Rep. Ron Kind (D) Elected 1996, 4th term
Born:	Mar. 16, 1963, La Crosse
Home:	La Crosse
Education:	Harvard U., B.A. 1985, London Schl. of Econ., 1986, U. of MN, J.D. 1990
Religion:	Lutheran
Marital Status:	married (Tawni)
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1990-92; Asst. St. Prosecutor, La Crosse Cnty., 1992-96.
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On the rolling land of western Wisconsin, in the knobby hills just east of the Mississippi River, is some of the most beautiful river landscape in the country. This is where Laura Ingalls Wilder's family built the "little house in the big woods" in the 1870s, before the first railroad came steaming up the narrow floodplain alongside the Mississippi River. Today, it is hard to imagine the big woods: The trees have long since been cut and the hillsides are covered with grass grazed by placid dairy cattle. Where pioneers tried to scratch out diversified crops, farmers soon created America's premier dairy region, producing milk, butter and especially cheese. But more than half of family dairy farmers have gone out of business since 1980. Cows are more productive, while demand for milk has decreased. And Wisconsin has trouble competing against the European Common Market's hugely subsidized cheese and butter. But other businesses have risen. Dodgeville in Iowa County (which is not on the Iowa border) is the headquarters of Lands' End, the catalog retailer. In the 1980s many communities here lost population, but in the 1990s there was steady 10% growth, especially rapid in the northern counties within commuting distance of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

The 3d Congressional District follows the Mississippi and St. Croix River counties from the southern border of the state to St. Croix County, just east of St. Paul, and extends east two or three counties. This is probably the nation's number one dairy district, with nearly as many cows as people. It was settled largely by German and Scandinavian immigrants (Laura's Yankee family moved away as Swedes were moving into the area), and it once voted for LaFollette Progressives. More recently, it has been fairly closely divided between Democrats and Republicans. In 2000 it voted 49%-46% for Al Gore; western Wisconsin and eastern Iowa were the one segment of rural America where Gore ran even with or ahead of historic Democratic percentages in 2000, which was vital to his narrow victory in each state. In 2002 the Democratic trend continued, as Democratic Governor Jim Doyle carried all but four counties in the district. He lost to Republican Scott McCallum in one northern rural county and St. Croix County, which trended Republican (as did the nearby Minnesota suburban counties in the Twin Cities), and he lost two counties to Libertarian nominee Ed Thompson, the brother of former Governor Tommy Thompson, who carried the county he lived in and the one he grew up in on his way to 10% of the statewide vote.

The congressman from the 3d District is Ron Kind, a Democrat first elected in 1996. He grew up in a large family in La Crosse, the son of a telephone repairman and a secretary. He went to Harvard on scholarship and played quarterback, and worked as a summer intern for Senator William Proxmire, doing research for his Golden Fleece awards. He attended the London School of Economics and University of Minnesota Law School, practiced law in a big firm in Milwaukee, then returned home to La Crosse to work as an assistant prosecutor on rape and sexual abuse cases. Kind started running for Congress soon after Republican Steve Gunderson announced during the 1994 campaign that he would not run again in 1996. He talked of cutting corporate welfare and aiding the poor, and won the September primary 46%-29%. Republican former state Senator Jim Harsdorf won the Republican primary after Gunderson rejected pleas to run again even though he might have become Agriculture Committee chairman. Harsdorf took hard-edged stands for the balanced budget and Governor Tommy Thompson's "Wisconsin Works" welfare program. Kind talked instead of campaign finance regulation and presented his own balanced budget proposal. On November 1 Gunderson announced he was neutral on the candidates because he didn't agree with Harsdorf's views on civil and human rights and thought him too close to the Christian Coalition. Kind won 52%-48%.

In the House, Kind has compiled a moderate record on economics and cultural issues, and was a bit more liberal on foreign and defense issues. Like other Wisconsin members, he worked to reform the Federal Milk Marketing Order System, instituted in 1937, which pays higher prices the farther the farmer is from Eau Claire, which is in the northern part of the district, which means that 3d District dairy farmers get the lowest prices in the nation. He focused attention on nitrogen fertilizer runoff from farms. In 2001, as an Agriculture Committee member, he sponsored the bipartisan amendment on the farm bill to shift $19 billion of commodity support dollars to environmental conservation of idle land. "Farmers are the best stewards of the land, but we have not given them the resources they need for conservation," he said. That was defeated 226-200. Later, he lost an attempt to impose a maximum payment limit of $275,000 per farmer.

Kind is a founder and co-chairman of the Upper Mississippi River Congressional Task Force. His own home is on the river and was flooded in 2001; the 3d District's entire western border is the Mississippi River. With members from Illinois and Iowa, he got the House to pass a bill to establish a water quality monitoring network in the Upper Mississippi River Basin. After strong lobbying by union leaders and dairy interests, he opposed trade promotion authority in 1997, but he sided with Bill Clinton and local farmers in favor of PNTR with China. In 2001 and 2002, he again opposed trade promotion authority. In 2002, he became a co-chairman of the New Democrat Coalition and said that he wanted to expand access to broadband in rural areas and to make his area "the Silicon Valley of agricultural research." Although he voted for the use of force in Iraq, in January 2003 he voiced concern about what he viewed as the rush to war after he took some heat from liberals back home (in November, more than 500 anti-war voters wrote in the name of Mark Twain to protest Kind's vote on the war).

After a heavily contested campaign in 1996, Kind has been reelected easily. Local union organizers have complained that he has not been sufficiently supportive on trade issues, but they have not put up a primary challenger. He briefly considered running for governor in 2002, but decided against it.

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DC Office
1406 LHOB 20515, 202-225-5506; Fax: 202-225-5739; Web site: www.house.gov/kind

State Offices
Eau Claire, 715-831-9214; La Crosse, 608-782-2558.

Committees

• Chief Deputy Minority Whip
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• Budget (19th of 19 D).
• Education & the Workforce (10th of 22 D): 21st Century Competitiveness; Education Reform.
• Resources (9th of 24 D): Energy & Mineral Resources (RMM); National Parks, Recreation & Public Lands.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	90	73	100	75	92	62	24	47	8	8	8
2001	90	--	100	100	--	--	15	39	12	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	70%	--	29%		64%	--	36%
Social	65%	--	36%		67%	--	29%
Foreign	79%	--	21%		76%	--	23%
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 Y 5. Faith-Based Charities N 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts Y		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion N  8. Arm Commercial Pilots Y  9. Trade Promotion Authority N 10. Bar Funds for Intl. Court N 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Deny Home. Sec. Dept. Union N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Ron Kind (D)	131,038	63%	$554,120
	Bill Arndt (R)	69,955	34%	$12,325
	Other	7,588	3%
2002 primary	Ron Kind (D)	unopposed
2000 general	Ron Kind (D)	173,505	64%	$564,246
	Susan Tully (R)	97,741	36%	$124,818
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (71%); 1996 (52%)

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	155,832	49%
	Bush (R)	144,948	46%
	Other	16,626	5%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Third 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: 13,849 square miles
• Population in 2000: 670,462; 43.1% urban; 56.9% rural
• Median Household Income: $40,006; 9.8% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 29.2% blue collar; 53.3% white collar; 17.5% gray collar; 12.9% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 96.1% White, 0.5% Black, 1.2% Asian, 0.5% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 0.7% Two+ races, 0.0% Other, 0.9% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 29.7% German, 14.1% Norwegian, 8.5% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.