Rep. Roy Blunt (R) Elected 1996, 4th term
Born:	Jan. 10, 1950, Niangua
Home:	Strafford
Education:	SW Baptist U., B.A. 1970, SW MO St. U., M.A. 1972
Religion:	Baptist
Marital Status:	married (Abigail Perlman)
Elected  Office:	MO Secy. of State, 1984-93.
Professional Career:	H.S. teacher, 1970-73; Greene Cnty. Clerk, 1973-85; Adjunct Instructor, Drury Col., 1976-82; Pres., SW Baptist U., 1993-96.
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One of the biggest tourist destinations in America today is Branson, Missouri--something almost no one predicted 25 years ago. Even today Branson has only 6,050 residents, is served by two-lane roads, is nowhere near a major airport; but it thrives, paralleling the surging popularity of country and western music. Branson was put on the map early in the century by Harold Bell Wright's novel, The Shepherd of the Hills, about the hardy people of the mountains, hills and meadows of southwest Missouri, just north of Arkansas. More tourists came in with completion of the Ozark Beach Dam that created Bull Shoals Lake in 1913, lured by the native bass and stocked trout. Then in the 1960s, new lakes were formed, a Shepherd of the Hills pageant and Silver Dollar City were started, and entertainers--the five Maybe brothers performing as "The Baldknobbers" and Box Car Willie from the Grand Ole Opry--started performing. Today Branson has 6 million visitors a year and more than two dozen theaters with 61,000 seats--more than Broadway. What do people like about Branson? The non-stop entertainment and fishing and boating; country music and family style entertainment; plenty of shopping and a safe atmosphere. These are also things that have made southwest Missouri the fastest growing part of the state in the last 20 years, generating new businesses and attracting retirees as well as vacationers. Workers come to Branson from as far away as Springfield, the biggest city in southwest Missouri. Springfield is the headquarters of such middle American institutions as the Mid-America Dairymen, the nation's largest milk producers' cooperative; the Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, probably the nation's largest fishing equipment store; the Assemblies of God, one of the nation's and the world's largest and fastest-growing Protestant denominations; and two of the nation's three largest coachbuilders (stretch limousine manufacturers), Springfield Coach and DaBryan Coach Builders, with a third nearby in Seymour, Executive Coach, run by a Nigerian immigrant. Southwest Missouri is also dairy country and has a growing poultry industry; Latinos have been moving into McDonald County to work in chicken plants. The Ozarks, long considered a backwater, are on the cutting edge of many trends in today's America.

The 7th Congressional District includes Branson and Springfield and most of southwest Missouri. Historically, this area has been Republican since it opposed secession in 1861: pro-Union Springfield changed hands several times as Missouri staged its own civil war. Its conservative response to the big-spending government of the 1960s and cultural liberalism of the 1970s reinforced its allegiance, and now this is the most Republican part of Missouri.

The congressman from the 7th District is Roy Blunt, a Republican first elected in 1996. Blunt grew up on a dairy farm near Springfield, in a political family; his father was a state representative. He graduated from Southwest Baptist University, 25 miles north of Springfield, and taught high school and college history and government. He got his start in politics by volunteering for John Ashcroft's unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1972; the story goes that he showed up at campaign headquarters in his pickup truck, Ashcroft asked, "Have you got gas in this truck?", Blunt said yes and became his driver (another congressman, Democrat Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, also started his political career driving around a future senator). In 1973, 33-year-old freshman Governor Christopher Bond, in his second appointment, named the 23-year-old Blunt Greene County clerk. In 1984, at 34, Blunt was elected Missouri secretary of state and was re-elected with 60% of the vote in 1988. In 1992 he ran for governor and lost the Republican primary to William Webster, 44%-39%. Blunt became president of Southwest Baptist University. In 1996 Congressman Mel Hancock kept his pledge to serve only four terms and retired. In the primary Blunt faced Gary Nodler, businessman and one-time staffer to Congressman Gene Taylor. Nodler carried his home area around Joplin and Carthage, but Blunt carried everything else and won 56%-44%. There were 75,000 votes cast in the Republican primary and only 16,000 in the Democratic primary: a harbinger of the general election, which Blunt won 65%-32%, running ahead of the Republican ticket and carrying every county with at least 62% of the vote. He has been reelected easily since.

Blunt has shown great political skills and is now Majority Whip. He wanted to run for freshman class president, but at then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay's suggestion ran for the freshman spot on the Republican Steering Committee, on which he worked to get good committee assignments for freshmen. White House political adviser Ken Mehlman was working for freshman Kay Granger then and remembers Blunt, "He was the one person every single member of his class felt like they could go to to solve a problem." In the process he got good committee assignments himself--Agriculture, International Relations, Transportation and Infrastructure. On International Relations, he supported the bill to penalize countries that practice or allow religious persecution--a concern of denominations like the Assemblies of God, which has more members abroad than in the United States. He was part of DeLay's "free speech" team proposing bills to undermine the Shays-Meehan campaign finance bill. Blunt was not inattentive to fellow members. In the 1998 campaign cycle he raised and contributed $250,000 to other incumbent Republicans.

Three weeks after the 1998 election Blunt won a seat on the Commerce Committee. Then in January 1999 Tom DeLay plucked him from the ranks of 48 deputy whips and appointed him Chief Deputy Whip, the position Dennis Hastert held until his astonishing elevation to speaker. Blunt has said that he never lobbied for the job and didn't even know he was being considered until he read it in a newspaper. On a number of issues Blunt was given the job of making more palatable to core Republicans measures that were going through in any case. In September 1999 he brokered a deal to tie business tax cuts to the minimum wage increase. In September 2000 he brokered a deal on food sales to Cuba: Miami's two Cuban-American Republicans got a ban on U.S. credits for sales, but the export-minded George Nethercutt got third-party financing. Blunt endorsed George W. Bush early, in March 1999, and was named the Bush campaign's liaison to House members, a busy position and a sensitive one given Bush's pointed criticisms of House Republicans in 1999.

As chief deputy whip, Blunt spent much time meeting with lobbyists, organizing groups interested in different issues like trade, taxes and energy. He developed a reputation as a good listener and took care to pay attention to party moderates. David Rehr, a lobbyist close to the Republican leadership, describes him thus: "Roy is more of the velvet glove, almost a confessor figure. He's the kind of guy who is able to say, 'That's a really good idea, but maybe it's better to do it this way,' without being confrontational." Speaker Dennis Hastert assigned Blunt to mediate disputes between Republicans and to win over votes on critical issues. Blunt also weighed in on some local issues. Alerted by constituents whose relatives had died in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, he sponsored a bill to treat relatives of American victims of those attacks the same as relatives of September 11 victims; it passed the House 391-18. And after Democrat Rob Andrews complained that New Jersey-licensed limousines were not allowed into New York without paying a tax, Blunt, representing the number one stretch-limousine-producing district, sponsored a bill limiting local regulation of limousines that cross state lines. It was opposed by New Yorker officials eager for revenue and Nevada limousine drivers, worried about competition from California drivers; but it passed by wide margins and was signed into law in November 2002.

In 2000 Blunt began keeping a list of members who would back him for a higher leadership position. In the 2002 cycle he headed the Battleground 2002 operation, which raised many millions, and contributed $5.6 million to Republican House candidates. In December 2001 Majority Leader Dick Armey announced that he would retire in 2002. Immediately DeLay began to run for majority leader and Blunt said he would run for majority whip. Ray LaHood of Illinois, whose evenhanded presiding over important session has impressed members in both parties, announced he was running for whip too. But in February 2002 he said he would not run and was supporting Blunt; he found that Blunt had the support not only of most Republicans but of most moderates. In November 2002 both DeLay and Blunt were elected to their new positions without opposition; DeLay presented Blunt with a velvet-covered hammer.

As Whip Blunt made two decisions on his own which showed that he was not DeLay's puppet. One was his decision to name as his chief deputy whip Eric Cantor, who had served only one term and who is the only Jewish Republican in the House; Cantor was as astonished as everyone else. And he proposed to change House rules by repealing the eight-year term limit Newt Gingrich had imposed on speakers; that was agreed to by the whole House. Naturally there was speculation that Blunt might some day run for speaker, presumably against DeLay.

Blunt has been reelected by very wide margins. His son Matt Blunt was elected to the state House in 1998 and as Missouri's secretary of state in 2000; an Annapolis graduate, he was called up as a naval reservist and served six months in the United Kingdom after September 11; in early 2003, at 32, he seemed to be the consensus Republican candidate for governor against a Democratic incumbent with low job ratings: moving up as rapidly in Missouri politics as his father has in the House.

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DC Office
217 CHOB 20515, 202-225-6536; Fax: 202-225-5604; Web site: www.house.gov/blunt

State Offices
Joplin, 417-781-1041; Springfield, 417-889-1800.

Committees

• Majority Whip
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• Energy & Commerce (19th of 31 R).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	0	14	0	0	25	75	56	100	100	91	92
2001	5	--	10	0	--	--	67	95	96	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	15%	--	82%		0%	--	91%
Social	0%	--	81%		0%	--	75%
Foreign	4%	--	87%		0%	--	85%
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 *

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Roy Blunt (R)	149,519	75%	$1,331,576
	Ron Lapham (D)	45,964	23%
	Other	4,380	2%
2002 primary	Roy Blunt (R)	unopposed
2000 general	Roy Blunt (R)	202,305	74%	$1,177,456
	Charles Christup (D)	65,510	24%
	Other	6,122	2%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (73%); 1996 (65%)

2000 presidential
	Bush (R)	153,453	62%
	Gore (D)	87,663	35%
	Other	6,124	2%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Seventh 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 +14
• District Size: 5,555 square miles
• Population in 2000: 621,690; 59.1% urban; 40.9% rural
• Median Household Income: $32,929; 13.0% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 28.5% blue collar; 55.0% white collar; 16.5% gray collar; 14.4% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 92.9% White, 1.2% Black, 0.7% Asian, 1.0% Amer. Indian, 0.1% Hawaiian, 1.5% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 2.6% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 13.5% German, 10.8% USA, 9.2% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.