Rep. Jon Porter (R) Elected 2002, 1st term
Born:	May 16, 1955, Ft. Dodge, IA
Home:	Henderson
Education:	Attended Briar Cliff College, 1974-78.
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Laurie)
Elected  Office:	Boulder City Cncl., 1983-93; Boulder City Mayor, 1987-91; NV Senate, 1994-02.
Professional Career:	Indep. contractor, Farmers Insurance Group Corp., 1982-00.
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Las Vegas means The Meadows, and was the name of a place on the Old Spanish Trail from Santa Fe to California. In the early 20th century it was one of the terminuses of the Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad, a link to Nevada's silver mines. Even at the end of the 1930s, when gambling was legalized in Nevada, Las Vegas was still a town of less than 10,000. Then came decades of amazing growth, as Las Vegas became America's greatest center of gambling and one of its greatest centers of entertainment; it grew to a metropolitan area of 1.6 million people by 2000. For the last 15 years, Las Vegas has been the fastest-growing metropolitan area in America--up 85% in the 1990s. It is still frontier country, one of the few places in the nation with more men than women. Las Vegas has spread from the few blocks around Fremont Street that it occupied in the 1930s all across the bleak desert, in every direction. It is an exuberant, undisciplined and chaotic American city, within its pattern of grid-street mile roads all manner of curved-street subdivisions and gated communities, an America uncontrolled by traditional elites.

The 3d Congressional District is a Y-shaped segment of Nevada's Clark County made up of most of the suburbs of Las Vegas. It includes the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, off South Las Vegas Boulevard, and McCarran International Airport, and spreads west, northeast and south. It includes active retiree communities, blue-collar communities such as Blue Diamond that still have a rural flavor and a variety of planned (and often gated) communities like Summerlin that cater to young families drawn by the job opportunities. Southeast of Las Vegas, the district takes in two additional population hubs: Henderson, the fastest-growing city in the United States in the 1990s, and Boulder City, originally built for federal workers at Hoover Dam (Boulder City, under an old agreement with the federal government, is the only place in Nevada where gambling is prohibited). The 3d includes the Nevada halves of Lake Mead and Lake Mohave, on the border of Arizona, and state's southernmost tip including Searchlight (hometown of Senator Harry Reid) and Laughlin, right across the Colorado River from Bullhead City, Arizona.

The 3d District is a creature of redistricting, drawn after Nevada won a third congressional district from the 2000 Census. The lines were drawn so that the new district would have almost a precisely equal number of registered Democrats and registered Republicans. Clark County historically was the most Democratic part of Nevada, but the newcomers attracted to the state in the 1990s have been tilted toward Republicans; the result is this closely divided district.

The congressman from the new 3d District is Jon Porter, a Republican elected in 2002. He grew up in Humboldt, Iowa, and attended Briar Cliff College in Sioux City. After moving to Nevada, he managed an office with more than 40 agents for the Farmers Insurance Group. He was elected mayor of Boulder City in 1987 and in 1994 won election to the state Senate, where he earned a reputation as a consensus-building moderate. An abortion opponent, he sponsored bills addressing growth management, education reform and victims rights. His legislation to streamline the state child adoption process increased the number of public adoptions in the state by 50%. He secured funding for 18-year-olds leaving foster care to assist them in living on their own.

In 2000 he ran against Democratic Congresswoman Shelley Berkley in the 1st District, attacking her for her controversial communications to a hotel owner who was seeking approvals for another hotel; he lost 52%-44%. When the new district lines were adopted in June 2001, Porter, as expected by many insiders, proceeded to run in the new 3d District. But Democrats were enthusiastic about their political wunderkind candidate, 28-year-old Clark County Commissioner Dario Herrera, who seemed to have the political skills and savvy that could make him in time a major statewide politician. This was one of three new, highly-competitive Mountain West districts--the other two were the Arizona 1st and the Colorado 7th-- created after reapportionment; these seats seemed equally divided between the two parties, which gave Democrats the hope of pickups in states where they had been on the defensive.

But Herrera turned out to have serious problems. He spent the election season defending himself against a spate of charges over alleged ethics violations--such as his winning a no-bid consulting deal and taking a questionable loan. Herrera's ethics problems led the Nevada Conference of Police and Sheriffs to rescind its earlier endorsement of him. In turn, he sought to discredit Porter on the grounds that as an insurance agent he was furthering his own interests in restricting recoveries for medical malpractice, a raging issue in Nevada. Though both candidates strongly opposed shipping the nation's nuclear waste to the nearby Yucca Mountain site, Herrera attacked Porter for accepting contributions from House Republicans who supported the Nevada nuclear waste repository. Herrera also criticized Porter for supporting "privatization" of Social Security. Porter, who supported individual investment accounts in 2000, retreated from that position but said that he would "always look at alternatives."

It turned out to be no contest. Porter won by a 56%-37% margin, running far ahead of party lines--or perhaps it was Herrera running far behind party lines. Herrera seemed little interested in running again, but Democrats continued to hold out hope to recruit a serious challenger for 2004.

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DC Office
218 CHOB 20515, 202-225-3252; Fax: 202-225-2185; Web site: www.house.gov/porter

State Offices
Henderson, 702-387-4941.

Committees

• Education & the Workforce (21st of 27 R): 21st Century Competitiveness; Select Education (Vice Chmn.).
• Transportation & Infrastructure (41st of 41 R): Aviation; Railroads (Vice Chmn.).

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Jon Porter (R)	100,378	56%	$1,916,277
	Dario Herrera (D)	66,659	37%	$1,809,383
	Pete O'Neil (I)	6,842	4%	$11,560
	Other	5,115	3%
2002 primary	Jon Porter (R)	25,446	69%
	Barry Bilbray (R)	6,179	17%
	Susan Kiger (R)	3,407	9%
	Bob Daily (R)	2,052	6%

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	104,772	49%
	Bush (R)	103,720	48%
	Other	6,119	3%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Third 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: X +00
• District Size: 4,749 square miles
• Population in 2000: 666,082; 96.3% urban; 3.7% rural
• Median Household Income: $50,749; 7.5% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 18.4% blue collar; 56.8% white collar; 24.8% gray collar; 16.4% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 69.3% White, 5.5% Black, 5.9% Asian, 0.5% Amer. Indian, 0.4% Hawaiian, 2.7% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 15.6% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 11.1% German, 8.7% Irish, 7.7% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.