Rep. Jim Greenwood (R) Elected 1992, 6th term
Born:	May 4, 1951, Philadelphia
Home:	Erwinna
Education:	Dickinson Col., B.A. 1973
Religion:	Protestant
Marital Status:	married (Christina)
Elected  Office:	PA House of Reps., 1980-86; PA Senate, 1986-93.
Professional Career:	Legis. Asst., PA Rep. John Renninger, 1972-76; Social worker, Woods Schools, 1974-76; Caseworker, Bucks Cnty. Children & Youth Social Svc. Agency, 1977-80.
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Bucks County was one of William Penn's three original settlements and the launching point for George Washington's crossing of the frigid Delaware River to surprise English and Hessian forces on Christmas Day 1776. But it had a split personality from the start. Upper Bucks County was at once a paradise of bucolic hills and creeks running into the Delaware River and, after Penn's secretary James Logan built the Durham Furnace iron works in 1727, one of the nation's major industrial sites. In the 1920s, Bucks County's well-settled farmland, old fieldstone houses and covered bridges in its northern parts captured the imagination of writers and artists, attracting the New York theatrical crowd--Oscar Hammerstein, Moss Hart, Dorothy Parker, S. J. Perelman. After World War II, its location between Philadelphia and Trenton, New Jersey, brought industrial Lower Bucks County to the forefront. The ocean-navigable Delaware River and several rail lines resulted in huge new developments: U.S. Steel's Fairless Works, one of the few big postwar steel plants, down by the river, and the Levitt organization's second Levittown, in what had been farmland and swamp between U.S. 13 and U.S. 1. But now the steel mill is closed, and Bucks County's economy depends more on modern technologies.

Bucks County's political tradition was heavily Republican and protectionist; more recently it has been marginally Republican and environmentalist. This was the home of Senator Joseph Grundy, longtime head of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association, who opposed the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff as insufficiently protectionist. Development in Bucks came after the New Deal, unlike other suburban Philadelphia counties where most blue collar immigration occurred years earlier, when county political organizations were ready to enroll new residents in their party. So Lower Bucks around the Fairless Works and Levittown, with its tightly-packed homes filled with blue collar workers, became Democratic. And Upper Bucks, faster-growing and still attracting trendy New Yorkers, is Republican but environment-conscious.

The 8th Congressional District includes all of Bucks County, a tiny finger of Montgomery County around Willow Grove and parts of two Far Northeast wards in Philadelphia. Bucks has the third highest income of any county in the state and the district as a whole has the highest percentage of married persons; the county's population grew by 10% in the 1990s. Bucks County's population has been just slightly less than that of a full congressional district for several decades, and so the 8th District has been one of the few districts in the country in states with multiple districts that has been left virtually unchanged during the last three redistricting cycles. The 8th was marginal in congressional elections between 1976 and 1992; since then, it has moved like other Philadelphia suburbs toward national Democrats and voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and Al Gore in 2000. It also joined the rest of southeastern Pennsylvania in voting decisively for Democrat Ed Rendell for governor in 2002. But Rendell had no coattails; three Republican state legislative candidates fended off concerted Democratic opposition; one of the failed Democrats was Peter Kostmayer, who had been congressman from the 8th from 1976 to 1980 and 1982 to 1992.

The congressman from the 8th District is Jim Greenwood, a Republican elected in 1992. Greenwood grew up in Newtown, on the margin between Lower Bucks and Upper Bucks. After college he worked for a state legislator, then was a social worker in Langhorne. He was elected to the state House in 1980 and the state Senate in 1986. In 1992 he ran against Kostmayer, an environment-minded, defense-cutting liberal. But Kostmayer had 50 overdrafts on the House bank and other financial problems, and Greenwood won 52%-46%.

In the House, Greenwood's voting record has been moderate-to-conservative on economic and foreign issues and moderate-to-liberal on cultural issues. He has worked closely with Republican leaders and was the moderate Tuesday Group's representative at Republican leadership meetings; in 1997 Speaker Newt Gingrich appointed him to head the House Republican long-term planning team after Bill Paxon resigned after the failed coup against Gingrich. On impeachment, he was undecided nearly until the vote, and displayed his balancing act by voting for two of the four House charges but urging the Senate to quickly end the trial with a bipartisan rebuke of Clinton. One of Greenwood's big causes has been to maintain funding of international family planning, insisting the issue wasn't abortion. "The whole planet is too fragile to support a runaway population," he says. Domestically, he wants to ensure that all private health insurance covers contraceptives. He has been among the handful of House Republicans opposing the ban on partial-birth abortions.

Greenwood has been busy on consumer issues at Energy and Commerce. He won committee approval of changes in the Superfund program to relieve liability from small businesses, recyclers and municipalities, and to allocate more money to clean up abandoned brownfield sites. On another Commerce issue, he helped to write legislation restricting Internet pornography's availability to kids, but it was overturned by the Supreme Court. As chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee since 2001, he has targeted rising prices by insurance and pharmaceutical companies, demanded proof that government agencies protect against computer hackers and held lengthy hearings on the collapse of Enron that produced extensive documentation of the corporate abuses. He ran a separate investigation into the alleged stock manipulation by Martha Stewart; he called the scope of his influence as chairman "very liberating." In 2001, he tried to help organize a bipartisan coalition in the House, but it didn't get far. Likewise, he has sought centrist alternatives on health care in vain. As the House was about to vote a sweeping ban on human cloning, Greenwood offered an amendment to permit limited "therapeutic cloning" for medical research; it lost 249-178. Pat Toomey of the neighboring 15th District was a leader on the other side of the issue; Greenwood criticized the "hysteria" surrounding the debate. In April 2002, he introduced a bipartisan bill to limit to $250,000 claims for medical malpractice, which have become particularly troublesome in Pennsylvania; he cited low malpractice premiums in California, which sets that limit. In July George W. Bush endorsed the bill and it passed the House in September, but went nowhere in the Senate. The House again passed the bill in March 2003; the Senate has yet to act.

Greenwood's political formula still seems to suit the 8th District well. He has been reelected comfortably against poorly funded Democrats. Not surprisingly, given his continuing warnings that Republicans should not bow to the right wing on social issues, his problem has been in the Republican primary. In the past four cycles, he had primary challenges from conservatives and won each time with at least 60% of the vote; in 2002, he won with 63% in the general. Greenwood has said he might be interested in running for the Senate if Arlen Specter retires in 2004. In June 2003, he announced he would break the 12-year term limit pledge he made in 1992. "What I didn't know thenis that it takes a long time in the U.S. Congress to develop the expertise for incredibly complex issues," Greenwood said at a press conference. "It takes a very long time to develop clout and influence in Washington." The new Bucks County Democratic chairman promised a more aggressive challenge against Greenwood for neglecting everyday problems while playing on the national stage.

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DC Office
2436 RHOB 20515, 202-225-4276; Fax: 202-225-9511; Web site: www.house.gov/greenwood

State Offices
Doylestown, 215-348-7511; Langhorne, 215-752-7711.

Committees

• Education & the Workforce (8th of 27 R): Education Reform; Select Education.
• Energy & Commerce (7th of 31 R): Environment & Hazardous Materials; Health; Oversight & Investigations (Chmn.).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	20	47	0	50	31	100	55	95	78	80	42
2001	25	--	0	64	--	--	57	91	48	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	41%	--	58%		44%	--	55%
Social	59%	--	41%		62%	--	37%
Foreign	33%	--	60%		28%	--	71%
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 Y 4. Ban ANWR Development Y 5. Faith-Based Charities Y 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts Y		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion N  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	Jim Greenwood (R)	127,475	63%	$889,736
	Timothy Reece (D)	76,178	37%
2002 primary	Jim Greenwood (R)	31,327	69%
	Tom Lingenfelter (R)	13,981	31%
2000 general	Jim Greenwood (R)	154,090	59%	$889,821
	Ronald L. Strouse (D)	100,617	39%	$146,563
	Other	5,394	2%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (63%); 1996 (59%); 1994 (66%); 1992 (52%)

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	144,878	51%
	Bush (R)	130,500	46%
	Other	9,050	3%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Eighth 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 + 2
• District Size: 634 square miles
• Population in 2000: 646,340; 90.9% urban; 9.1% rural
• Median Household Income: $59,184; 4.5% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 20.9% blue collar; 68.0% white collar; 11.1% gray collar; 12.9% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 90.8% White, 3.4% Black, 2.4% Asian, 0.1% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 0.9% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 2.3% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 18.5% German, 18.1% Irish, 10.6% Italian
• Click here for statewide demographic data.