bingo at senior centers, attending chamber of commerce breakfasts, holding coffees in condominium party rooms. He raised and spent $1.9 million; his long years of constituency service helped him win endorsements from the Democratic mayors of Fort Lauderdale, Plantation and six towns in Palm Beach County. Shaw won 61%-38%. In Palm Beach County, where 60% of the votes were cast, Shaw won 59%-40%; in Broward County he won 64%-35%.

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DC Office
2408 RHOB 20515, 202-225-3026; Fax: 202-225-8398; Web site: www.house.gov/shaw

State Offices
Ft. Lauderdale, 954-522-1800; West Palm Beach, 561-832-3007.

Committees

• Ways & Means (3d of 24 R): Social Security (Chmn.); Trade.
• Joint Committee on Taxation (3d of 5 Reps.).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	10	20	0	38	82	100	52	95	88	78	92
2001	10	--	0	21	--	--	56	100	76	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	41%	--	60%		40%	--	60%
Social	43%	--	55%		32%	--	63%
Foreign	4%	--	87%		15%	--	78%
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	Clay Shaw (R)	131,930	61%	$1,968,153
	Carol Roberts (D)	83,265	38%	$1,138,776
2002 primary	Clay Shaw (R)	unopposed
2000 general	Clay Shaw (R)	105,855	50%	$3,086,708
	Elaine Bloom (D)	105,256	50%	$2,378,327
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (100%); 1996 (62%); 1994 (63%); 1992 (52%); 1990 (98%); 1988 (66%); 1986 (100%); 1984 (66%); 1982 (57%); 1980 (55%)

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	135,868	52%
	Bush (R)	123,302	48%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Twenty-Second 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 + 2
• District Size: 500 square miles
• Population in 2000: 639,295; 99.2% urban; 0.8% rural
• Median Household Income: $51,200; 7.1% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 16.0% blue collar; 69.4% white collar; 14.7% gray collar; 14.9% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 82.3% White, 3.8% Black, 1.7% Asian, 0.1% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.2% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 10.7% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 11.7% German, 11.0% Irish, 9.5% Italian
• Click here for statewide demographic data.