Rep. John Spratt (D) Elected 1982, 11th term
Born:	Nov. 1, 1942, Charlotte, NC
Home:	York
Education:	Davidson Col., A.B. 1964, Oxford U., M.A. 1966, Yale U., LL.B. 1969
Religion:	Presbyterian
Marital Status:	married (Jane Stacy)
Military Career:	Army Operations, U.S. Dept. of Defense, 1969-71.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1971-82; Pres., Bank of Ft. Mill, 1973-82; Pres., Spratt Insurance Agcy., 1973-82.
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Some of the fiercest battles of the Revolutionary War were fought in South Carolina's Up Country, on hilly lands just being settled by Scots-Irish farmers moving up from the Low Country or down the Virginia Piedmont valley. This was a country of violent passions and unclear lines; Carolinians have long argued over which side of the North and South Carolina boundary Andrew Jackson was born in 1767. Ever since, the fighting spirit and Calvinist faith of Up Country Carolinians have never wavered. This ''Olde English District'' remains intensely religious and pro-military. But it is no longer impoverished. For many years, the dominant industry here was textiles, traditionally the first factory enterprise of industrializing countries, with low pay and poor working conditions. But in the 1980s and 1990s the number of textile jobs declined, and small business prosperity more recently has been barreling out the interstates from Greenville-Spartanburg and Columbia and Charlotte, to transform counties once dependent on tobacco fields and textile mills.

The 5th Congressional District consists of all or part of 14 counties, mostly in the Up Country. It includes just one small county in the Greenville metro area and fast-growing (up 25% in the 1990s) York County, part of the Charlotte, North Carolina, metro area; growth accelerated here after settlement of the Catawba Indians' land claims in 1993. To the east, the 5th includes Dillon County, site of the pink, orange and turquoise South of the Border tourist attraction heralded on 250 billboards on I-95, and Darlington, site of the Southern 500 stock car race every Labor Day. It also includes lowland tobacco country, including Marlboro and Chesterfield Counties. In the west, it includes Fort Mill and Rock Hill in York County, just south of Charlotte, the site of rapid development after a 1993 land settlement with the Catawba Indians. Politically, this homeland of Andrew Jackson is ancestrally Democratic. But Republicans are now competitive if not dominant here: the tobacco counties are heavily Democratic but York County is trending Republican. George W. Bush won 55% of the vote here in 2000; in 2002 the 5th was carried by Democratic Governor Jim Hodges, who lives in the district, and by Republican Senate candidate Lindsey Graham.

The congressman from the 5th District is John Spratt, ranking minority member on the House Budget Committee and assistant to the minority leader, a Democrat first elected in 1982. He comes from a prominent York County family and graduated from Davidson College, Yale Law School and Oxford University. He served two years in the Army, in the Operations Analysis Group in the office of the Pentagon comptroller. He first got involved in politics in Charles Ravenel's unsuccessful 1974 campaign for governor. In 1982 the 5th District incumbent announced his retirement a week before the filing deadline; Spratt put a campaign together fast and won 38% in the primary, 55% in the runoff against a high-spending candidate, and 68% in the general. And so a campaign quickly put together has given Spratt a seat in the House for more than 20 years and a key role in shaping national legislation.

Spratt is the second-ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. In the 1980s, he worked with Chairman Les Aspin and, in his thick Carolina accent and with impressive knowledge of details, stitched together compromises on the MX missile, binary nerve gas weapons, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the Savannah River Site and other nuclear plants--keeping military projects flowing through the House, many of whose members were constantly looking to cut military spending. Starting in the mid-1990s Spratt has been the House Democrats' lead man on missile defense. He conceded that the ABM Treaty will have to be abandoned some day, but was cautious about rapid development and deployment of missile defense. His amendment on the subject prevailed in February 1995 by 218-212, the first significant defeat of a Contract with America promise in the Republican House. In August 1998, a month after the Rumsfeld Commission report on missile defense, he joined Curt Weldon and other Republicans in support of a one-sentence bill declaring ''the policy of the United States is to deploy a national missile defense.'' This passed the House, but Senate Democrats (except for South Carolina's Ernest Hollings and three others) filibustered against any missile defense measure in September 1998. In late May 1999 the House passed a bill that would make the construction of a national missile defense a top priority. In May 2000 Spratt argued that near-term deployment of missile defense would be a mistake, but said that missile defense tests were promising; he said that much work needed to be done diplomatically with Russia and our European allies before withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, and that he preferred modification of the agreement over withdrawal. George W. Bush did not take his advice, but abrogated the Treaty and increased the pace of development, which Spratt continues to monitor.

On the Iraq war resolution Spratt played a key role for House Democrats. He had voted for the Gulf War resolution in January 1991 and had strong defense credentials from his work on Armed Services. In September 2002, after George W. Bush's speech at the United Nations, Minority Leader Dick Gephardt turned to Spratt and Ike Skelton, ranking Democrat on Armed Services, for help in drafting an alternative to the broad White House resolution authorizing the use of force. Spratt sought another round of weapons inspections and wanted Bush to ask for U.N. approval and suggested removing a phrase authorizing any action to ensure peace and security in the region; the administration agreed to delete it. He sought advice from Anthony Zinni, Joseph Hoar and other retired generals with experience in the region, and found that they were wary of military action against Iraq. When Gephardt went to the White House and agreed on a resolution, Spratt continued to prepare a Democratic alternative, working with Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi. He saw "no need to invoke preemptive intervention or to draw a tenuous connection between Iraq and al Qaeda." His resolution authorized military action if the U.N. approved and left room for the administration to seek another resolution from Congress if the U.N. did not approve. "Iraq's defiance of Security Council resolutions is enough to warrant force, particularly if it does not comply with a new, tougher round of arms inspections," Spratt said, but he also argued that it was worth getting approval from others. He offered his resolution as an amendment and it was defeated 270-155; Democrats favored it 147-60 but Republicans opposed it 210-8. Spratt joined the majority and voted for the resolution sponsored by the administration and Gephardt, which passed 296-133. Spratt worked closely with Pelosi in seeking support for his alternative. After the election, Gephardt stepped down and Pelosi was elected minority leader; one of her first acts was to appoint Spratt assistant to the leader and name him her designee on budget issues--a sign, it appeared, that she would be paying attention to moderates in the Democratic Caucus.

In 1991 Spratt got a seat on the Budget Committee. His moderate voting record made him a natural point of contact between the parties, but Democrats did not see him as their leader: In their November 1992 caucus, he was beaten for Budget chairman by the more liberal Martin Sabo by 149-112. He rotated off the committee in 1992, then ran for the ranking Democrat position on Budget again in December 1996. Democrats, now in the minority, were more ready for his leadership; he beat the more liberal Louise Slaughter by 106-83. He played a major role in putting together the May 1997 agreement to reach a balanced budget, holding together Democrats who disliked the concessions to high-income taxpayers and staying in touch with Republicans who wanted more spending cuts. In the process, he got support from Bill Archer and Al Gore against a proposed Medicaid funding cut that would have hurt South Carolina, and came up with an alternative Republican Governor David Beasley praised. Spratt continued to work with the White House, House Republicans and House Democrats in establishing the specific details of the balanced budget package, which finally were agreed on in August 1997.

The bipartisanship of that period has not continued, and Spratt has been given the role of offering Democratic alternatives which are beaten on party lines. His March 2000 budget resolution would have provided for more non-defense spending and less defense spending (though an increase) than Chairman John Kasich's. In early 2001 he urged George W. Bush to approach the budget as Bill Clinton did in 1997, with negotiations between leaders of both parties. But the new Budget chairman, Jim Nussle, instead offered a budget resolution based on Bush's program, with a $1.6 trillion tax cut over 10 years and a 4% increase in non-defense spending. Spratt's alternative offered a smaller tax cut, with one-third of the surplus going to tax cuts, one-third to increased spending and one-third to a "strategic reserve fund." He decried the size of the Republican tax cuts. In August 2001 he was warning that administration economic projections were too optimistic. "You can only fudge these numbers so far before the real numbers come in and start undoing your numbers, if they're too optimistic." But he cooperated with Nussle on creating a Commission on Federal Budget Concepts. After September 11, he issued a report predicting that the budget surplus would disappear in 2002 and, pessimistically, it would disappear for several years. In 2002 he called for negotiations like those that produced the 1997 budget agreement or the 1990 budget summit in which George W. Bush's father agreed to break his promise and raise taxes. "He can take a page from his father's experience and hope it doesn't cost him what it cost his dad. But his dad did the right thing." In 2002 Republicans once again passed a budget resolution along party lines; surveying the deficits ahead, Spratt blamed them on the 2001 Bush tax cuts, but said that he would not urge their repeal. "We think they have the first move." In February 2003, as House Republicans moved toward another monopartisan budget resolution, Spratt and his Senate counterpart Kent Conrad wrote, "We warned two years ago that the president was betting his budget on a blue sky forecast and making his tax cuts so large that no margin was left for error. Now we are watching 15 years of fiscal effort unravel." On other issues, Spratt has a moderate record, a bit to the left of the middle of the House. He has been co-chair of the Textile Caucus and criticized the Clinton FDA's attempts to regulate tobacco as unjustified by law.

Spratt had two tough races, in 1994 and 1996, when he won by margins of 52%-48% and 54%-45%. Since then he has been reelected easily; he had no Republican opponent in 2002.

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DC Office
1401 LHOB 20515, 202-225-5501; Fax: 202-225-0464; Web site: www.house.gov/spratt

State Offices
Darlington, 843-393-3998; Rock Hill, 803-327-1114; Sumter, 803-773-3362.

Committees

• Armed Services (2d of 29 D): Strategic Forces; Tactical Air & Land Forces.
• Budget (RMM of 19 D).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	80	50	100	63	43	50	16	55	16	0	17
2001	85	--	90	71	--	--	11	45	36	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	65%	--	36%		77%	--	20%
Social	54%	--	45%		63%	--	35%
Foreign	56%	--	41%		58%	--	42%
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 N 2. Limit Patients' Bill of Rights N 3. Campaign Finance Reform Y 4. Ban ANWR Development * 5. Faith-Based Charities N 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts Y		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  8. Arm Commercial Pilots N  9. Trade Promotion Authority N 10. Bar Funds for Intl. Court Y 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Deny Home. Sec. Dept. Union N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	John Spratt (D)	121,912	86%	$406,711
	Doug Kendall (Lib)	11,013	8%
	Steve Lefemine (CNP)	8,930	6%
2002 primary	John Spratt (D)	unopposed
2000 general	John Spratt (D)	126,877	59%	$1,070,965
	Carl L. Gullick (R)	85,247	39%	$342,397
	Other	3,714	2%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (58%); 1996 (54%); 1994 (52%); 1992 (61%); 1990 (100%); 1988 (70%); 1986 (100%); 1984 (92%); 1982 (68%)

2000 presidential
	Bush (R)	119,052	55%
	Gore (D)	93,637	43%
	Other	3,979	2%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Fifth 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 + 6
• District Size: 7,141 square miles
• Population in 2000: 668,668; 46.7% urban; 53.3% rural
• Median Household Income: $35,416; 15.2% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 37.5% blue collar; 48.5% white collar; 14.1% gray collar; 13.0% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 64.1% White, 32.2% Black, 0.5% Asian, 0.6% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 0.7% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 1.8% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 14.8% USA, 5.6% Irish, 5.6% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.