Rep. Henry Hyde (R) Elected 1974, 15th term
Born:	Apr. 18, 1924, Chicago
Home:	Wood Dale
Education:	Georgetown U., B.S. 1947, Loyola U., J.D. 1949
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	widowed
Elected  Office:	IL House of Reps., 1966-74, Maj. Ldr., 1971-72.
Military Career:	Navy, 1944-46 (WWII); Naval Reserves, 1946-68.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1950-75.
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In World War II, what is now the nation's second-busiest airport was an apple orchard on which a defense plant was built (hence its current three-letter code: ORD); to the east was the Forest Preserve along the Des Plaines River, to the west little suburban villages strung along rail lines, separated by cornfields. But in the 1940s, Chicago politicians, in search of a new airport site, annexed the orchard and named it after a World War II airman awarded the Medal of Honor, who got a military appointment from the feds after his father gave state's evidence against Al Capone and was gunned down. Mayor Richard J. Daley opened O'Hare in 1955 and promoted its development, correctly concluding that a great airport could maintain in the 20th century the economic strength Chicago gained from railroad stations and rail yards in the 19th century. Today, O'Hare is surrounded on all sides by suburbs almost as densely settled as the bungalow wards of the city. Politically, these suburbs were for many years solidly Republican, convinced that civic virtues could best be realized by opposing the party of City Hall in Chicago and that economic growth could best be assured by opposing the party that backed stifling government regulation.

The 6th Congressional District includes O'Hare and much of the suburban area to its west. Most of the district is in DuPage County, the second largest county in the state. It includes the string of long-settled suburbs due west of the Loop: Elmhurst, Villa Park, Lombard, Glen Ellyn, Wheaton, plus the newer suburbs along I-290 and Lake Street: Bensenville, Addison, Wood Dale, Bloomingdale. Over the years growth has brought some changes, with many former Chicagoans of ethnically diverse backgrounds. Economically, this remains high-income territory; culturally, it is now cautiously moderate or even liberal. Politically, it has become less overwhelmingly Republican. In 1988 George Bush carried DuPage by 124,000 votes, with 68% of the vote, but in 2000 George W. Bush carried the county by only 48,000, with 55% of the vote--which tells you in a nutshell why the elder Bush carried Illinois and the younger Bush lost it.

The congressman from the 6th District is Henry Hyde, former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, chief manager of the impeachment of Bill Clinton and one of the most respected and intellectually honest members of the House. Hyde springs from Chicago earth, was raised a Catholic and a Democrat; he was an all-city basketball center and played against basketball great George Mikan; he went off to college at Georgetown and enlisted in the Navy and served at Lingayen Gulf. After the war, he finished college and law school, practiced law in Chicago, and in 1958 switched parties, convinced that Republicans were more in line with his anti-Communist beliefs. He ran for the House in 1962 in northwest Chicago and lost 53%-47% to incumbent Roman Pucinski. He was elected to the Illinois House in 1966 and in the Democratic year of 1974 was elected, as one of only 144 Republicans, to the U.S. House.

There he first made his name as an abortion opponent, attaching to Appropriations subcommittee bills his Hyde amendments prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay for abortions in various circumstances. ''I look for the common thread in slavery, the Holocaust and abortion,'' he said in 1998. ''To me, the common thread is dehumanizing people.'' In 1976 he passed the first Hyde amendment to an appropriation bill, banning abortions financed by Medicaid. It has remained in force ever since, though states can spend their own money on abortions, and some do; exceptions for saving the life of the mother, and victims of rape and incest were added in 1993. Hyde is concerned about born as well as unborn children. He was one of the few Republicans who supported the family leave bill, and has sponsored bills to expand the number of women eligible for pregnancy benefits under the children's health insurance program. He opposes assisted suicide as part of a "culture of death" and sponsored the bill passed by the House to criminalize the prescription of lethal drugs to terminally ill patients contemplating ending their lives.

On many occasions, Hyde has proven himself one of the most eloquent members of the House. His speeches against term limits and in favor of the flag-burning amendment are classics; his evisceration of the nuclear freeze resolution helped turn the tide on foreign policy in the House in the 1980s. He defended the Reagan administration on Iran-Contra and in the process said, somewhat to his embarrassment in the impeachment debate, that to condemn all lying "seems to me too simplistic. In the murkier grayness of the real world, choices must often be made." Three major Hyde measures passed both houses but were vetoed by Clinton: the partial-birth abortion ban, product liability and tort reform.

None of these challenges he had faced before was as great or as public as the challenge of impeachment. From the first, Hyde had little taste for the subject, yet realized he had the responsibility to handle it. Early on he said that any impeachment resolution must be bipartisan if it were to be credible, but it became clear by September that many Democrats were determined to defend Clinton at every turn. Democrats resisted his resolution for an impeachment inquiry but felt obliged to advance one of their own, with time limits and with Zoe Lofgren's requirement that members vote first on the definition of an impeachable offense. All Republicans and 31 Democrats voted for the Republican resolution. Clinton defenders tried to put Hyde on the defensive. In September, an online publication, Salon, reported that Hyde had had an affair 30 years before; "youthful indiscretions," Hyde responded. As the facts of Clinton's conduct became known, Hyde obviously decided that the president had lied under oath in a United States District Court proceeding, and that that could not be forgiven. He ran the fractious hearings with scrupulous fairness, and even with occasional humor. His summation to the House was genuinely eloquent, and impeachment was voted on two of four counts.

Then came the historic march of Hyde and the 12 other House managers to the Senate presided over by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The managers were pitted against Clinton's professional litigators, and the discomfort of almost all senators was obvious. (In 1996, Hyde rebuffed requests that he run for the Senate, adding "I'd be a great senator--God, I'd be so arrogant.") Remembering his own experience in combat, he summoned up memories of Americans who had fallen in battle and urged the senators to uphold the rule of law. But Democrats did not waver, and the articles of impeachment were rejected.

After the 2000 election he tried to get the House Republican leadership to waive the six-year term limit on chairmanships, arguing that he had lost one year of chairing Judiciary to impeachment. But they declined, and instead Hyde got the chairmanship of the International Relations Committee. This was a far less partisan assignment for Hyde, who agreed with committee senior Democrat Tom Lantos on many foreign-policy issues, including firmness toward Iraq, support for Israel, door-opening to Vietnam, economic aid to Afghanistan, and increased federal dollars for "public diplomacy" overseas following September 11.

Hyde has continued to work on other issues. Much of his district lies under O'Hare flight paths, and he has been a champion of building a third Chicago-area airport in Peotone in Will County; in this, his chief ally has been the 2d District's Jesse Jackson Jr. He was the only House Republican from Illinois not to endorse a federal bailout for United Airlines. He supported bankruptcy reform, passed by the House in May 2001 and in July 2001 by the Senate, and unexpectedly found himself on the other side of the issue from the House's pro-life movement that he had been instrumental in creating. When he painstakingly negotiated in the summer of 2002 a deal with Senator Charles Schumer on the Democrat's amendment to the bankruptcy bill to make it more difficult for abortion-clinic protestors from declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying court fines or damages, many conservative colleagues said that Hyde had been too accommodating, and the bankruptcy bill did not pass.

Hyde considered not running for re-election in 2000, but decided to do so after Democrats' threatened to target the House impeachment managers. In 2002, he improved on his showing in 2000, when evidently he paid some political price for his stand. Now the second-oldest member of Congress (Ralph Hall is older) and the fifth most-senior House Republican, he enjoys a more bipartisan respect accorded to an icon.

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DC Office
2110 RHOB 20515, 202-225-4561; Fax: 202-225-1166; Web site: www.house.gov/hyde

State Offices
Addison, 630-832-5950.

Committees

• International Relations (Chmn. of 26 R).
• Judiciary (2d of 21 R): Courts, the Internet & Intellectual Property.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	0	7	0	13	32	88	53	100	88	83	100
2001	5	--	0	14	--	--	56	96	92	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	33%	--	66%		31%	--	69%
Social	0%	--	81%		0%	--	75%
Foreign	21%	--	74%		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	Henry Hyde (R)	113,174	65%	$839,199
	Tom Berry (D)	60,698	35%
2002 primary	Henry Hyde (R)	unopposed
2000 general	Henry Hyde (R)	133,327	59%	$2,436,839
	Brent Christensen (D)	92,880	41%	$234,608
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (67%); 1996 (64%); 1994 (73%); 1992 (66%); 1990 (67%); 1988 (74%); 1986 (75%); 1984 (75%); 1982 (68%); 1980 (67%); 1978 (66%); 1976 (61%); 1974 (53%)

2000 presidential
	Bush (R)	126,254	53%
	Gore (D)	103,616	44%
	Other	6,945	3%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the 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: 215 square miles
• Population in 2000: 653,647; 100.0% urban; 0.0% rural
• Median Household Income: $62,640; 4.3% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 20.2% blue collar; 69.5% white collar; 10.3% gray collar; 9.6% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 75.3% White, 2.7% Black, 8.1% Asian, 0.1% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.3% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 12.5% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 16.7% German, 11.0% Irish, 9.4% Polish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.