Rep. Deborah Pryce (R) Elected 1992, 6th term
Born:	July 29, 1951, Warren
Home:	Columbus
Education:	OH St. U., B.A. 1973, Capital U. Law Schl., J.D. 1976
Religion:	Presbyterian
Marital Status:	divorced
Elected  Office:	Franklin Cnty. Municipal Court Judge, 1985-92.
Professional Career:	Admin. Law Judge, OH Dept. of Insurance, 1976; Columbus City Asst. Prosecutor & Asst. City Atty., 1978-85; Practicing atty., 1992.
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Columbus, smack in the center of Ohio, was founded in 1812 to be the state capital. Its flat-domed Capitol at Broad and High, with the statue of William McKinley out front, is surrounded by high-rises, public and private, while the city has been growing in all directions into the countryside, and now is on the verge of becoming a large metropolis. It is the headquarters of state government and Ohio State, one of the nation's largest universities; it is the home as well of Nationwide Insurance and The Limited and Wendy's. It is the headquarters of the Batelle Memorial Institute, the think tank that helped invent compact discs, office copy machines and the universal product code; a major industry here is data retrieval. Columbus, which has kept annexing suburbs, is now Ohio's largest central city by far, with 711,000 people in 2000; Franklin County topped 1 million in 2000 and the metro area extends into formerly rural counties. Columbus is rapidly building civic landmarks--the Center of Science and Industry on the riverfront, the Jerome Schottenstein Center for sports and concerts at OSU, a hockey stadium for the Columbus Blue Jackets and the nation's first stadium built for a professional soccer team, the Columbus Crew. With the nation's highest proportion of residents age 25 to 34, Columbus has been attracting young professionals and immigrants more than any other Ohio city and continues to be a prime test market for products of all kinds.

The 15th Congressional District includes all of Columbus except the east side, plus southern and western Franklin County and once-rural Madison and Union Counties directly to the west; the latter is the site of the Honda plant in Marysville and grew 28% in the 1990s. The 15th includes white working class areas on the south side of the city and in nearby Grove City, and the Ohio State University campus. Politically, these Democratic areas are more than balanced by the heavily Republican suburb of Upper Arlington, across the Olentangy River from Ohio State, and by Republican subdivisions sprouting up in rural land between the old villages.

The congresswoman from the 15th District is Deborah Pryce, a Republican first elected in 1992. Pryce grew up in Warren, graduated from Ohio State and Capital University Law School, worked in state government and as a city prosecutor, and was elected municipal court judge in 1985. In 1992, when incumbent Chalmers Wylie retired after 26 years, Pryce ran for the House. She was unopposed in the primary but had tough competition in the general from Democrat Richard Cordray and from anti-abortion independent Linda Reidelbach. Pryce talked much about congressional reform--term limits, rotating chairmanships, line-item veto--and called for limiting annual spending increases to 3%. She won with 44% of the vote to Cordray's 38% and Reidelbach's 18%.

In the House, Pryce has a voting record that is mostly conservative on economic and foreign issues, more moderate on cultural issues. In her first term she was elected interim president of her Republican class and helped to write the Contract with America. Pryce has been a leadership loyalist on the Rules Committee since 1995 and headed the House Republican task force on tobacco in 1998.

Pryce has been particularly interested in issues relating to children, adoption and cancer. Her adoptive daughter developed cancer in September 1998 and died at age nine in September 1999; she adopted a newborn in 2002. Pryce started Hope Street Kids, an organization to raise funds for cancer research, using funds donated in memory of her daughter. She is co-chairwoman of the House Cancer Working Group and sponsored a bill in 2001 to require private insurers to provide coverage of routine patient costs of cancer patients who qualify to participate in a clinical trial. She sponsored the law creating the adoption stamp, which was unveiled by Wendy's founder and adoption advocate Dave Thomas. She sponsored a law signed in March 2000 giving child protective services and child welfare workers access to more court records and doubling funding for federal child abuse and domestic assistance programs to $20 million.

Pryce is now chairman of the Republican Conference, the number four position in the Republican leadership, tasked with disseminating House Republicans' message. She was elected conference secretary in July 1997, with 110 votes on the second ballot to 65 for Sue Myrick and 42 for Duke Cunningham. In November 2000 she was elected conference vice chair without opposition. In November 2002, after Conference Chairman J.C. Watts retired, she was elected to his post, with 133 votes to 61 for J.D. Hayworth and 28 for Jim Ryun. Although in charge of the party's message, Pryce has not often been seen on national television or quoted in national print media. "Controversy is part of politics, but not the part I like to participate in. Do I like being behind the scenes better than out in front? Yes. I work better. I'm more effective that way. I'm way more comfortable." She plays more of an inside role, keeping Republicans, especially moderates, together; Pryce argues for maintaining party unity and accepting bills with conservative provisions, to keep the process moving, knowing that the Senate or the administration may modify things. With Tom DeLay and Bill Paxon, she was one of the key members who got Republicans committed to Dennis Hastert for speaker after Bob Livingston stepped down on December 19, 1998. Like others in the Republican leadership, she contributes money to other Republicans, $630,000 in the 2002 cycle.

As a member of the leadership and of the Rules Committee, Pryce does not have much occasion to shepherd legislation to passage. She was a sponsor of the privacy amendment voted in the 1999 financial services deregulation bill; it gave consumers the right to block banks and financial institutions from selling personal data to outside firms, but would let them share it with affiliated companies. In 2000 she inserted into an appropriation $235 million for graduate medical programs at children's hospitals; Children's Hospital of Columbus stood to get $5 million. She got the Appropriations Committee to grant $430,000 for Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman's $20 million revolving loan fund for central-city housing initiatives. She sponsored a bill to limit coal companies' responsibility for retired mine workers' health care costs; Columbus's AEP has major coal interests.

Pryce has won reelection easily. Redistricting did not make major changes in the 15th District.

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DC Office
221 CHOB 20515, 202-225-2015; Web site: www.house.gov/pryce

State Offices
Columbus, 614-469-5614.

Committees

• Republican Conference Chairman
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• Rules (4th of 9 R): The Legislative & Budget Process (Chmn.).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	5	23	0	13	58	100	58	100	88	82	58
2001	15	--	10	21	--	--	59	100	68	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	28%	--	69%		21%	--	79%
Social	54%	--	45%		44%	--	56%
Foreign	4%	--	87%		34%	--	65%
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	Deborah Pryce (R)	108,193	67%	$872,928
	Mark Brown (D)	54,286	33%
2002 primary	Deborah Pryce (R)	22,048	78%
	Charlie Morrison (R)	6,216	22%
2000 general	Deborah Pryce (R)	156,792	68%	$589,675
	Bill Buckel (D)	64,805	28%	$4,455
	Scott Smith (Lib)	10,700	5%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (66%); 1996 (71%); 1994 (71%); 1992 (44%)

2000 presidential
	Bush (R)	117,175	52%
	Gore (D)	98,204	44%
	Other	8,931	4%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Fifteenth 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 + 5
• District Size: 1,182 square miles
• Population in 2000: 630,730; 91.3% urban; 8.8% rural
• Median Household Income: $43,885; 10.8% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 19.8% blue collar; 66.3% white collar; 13.9% gray collar; 11.6% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 85.2% White, 7.2% Black, 3.3% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.7% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 2.3% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 18.5% German, 10.4% Irish, 8.0% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.