Rep. Shelley Berkley (D) Elected 1998, 3d term
Born:	Jan. 20, 1951, South Fallsburg, NY
Home:	Las Vegas
Education:	U.N.L.V., B.A. 1972; U. of San Diego Law Schl., J.D. 1976
Religion:	Jewish
Marital Status:	married (Larry Lehrner)
Elected  Office:	NV Assembly, 1982-84; Regent, U. Commun. Col. System of NV, 1990-98.
Professional Career:	Cnsl., SW Gas Corp., 1977-82; VP, Sands Hotel, 1989-98; Chair, NV Hotel & Motel Assn., 1994.
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Las Vegas, a city whose garishness and sheer improbability are literally awesome, had a fittingly colorful beginning. It began as a Paiute Indian settlement that in the late 1700s served as a watering stop for Spanish priests making the 1,200-mile trek between New Mexico and California. By the 1800s, the Old Spanish Trail, as it came to be known, was used by horse- and mule smugglers, by white explorers such as John Fremont and by Mormon emigrants heading west. Las Vegas was still a small crossroads when Nevada, its mining industry a shambles, legalized gambling in the 1930s. The WPA Guide to Nevada, published in 1940, when the city had 10,000 people, describes a prim Las Vegas: "Relatively little emphasis is placed on the gambling clubs and divorce facilities--though they are attractions to many visitors--and much effort is being made to build up cultural attractions. No cheap and easily parodied slogans have been adopted to publicize the city, no attempt has been made to introduce pseudo-romantic architectural themes, or to give an artificial glamour or gaiety." All that changed after World War II, when gangster Bugsy Siegel built the Flamingo hotel on what became The Strip south of the city limits. Pseudo-romantic architectural themes became the order of the day (you find flamingoes in the waters of Florida, not in the deserts of Nevada) and one casino followed another. Organized crime provided much of the money and muscle for Las Vegas, and investment capital came from Teamsters pension funds. That changed in the late 1960s, when the eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes bought most of the casinos and hired Mormons to run them. Then Hughes abruptly left town, and other operators built casinos like Caesar's Palace and Circus Circus, the Mirage and Excalibur, Paris and New York, New York. In the 1970s, the casinos were the haven of flashy high rollers, of Frank Sinatra and girl shows. By the 1990s Las Vegas was producing more family-oriented entertainment and even high art, with Steve Wynn's museum-quality art collection on view, and Las Vegas built the biggest convention center in the country. September 11 hurt Las Vegas, and 15,000 casino workers were laid off. But Vegas recovered smartly in 2002 and remains one of the great leisure destinations in the world.

The 1st Congressional District consists of the inner core of Las Vegas that visitors are most likely to see. They cross into it as soon as they drive their rental cars out of the lot at McCarran International Airport and remain in the 1st as they cruise down Las Vegas Boulevard--the Strip. On the three-mile Strip--an architectural model since Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's Learning from Las Vegas--you can find 11 of the world's 13 largest hotels, each with thousands of rooms. North of Sahara Avenue, Las Vegas Boulevard enters the city of Las Vegas, the older and less glamorous part of town, although the city has embarked on a plan to renovate downtown. The 1st continues north for another dozen miles through the housing developments and scrubland that follow the diagonal U.S. 95 and Interstate 15, to include the sizable Hispanic and black communities of North Las Vegas. The 1st is home to the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and includes the Clark County Government Center, a circular sandstone complex built in the 1990s whose beautiful Indian-inspired architecture is a testament to the power of the gambling dollar.

The population of the 1st District is 12% black and 28% Hispanic; this is also one of the parts of the west with a high percentage of union members. Overall, this is a solidly Democratic district--Al Gore won 56% here in 2000.

The congresswoman from the 1st District is Shelley Berkley, a Democrat elected in 1998. Berkley moved to Las Vegas at 11; her father worked at the Sands and rose to maitre d'; she waited tables and was a keno runner as she made her way through the UNLV, where she was student body president, and the University of San Diego law school. "My roots in this community run very, very deep," she says, and she has worked for many of its major institutions. She chaired the Nevada Hotel and Motel Associations, was government and legal affairs vice president at the Sands and in-house counsel at Southwest Gas. She was elected to one term in the state House. In 1990, she was appointed to the University of Nevada Board of Regents and then elected to serve two more terms.

After the 1996 election, she decided to run for the House. Republican John Ensign had been reelected by only 50%-44% after spending $1.9 million. Ensign decided to run against Senator Harry Reid, and Berkley--brassy, direct, effusive--seemed headed for victory. Republicans lacked a serious candidate until filing day in May 1998; 15 minutes before the deadline, Judge Donald Chairez resigned his post and filed for the seat. Then in June came a bombshell. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on tapes of Berkley's May 1997 telephone conversations to a friend and texts of a memo Berkley sent the Sands's owner Sheldon Adelson when he was seeking approvals for his Venetian megahotel. They showed her advising him to make campaign contributions to local judges to curry favor and to grant concessions to Clark County commissioners to get their votes for approval. "Those suggestions were at best unethical and at worst illegal," said the Sands's President Bill Weidner, and Adelson fired Berkley. She quickly apologized; the Clark County district attorney saw no cause for prosecution. But Chairez made his slogan, "Fairness, not favors!" Berkley argued for affordable college tuition, adequate classrooms and computers. Both candidates supported the gaming industry and opposed the temporary nuclear storage site at Yucca Mountain. With strong support from the gaming industry, Berkley outspent Chairez by $1.2 million to $554,000. She won narrowly, by 49%-46%.

In the House, Berkley's voting record has been moderate. She keeps a close watch on the interests of the gaming industry. She led opposition to a proposal by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to bar Nevada casinos from accepting bets on college sports. With the state's bipartisan delegation, she unsuccessfully fought the plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. In 2001, she voted for Republican proposals to repeal the marriage penalty and estate taxes. She co-sponsored with Representative Pat Toomey a proposal to reduce the regulatory burden on Medicare providers. She fought to return to a local woman seven paintings that she had done for Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in the Auschwitz concentration camp and that later were taken by a Polish museum. Berkley forcefully backed George W. Bush on the use of force in Iraq.

Berkley has had tough re-election campaigns. In 2000, state senator Jon Porter revived the 1998 controversy by attacking her for failing to apologize for her conversations and notes to Adelson. After Berkley said that the state's prescription drug plan "crashed and burned," Governor Kenny Guinn said that he would do everything he could to defeat her. She refused Porter's demand to apologize to Guinn. Both candidates spent heavily on ads, with Porter helped by additional spending by pharmaceutical firms. Berkley won 52%-44%. In 2002, Republicans nominated Las Vegas Councilwoman Lynette Boggs-McDonald, a former Miss Oregon and former Democrat, who hoped to become the first Republican black woman elected to the House. Boggs-McDonald was well-funded, including strong support from anti-abortion groups, and she attacked Berkley for voting for spending bills that included money for the Yucca Mountain repository. But redistricting had reduced the size of the district, removing many suburban precincts, and Berkley won 54%-43%.

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DC Office
439 CHOB 20515, 202-225-5965; Fax: 202-225-3119; Web site: www.house.gov/berkley

State Offices
Las Vegas, 702-220-9823.

Committees

• International Relations (17th of 23 D): International Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Human Rights; Middle East & Central Asia.
• Transportation & Infrastructure (22d of 34 D): Aviation; Highways, Transit & Pipelines.
• Veterans' Affairs (11th of 14 D): Health.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	85	73	88	100	50	38	25	50	16	14	17
2001	90	--	90	79	--	--	22	43	12	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	62%	--	39%		61%	--	39%
Social	74%	--	23%		74%	--	19%
Foreign	66%	--	34%		64%	--	35%
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 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 Y  9. Trade Promotion Authority N 10. Bar Funds for Intl. Court N 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Deny Home. Sec. Dept. Union N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Shelley Berkley (D)	64,312	54%	$1,717,220
	Lynette Boggs McDonald (R)	51,148	43%	$983,110
	Other	4,254	4%
2002 primary	Shelley Berkley (D)	unopposed
2000 general	Shelley Berkley (D)	118,469	52%	$2,062,803
	Jon Porter (R)	101,276	44%	$1,386,081
	Other	9,490	4%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (49%)

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	87,345	56%
	Bush (R)	63,163	41%
	Other	4,801	3%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the First 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: 177 square miles
• Population in 2000: 666,088; 99.9% urban; 0.1% rural
• Median Household Income: $39,480; 13.9% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 23.0% blue collar; 47.8% white collar; 29.2% gray collar; 14.4% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 51.5% White, 11.9% Black, 4.6% Asian, 0.6% Amer. Indian, 0.4% Hawaiian, 2.6% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 28.2% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 8.8% German, 7.1% Irish, 5.9% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.