Rep. Bill Delahunt (D) Elected 1996, 4th term
Born:	July 18, 1941, Quincy
Home:	Quincy
Education:	Middlebury Col., B.A. 1963, Boston Col., J.D. 1967
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	divorced
Elected  Office:	Quincy City Cncl., 1971; MA House of Reps., 1972-75.
Military Career:	Coast Guard, 1963; Coast Guard Reserves, 1963-71.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1967-75; Asst. Clerk, Norfolk Superior Court, 1969-71; Norfolk Cnty. Dist. Atty., 1975-96.
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The South Shore of Massachusetts Bay, from Boston southward to Plymouth and then down Cape Cod (there is a lot of dispute about which way is up and down on the Cape), is Massachusetts's oldest-settled territory. The Pilgrims landed here at Plymouth Rock in 1620; this stony land was farmed by John Adams's father, who was anything but the aristocrat some later members of the Adams family would have you believe. Daniel Webster lived in the South Shore town of Marshfield, today a high-income suburb of Boston far out on the usually clogged Southeast Expressway. Joseph P. Kennedy used to summer with his young family on Nantasket Beach in Hull, before moving out of Massachusetts when the Yankees wouldn't let them into their beach club in Cohasset in the 1920s; but the Kennedys continue to summer at their Hyannis Port compound on the Cape. Provincetown, at the tip of the Cape, is still a fishing port, and also one of the major gay vacation areas in the country; the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, rich whaling ports in the early 19th century, are now favored summer resorts for the trendy liberal rich of New York and Washington. Half the nation's cranberry growers are clustered among the bogs along Cape Cod Bay. But the Cape is also filled increasingly with retirees and, to the dismay of some, is the fastest-growing part of Massachusetts. The Cape's Barnstable County grew 19% in the 1990s, almost four times the state average.

The 10th Congressional District follows the South Shore from Quincy (pronounced quin-zee) to the Cape. It juts inland almost, but not quite to Brockton, and includes Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The South Shore and the Cape were once exclusively Protestant and Yankee, but in the Massachusetts way they have changed over the years, with Irish and Italian surnames as common as Yankee ones (this is the nation's most heavily Irish congressional district), and the descendants of Portuguese-Azorean fishermen have fanned out into the countryside. Trendy liberal politics, well established on the Vineyard and Nantucket, have spread inland as well. The South Shore is generally Democratic territory, but in 2002 Republican Mitt Romney carried Plymouth and Weymouth in the gubernatorial election--they are two of the district's three South Shore population centers.

The congressman from the 10th District is Bill Delahunt, a Democrat elected in 1996. Delahunt is a lifelong resident of Quincy at the northern tip of the district, who graduated from Middlebury College and Boston College Law School and served in the Coast Guard. He practiced law and was elected to the Quincy Council. In 1972, he was elected to the state House; Governor Michael Dukakis in 1975 appointed him district attorney of Norfolk County, a job that Delahunt held for two decades. He was prompted to run for the House in 1996 when 24-year incumbent Gerry Studds retired. Delahunt had serious primary competition from former state Representative Philip Johnston and self-financed environmentalist Ian Bowles. The initial results showed 38% each for Delahunt and Johnston, with Johnston ahead by 266 votes; a recount declared Johnston still ahead by 175 votes. But Delahunt sued, and on October 4, a judge ruled that more than 900 punch card votes in Weymouth had not been properly tabulated. In shades of another election challenge four years later, the judge ordered a recount of every ballot with an indentation, dimple or other mark: Only in this district and in 14 counties in Texas had dimpled chads ever been counted as votes in the U.S. until the Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade County canvassing boards started counting them in November 2000. On October 10, Delahunt was declared the winner by 108 votes, even as Johnston was being hailed at a Quincy rally by Ted Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Subsequently, Massachusetts eliminated punch-card voting, and Delahunt voiced support for hand recounts of punch cards elsewhere). Johnston called the result a "travesty," and Delahunt had less than a month to campaign for the general against conservative state House Minority Leader Edward Teague, who had won the Republican primary. Both ran million-dollar campaigns, but Teague had been running ads against Johnston. Eight years earlier, George Bush carried this district over Michael Dukakis, but reaction here to the new Republican majority in the House was hostile; Delahunt won 54%-42%.

Delahunt has been an active legislator, and has kept pledge to wear Cape Cod ties in the House and hand them out to colleagues of both parties. As the father of an adopted daughter who escaped Vietnam in the 1975 Operation Babylift, he has written laws to ease international adoptions. His positions on abortion are part of Massachusetts's move to the left: In 1974 as a state legislator he called Roe v. Wade "a tragic decision," but he switched to a pro-abortion rights position before running for the House and has voted against the partial-birth abortion ban. His experience with contested elections later made him an enthusiast for abolishing the Electoral College. On the Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment, he was one of the few members who sat down in bipartisan breakfasts to discuss procedures. But he ended up siding completely with impeachment opponents. He took the lead in framing a Democratic motion to censure Clinton and protested bitterly when Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde would not allow it to be heard. A former state prosecutor, Delahunt has also explored further steps to rein in the authority of federal prosecutors and to protect defendants' rights. He filed the Innocence Protection Act with Illinois Rep. Ray LaHood, and it was cosponsored by a majority of members in the 107th Congress; it includes federal funding to the states for DNA testing of the accused. On the International Relations Committee, he worked with North Carolina Rep. Cass Ballenger to make several visits with Venezuela president Hugo Chavez to encourage cooperation between the two nations, and he criticized the Bush administration's handling of the failed coup in Caracas in April 2002.

Delahunt also has worked on local projects, including the Cape Cod land bank, the Salt Pond visitors' center at the National Seashore entry in Eastham, and conversion of the former Camp Edwards National Guard training site to a federal wildlife refuge. He wrote a law requiring large ships entering Massachusetts' waters to notify the Coast Guard, so they could be warned away from endangered right whales.

Delahunt has easily won his re-election bids--no need to count dimpled chads. Even with the Cape's population growth, it's not likely to give much hope for a Republican revival. On Capitol Hill, he is the fourth tenant in a long-running apartment rental shared by Senators Chuck Schumer and Richard Durbin and Representative George Miller. He shares the living room with Schumer in conditions best described as ramshackle.

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DC Office
1317 LHOB 20515, 202-225-3111; Fax: 202-225-5658; Web site: www.house.gov/delahunt

State Offices
Hyannis, 508-771-0666; Quincy, 617-770-3700.

Committees

• International Relations (11th of 23 D): Europe; Western Hemisphere.
• Judiciary (11th of 16 D): Commercial & Administrative Law; Courts, the Internet & Intellectual Property.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	90	85	100	75	81	38	26	39	0	0	0
2001	95	--	100	100	--	--	12	26	4	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	95%	--	0%		81%	--	18%
Social	90%	--	0%		83%	--	16%
Foreign	85%	--	16%		87%	--	10%
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 N 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 *  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	Bill Delahunt (D)	179,238	69%	$266,025
	Luiz Gonzaga (R)	79,624	31%	$55,428
2002 primary	Bill Delahunt (D)	unopposed
2000 general	Bill Delahunt (D)	234,675	74%	$231,526
	Eric V. Bleicken (R)	81,192	26%	$1,146
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (70%); 1996 (54%)

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	175,426	54%
	Bush (R)	124,956	39%
	Other	22,722	7%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Tenth 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 + 8
• District Size: 2,969 square miles
• Population in 2000: 635,901; 92.2% urban; 7.8% rural
• Median Household Income: $51,928; 5.9% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 18.1% blue collar; 66.7% white collar; 15.2% gray collar; 15.1% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 92.2% White, 1.5% Black, 2.7% Asian, 0.3% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.3% Two+ races, 0.6% Other, 1.3% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 23.9% Irish, 11.9% English, 9.9% Italian
• Click here for statewide demographic data.