Rep. Sue Myrick (R) Elected 1994, 5th term
Born:	Aug. 1, 1941, Tiffin, OH
Home:	Charlotte
Education:	Heidelberg Col., 1959-60
Religion:	Methodist
Marital Status:	married (Ed)
Elected  Office:	Charlotte City Cncl., 1983-85; Charlotte Mayor, 1987-91.
Professional Career:	Pres. & CEO, Myrick Advertising, 1985-94; Pres. & CEO, Myrick Enterprises, 1992-94.
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"An agreeable village but in a damn rebellious country," recorded General Cornwallis when, before the unpleasantness at Yorktown, he visited Charlotte, North Carolina. "A veritable nest of hornets." This town, settled by Scots-Irish and German colonists who came down the Blue Ridge from Pennsylvania, is now a metropolitan area of 1.4 million people. Before the California gold rush, Charlotte was the gold mining capital of the country; in 1837, the U.S. Mint established a branch here. Now, Charlotte is headquarters to two of the nation's biggest banks: Bank of America, formed from the 1998 merger of Charlotte-based NationsBank and San Francisco's Bank of America; and Wachovia, created by the 2001 merger of Charlotte's First Union and Winston-Salem's Wachovia. All told, almost $1 trillion in banking resources are headquartered in Charlotte--more than in any American city except New York. Charlotte is also home to eight members of the Fortune 500, including Duke Energy, Sonic Automotive, B.F. Goodrich and Nucor; it is the center of the nation's biggest textile manufacturing region, and serves as an airline hub for USAirways.

The past two decades have brought Charlotte cultural growth worthy of its growing business stature. It now boasts a $50 million performing arts center across from 60-story Bank of America tower, and is home to the expansion NFL Panthers and a new NBA franchise owned by Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson. (A feuding owner spirited away the city's first NBA expansion team, the Hornets, to New Orleans.) The rebelliousness Cornwallis noted can still be seen in this region's passion for the booming stock-car circuit: One of the nation's biggest auto-racing tracks is here, and just up the road is Mooresville, home of the sport's giant, the late Dale Earnhardt. Charlotte has also built a boosterish pride in its capacity for accommodation. It is proud that it responded amicably to a busing order approved in a landmark Supreme Court case in 1971; that it twice elected Harvey Gantt, who is black, then replaced him with Sue Myrick, a Republican woman whose grievance wasn't race but traffic.

The 9th Congressional District includes about half of Mecklenburg County; it extends west to include most of Gaston County, long a textile center, and south to take in upscale bedroom communities in fast-growing Union County. Democratic redistricters happily made this district more Republican, in order to keep Republican precincts out of the 8th and 12th Districts. Mecklenburg County as a whole is politically marginal, with a large black minority and some neighborhoods of affluent white liberals, but the 9th District is overwhelmingly Republican.

The congresswoman from the 9th District is Sue Myrick, a Republican first elected in 1994. Myrick grew up and went to college in Ohio, raised her family in Charlotte, owned an advertising agency and Amway distributorship. In 1981 she ran for the Charlotte city council and lost. She ran again and won in 1983, ran for mayor and lost in 1985, then beat Harvey Gantt in 1987. Despite nasty personal charges, she was reelected in 1989; she is proud of making infrastructure improvements, bringing the NFL Carolina Panthers to Charlotte, and preventing property tax increases for four years. Myrick ran for the Senate in 1992, but was beaten by Lauch Faircloth in the primary 48%-30%. In 1994 Charlotte Congressman Alex McMillan, passed over for the ranking position on Budget, retired. In the first round of the primary, against State House Minority Leader David Balmer, Myrick led by just 34%-28%. But before the runoff three weeks later, it was revealed that Balmer had falsely claimed on his resume to have graduated in the top 20% of his law school class and to have played varsity soccer. Myrick won 68%-32%, then easily won the general.

Myrick was a proud leader of the 1994 Republican freshman class. She served on Newt Gingrich's transition team and was her class liaison to the leadership. On the Budget Committee, she co-chaired a task force on privatizing HUD functions, supported a flat-rate income tax and sponsored a bill for civil monetary penalties for making false statements in political ads. In January 1997, she was named to the Rules Committee. But she communicated with leaders of the unsuccessful coup against Gingrich in July 1997, and later that month lost the post of Conference secretary by 110-65 to Deborah Pryce, whom Gingrich backed.

Myrick, a firm conservative, has taken a lead role on many Republican initiatives. She initiated the bill to outlaw taking a child out of state to get an abortion to avoid a state parental notification law. Representing a prosperous and growing district, she turned down the Transportation Committee's offer of $15 million for Charlotte's outerbelt because she felt the transportation bill would bust the budget: "I said when I ran for this job, 'If you want somebody to bring home the bacon, don't send me.' We get a balanced budget agreement for the first time in 30 years, and now they do this?" But she is willing to help others: She set up a database so that Charlotte residents could help those in east Carolina recover from Hurricane Floyd. Following apparent congressional leaks of post-September 11 intelligence data, Myrick proposed that members of Congress undergo the same background checks as non-elected security officials. Not surprisingly, the bill was not passed; an expert at congressional procedure said that criminal penalties already exist for any such leak, but that the law is difficult to enforce because a prosecutor must prove intent. With relatively few textile workers in her district, she voted for trade promotion authority, contending that critics in that industry were "standing outside, throwing stones."

After the 1998 election Myrick ran for another leadership position, vice chairman of the Republican Conference, but lost. She was more successful in 2000, when she was named one of two vice chairmen of the Republican platform committee; under her experienced gavel, the proceedings on the foreign policy planks proceeded briskly. Following the 2002 election, Myrick filed a change in the rules of the House Republican Conference to require that each of 13 Appropriations subcommittee chairmen secure leadership approval; Speaker Dennis Hastert modified the proposal to give the review power to the leadership's Steering Committee, and it was approved. In 2003, she became chairman of the Republican Study Committee, activist conservatives who have urged spending restraint.

Myrick had surgery for breast cancer in December 1999 and underwent three months of chemotherapy and another six weeks of radiation treatment. Following that, she sponsored the law to provide Medicaid coverage for low-income women for mammograms and Pap smears, and was critical when Bill Clinton signed it in private in October 2000 to deny a photo opportunity to co-sponsor Rick Lazio, who was running for the Senate against his wife. Myrick became co-chairman of the Cancer Caucus, and co-sponsored with Nita Lowey a bill to require the National Institutes of Health to explore the connection between the environment and cancer. Myrick was declared cancer-free and has continued to win reelection easily. She considered, but quickly decided against, Senate bids in 2002 and 2004.

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DC Office
230 CHOB 20515, 202-225-1976; Fax: 202-225-3389; Web site: www.house.gov/myrick

State Offices
Charlotte, 704-362-1060; Gastonia, 704-861-1976.

Committees

• Rules (7th of 9 R): Technology & the House (Vice Chmn.).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	0	7	0	25	81	100	61	100	96	100	100
2001	0	--	0	7	--	--	71	95	96	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	19%	--	82%		21%	--	73%
Social	0%	--	81%		0%	--	75%
Foreign	0%	--	97%		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 Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Sue Myrick (R)	140,095	72%	$916,659
	Ed McGuire (D)	49,974	26%
	Other	3,374	2%
2002 primary	Sue Myrick (R)	unopposed
2000 general	Sue Myrick (R)	181,161	69%	$959,304
	Ed McGuire (D)	79,382	30%	$71,375
	Other	3,677	1%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (69%); 1996 (63%); 1994 (65%)

2000 presidential
	Bush (R)	157,734	63%
	Gore (D)	91,353	36%
	Other	2,066	1%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Ninth 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: 1,018 square miles
• Population in 2000: 619,178; 84.2% urban; 15.8% rural
• Median Household Income: $55,059; 6.2% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 20.4% blue collar; 69.5% white collar; 10.2% gray collar; 12.4% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 82.9% White, 10.3% Black, 2.0% Asian, 0.3% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 0.8% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 3.5% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 11.2% German, 9.5% USA, 9.0% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.