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Ohio: First District Rep. Steve Chabot (R) Last Updated July 14, 2003
From its seven hills, Cincinnati, dubbed the Queen City of the West in the 19th century, looks down on the curves of the Ohio River. Ohio's first major metropolis and a heavily German beehive of riverboats and sausage factories, known in the 1850s as Porkopolis, this was the nation's fourth-largest city and a chief destination for slaves on the Underground Railroad at the outbreak of the Civil War. Cincinnati has long given off an air of the recent past; Mark Twain said he'd like to be there for the apocalypse because everything in Cincinnati is 20 years behind. Growing slowly over many decades, Cincinnati has long-settled good looks and urbanity somehow consistent with its natural terrain: the bottomlands along the river, the hills and rolling terrain above. In the middle of Cincinnati is Mill Creek, lined with factories; on the hills to the west, above the restored Union Terminal with the children's, historic, and natural history museums, are the modest streetcar suburbs of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th. On Mount Adams and toward the northeast are set a string of affluent neighborhoods, with stately mansions like the William Howard Taft house, and the comfortable Tudors and colonials of the 20th century bourgeoisie--Reform Jewish as well as WASP and German. In the low-income Over-the-Rhine community, riots broke out after a white police officer shot an unarmed young black man in April 2001. Cincinnati was the site of great innovations: the first iron suspension bridge, in 1867, connecting Cincinnati to northern Kentucky and designed by John Roebling, who later built the Brooklyn Bridge; the first baseball team, the Red Stockings, in 1869; the country's leading Reform Jewish seminary, Hebrew Union College, in 1875. Cincinnati has not had the growth spurts of cities like Cleveland or Houston; it has spawned not flashy but solid industries, like the Procter & Gamble soap business, now headquartered in a striking two-towered office complex at the edge of downtown, and it has America's biggest concentration of machine tool makers. Downtown Cincinnati's spruced-up Fountain Square shows off the well-maintained skyscrapers of the past plus a revival of museums and arts institutions, and its first-class restaurants still attract a dressy clientele. Old ethnic neighborhoods, crowded with brick row houses on steep hills, keep their thick local accents and special local foods, from German sauerbrauten to Cincinnati chili. The 1st Congressional District includes almost all of Cincinnati, except for parts of its affluent eastern edge, plus most of the middle-class suburbs that cling to the woody hills west of I-71 and south of I-275. It covers the western part of Hamilton County all the way to the Indiana border, including North Bend, the home of President William Henry Harrison. The 2002 redistricting added the southwest quarter of Butler County. Ancestrally Republican, Cincinnati was a German anti-slavery island in a Southern-stock pro-Confederate sea. City elections here were for years competitive between old-line Republicans and a combination of Democrats and Charterites (the latter started by Charles Taft, liberal brother of Senator Robert Taft Sr. and great-uncle of Governor Bob Taft). Traditionally, Cincinnati was a Republican stronghold, and culturally conservative, though the suburbs now are much more Republican than the city. In the 1990s Cincinnati's population declined by a startling 9%, with many whites leaving for suburban counties, which grew rapidly; left behind were poor blacks. Cincinnati once cast most of the votes in Hamilton County; now it casts well under half. The 1st District lost population in the 1990s, and the 2002 redistricting added 88,000 people and in the process reduced the black percentage from 34% to 27% black and increased the Bush 2000 percentage from 47% to 51%. The congressman from the 1st District is Steve Chabot (pronounced SHAB-butt), a Republican first elected in 1994. Like so many of the local congressmen here over the decades, he grew up in Cincinnati and served on the city council. He graduated from William and Mary, taught elementary school for a year, then graduated from Northern Kentucky Law School and started a family law practice. In 1985, at 32, he was elected to the council in 1985, and in 1990 he was elected to the Hamilton County Commission. Chabot ran for the House in 1994 in odd circumstances. In 1992, first term Democrat Charles Luken (son of longtime incumbent Tom Luken) retired suddenly after the June primary; he later became mayor of Cincinnati. In the special primary to replace him, moderate Democratic Councilman David Mann defeated liberal state Senator William Bowen, by 416 votes, and won the general 51%-43%. In the House, Mann voted against the Clinton tax package and for NAFTA, which infuriated local unions; Bowen ran in the primary again in 1994 and this time Mann won by 667 votes. In the fall, Chabot backed the balanced budget amendment, strongly opposed abortion, and attacked Mann's support of Bill Clinton. Chabot won comfortably, 56%-44%. Chabot has had a conservative voting record in the House, though a bit less so on foreign and defense issues. He has shown himself willing to take political risks for principle. He voted against the Appalachian Regional Commission, a $2 million study of light rail in the Cincinnati area and a bill containing $6 million for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati; he argued that the city should solve problems with local resources and not depend on Washington. He opposed farm subsidies, including the ag bill in 2002, and his tight-fistedness created unusual alliances with environmentalists fighting what they considered, for different reasons, wasteful spending. Most of his committee work has been on the Judiciary Committee. In January 2001, he became chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, perennially a forum for bitter ideological debate but little legislative action. After the September 11 attacks, he held a hearing on the proposed constitutional amendment by Brian Baird to permit governors to fill House vacancies in the event of a national disaster; Chabot was skeptical, and the subcommittee took no further action. He has been a House leader for a constitutional amendment to protect the rights of crime victims. In 2002, he got enactment of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act requiring hospitals and medical personnel to protect infants who survive an abortion; abortion rights groups decided not to fight. In 2003 he worked to pass the partial-birth abortion ban by specifying its policy findings and narrowing its terms so that it would comply with Supreme Court decisions. He also has pushed measures to impose restrictions on minors who cross state lines to get an abortion and to make violence against an unborn child a crime. Initially, Chabot was a prime Democratic campaign target. In 1996 the AFL-CIO spent over $1 million, running nearly 2,000 television ads against him. A light moment came in October when Democratic challenger Mark Longabaugh, a top aide in Dick Gephardt's 1988 presidential campaign, ran an ad showing Chabot's yellow pages listing and noting that he took clients in DUI cases; Chabot responded with an ad showing the white pages and asking, "Where's Mark Longabaugh been listed for 15 years? Not here!" Chabot won 54%-43%. In 1998 Chabot was opposed by Cincinnati Mayor Roxanne Qualls. This was one of the hardest fought races in the country, and one of the most expensive: Chabot spent $1.5 million, Qualls $1.2 million. Qualls argued that Chabot's views were too conservative for the district. Chabot called for broad-based tax cuts, and cuts in pork barrel projects and corporate welfare. They disagreed on the partial-birth abortion ban and school vouchers. Chabot won 53%-47%, just a bit closer than his earlier elections. In 2000, Chabot defeated lawyer John Cranley 53%-45%. Redistricting made the district safer. Chabot won 72% of the vote in the new Butler County territory and won overall 65%-35%.
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