Rep. Jennifer Dunn (R) Elected 1992, 6th term
Born:	July 29, 1941, Seattle
Home:	Bellevue
Education:	U. of WA, 1960-62, Stanford U., B.A. 1963
Religion:	Episcopalian
Marital Status:	married (Keith Thomson)
Professional Career:	Systems Engineer, IBM, 1964-69; P.R., King Cnty. Assessors Office, 1978-80; Chmn., WA Repub. Party, 1981-92; Delegate, U.N. Comm. on Status of Women, 1984 & 1990.
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The land east of Seattle's Lake Washington half a century ago was quiet countryside. Orchards and vineyards flourished in the rich, moist soil just below the rise of the Cascades Mountains, while farms and broad pasturelands spread toward 14,410-foot Mount Rainier like a living green quilt. But as Seattle has grown over the years, people have crossed the pontoon bridge across Mercer Island to Bellevue and have made this Eastside area one of the most vibrant parts of metropolitan Seattle. Bellevue now has 109,000 people and enough office space to make it an edge city; its population in 2000 was 17% Asian, the highest percentage in Washington's 15 largest cities. While downtown Seattle specialized in banks and law firms and trading companies, Bellevue and other communities in Overlake specialized in high-tech startups. Redmond, just to the north, is the headquarters of Microsoft, and there are dozens of other firms here that make this one of America's leading high-tech centers.

The 8th Congressional District includes most of the eastern edge of metro Seattle. It includes most of Bellevue, Mercer Island and the affluent suburbs on Lake Washington--Medina, Clyde Hill, Yarrow Point, Hunts Point, Beaux Arts--where Bill Gates has built his 66,000-square foot high-tech home (the 8th does not include Redmond, however). It also includes the suburbs to the south in King and Pierce Counties. It goes up to the crest of the Cascades Mountains and includes all of Mount Rainier. This is the most affluent district in Washington, rivaled only by the 1st; politically it is market-oriented on economics, more liberal on the environment and other cultural issues. Historically it is Republican, but cast only 47% of its votes for George W. Bush.

The congresswoman from the 8th District is Jennifer Dunn, a Republican first elected in 1992. She grew up in Bellevue, graduated from Stanford, worked as a systems engineer for IBM in the 1960s and then stayed home to raise her children (her younger son is named Reagan, after the then-California governor, whom she supported over Gerald Ford in 1976). In 1981 she became Washington Republican Party chairwoman and served for 12 years. She is a peppery partisan, vigorous and knowledgeable about issues, persevering through bad times for her party and working to make them better. In 1992, when Congressman Rod Chandler ran for the Senate, she ran for the House and won in a walkover. In the House she was a vocal deficit hawk. Her voting record has been conservative on economic and foreign policy, moderate on cultural issues.

When Republicans won their majority in 1994, Dunn was put on the transition team and Speaker Newt Gingrich's task force on committee review, and given a seat on Ways and Means. She worked on the child support provisions of the welfare reform bill and pushed for medical savings accounts in the 1996 health care bill. She worked to allow software firms to lower their taxes by setting up foreign sales corporations as other businesses can.

Dunn, as one might expect of a longtime state party chairman, took political initiatives as well. She was a loyal supporter of Gingrich through his travails. In November 1996 she was elected secretary of the Republican Conference. In May 1997, when Susan Molinari announced her resignation from the House, Dunn ran for her post of Conference vice chair. Just as the coup against Gingrich was disintegrating, Dunn had leadership support and defeated Jim Nussle of Iowa, by 129-85. Having won that position, she decided not to run against Senator Patty Murray in 1998. Dunn had already moved to challenge Majority Leader Dick Armey, who was in low regard after the collapse of the anti-Gingrich coup. But the Tuesday Group and liberal Republicans did not endorse her, her longtime supporter Gingrich had announced his retirement and Steve Largent, one of the most ardent 1994 freshmen, was running as well. Dunn stressed the importance of having a woman in the Republican leadership, but other women were running for other leadership positions. Armey led the first ballot, led with 100 votes to 58 for Largent, 45 for Dunn and 18 for Dennis Hastert, whose name was advanced by others as he stuck by a commitment to support Armey. Largent asked Dunn to withdraw, in return for a new post as assistant majority leader; Dunn declined. On the second ballot, Armey got 99 votes, Largent 73 and Dunn 49--which meant that she was eliminated; Armey won on the third ballot, 127-95. After that setback, Dunn returned to her strong support of tax cuts: in income tax rates, in the estate tax, in capital gains and through Education Savings Accounts. She has worked on addressing the gender gap for Republicans, urging candidates to relate their policies to women's lives--she talks often about how she coped as a divorced working mom, and of how two-thirds of new small businesses are being formed by women. She has been a strong backer of free trade and PNTR with China.

In December 1998 she had dinner in Austin with George W. and Laura Bush and a few aides and agreed to support him. Among other things, she was impressed with how Bush related to his wife. She was one of three co-chairs of the 2000 national convention in Philadelphia, and then became a co-chair of the "Victory 2000" drive during the fall campaign. "She understands politics and she understands issues, and it's rare that you get someone who understands both," Bush political adviser Karl Rove said. But Dunn did not get a job in the Bush Cabinet; Rove may not have wished to risk a special election in a district that had gone for Al Gore. Dunn played a lead role on estate tax repeal and in 2003 moved to make it permanent. She led an effort to get 37 Republican congressmen to sign a letter in July 2001 supporting embryonic stem-cell research. In 2002 and 2003 she and Martin Frost co-sponsored the Amber Alert bill, which became law in April 2003. She supports individual investment accounts in Social Security and argues that the current program gives unfairly low benefits to women who spend some time at home rather than at a job, because the benefit formula depends on the 35 highest years of pay and because their earnings often don't qualify them for anything more than the spousal benefit and so they get nothing for the taxes they paid. Support for environmental restriction is high in the 8th District. In June 2002 Dunn supported the Wild Sky wilderness area sought by Murray and the 2d District's Rick Larsen; she got them to allow float planes in Lake Isabel. In 2003 she worked successfully on the Ways and Means Committee to get tax-exempt status for bonds floated to enable the Evergreen Forest Trust to buy the 104,000-acre Weyerhaeuser property in the Snoqualmie Tree Farm and for the Cascade Conservation Partnership to purchase the Plum Creek timber land.

Dunn clashed with Murray and Cantwell over Washington judicial nominations. Murray and former Senator Slade Gorton had created a bipartisan panel to consider possible nominees during the Clinton years. Dunn, as the senior Republican in the delegation, refused to do that after George W. Bush became president. She convened her own panel; she said Murray and Cantwell declined to participate in it. They said they were not asked. In any case, when the first nomination was made, Murray and Cantwell placed a hold on it.

Dunn has been reelected by wide margins, though less wide as the Seattle area became more Democratic in the Clinton years. In December 2002 it was reported that she was meeting with leaders of the Air Transport Association about the $700,000 executive directorship, but she was not offered the job. At that time she was also being urged to run against Murray in 2004--George W. Bush took to calling her "Senator," and 5th District Congressman George Nethercutt said he would not run if Dunn did. The Republican campaign committee took a poll showing her trailing the incumbent by only 46%-42%. But after being conspicuously undecided for several weeks, in April 2003 she announced that she would not run for the Senate. In February 2003 she got a seat on the Homeland Security Committee.

Update: March 10, 2004
On January 30, 2004, Dunn announced she would not seek reelection to a 7th term in 2004.

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DC Office
1501 LHOB 20515, 202-225-7761; Fax: 202-225-8673; Web site: www.house.gov/dunn

State Offices
Mercer Island, 206-275-3438.

Committees

• Select Committee on Homeland Security (2d of 27 R): Infrastructure & Border Security; Intelligence & Counterterrorism; Rules.
• Ways & Means (12th of 24 R): Health; Trade.
• Joint Economic Committee (3d of 10 Reps.).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	5	14	0	13	34	100	57	100	92	92	92
2001	10	--	0	21	--	--	66	95	88	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	36%	--	65%		34%	--	65%
Social	47%	--	53%		43%	--	57%
Foreign	4%	--	87%		15%	--	78%
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 Y 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	Jennifer Dunn (R)	121,633	60%	$1,031,727
	Heidi Behrens-Benedict (D)	75,931	37%	$120,333
	Other	5,771	3%
2002 primary	Jennifer Dunn (R)	68,199	64%
	Heidi Behrens-Benedict (D)	35,681	34%
	Other	2,606	2%
2000 general	Jennifer Dunn (R)	183,255	62%	$1,731,507
	Heidi Behrens-Benedict (D)	104,944	36%	$377,825
	Other	6,269	2%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (60%); 1996 (65%); 1994 (76%); 1992 (60%)

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	140,387	49%
	Bush (R)	136,575	47%
	Other	11,838	4%
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 + 0
• District Size: 2,621 square miles
• Population in 2000: 654,905; 87.6% urban; 12.4% rural
• Median Household Income: $63,854; 5.1% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 19.7% blue collar; 68.6% white collar; 11.8% gray collar; 14.0% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 82.1% White, 2.0% Black, 7.8% Asian, 0.8% Amer. Indian, 0.3% Hawaiian, 2.8% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 4.0% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 14.0% German, 9.4% English, 8.3% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.