Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) Elected 2000, 2d term
Born:	Nov. 26, 1953, Glen Dale
Home:	Charleston
Education:	Duke U., B.S. 1975, U. of VA, M.Ed. 1976
Religion:	Presbyterian
Marital Status:	married (Charles)
Elected  Office:	WV House of Del., 1996-00.
Professional Career:	Career counselor, WV State Col., 1976-78; Dir., Educ. Info. Center, WV Board of Regents, 1978-81.
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Not all of West Virginia is coal country, not all of its valleys are industrial hollows choked with workingmen's homes and small factories, and not all of its hills are scarred with strip mining wounds or piled with tailings. It's true that for miles you can see gentle hills and rugged mountains, stands of green trees and vistas stretching to far horizons. Yet over another hill you may find, amid scenery primeval and rural, sudden evidence of industrialization: A pulp mill or charcoal factory in a clearing scraped out of the forest; a small factory town, built close to a river in a cleft bordered with hills, its houses built in the same 1910s style as in the factory suburbs of Pittsburgh; the entrance to an underground coal mine or a mountaintop blasted open to allow surface mining. Large parts of this naturally beautiful state look as verdant and unchanged as they must have when George Washington was speculating in land here or taking the waters in Berkeley Springs, or when John Brown launched his assault at the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

The 2d Congressional District is the central part of West Virginia, a belt of land from Berkeley Springs and Harper's Ferry in the Washington exurbs all the way west to the Ohio River town of Point Pleasant, where the Kanawha River (pronounced kaNAW) flows into the Ohio. It could easily take a full day to drive through this mountainous district that, if ironed out, would probably spread across the continent. The 2d District includes the few fast-growing parts of West Virginia--the eastern panhandle counties, some of which are technically within the Washington, D.C., metro area, and chemical-producing Putnam County just west of Charleston, where Toyota built an engine plant. The major urban center here is Charleston, where on the banks of the Kanawha rises West Virginia's Capitol, built in 1932 and designed by Cass Gilbert with a dome higher than the U.S. Capitol and a chandelier with 10,000 pieces of cut glass. Charleston, with its two partisan newspapers, the Democratic Gazette and the Republican Daily Mail, is the state capital and the center of the state's political culture. Charleston is a major industrial center, with coal in the hills all around and, downriver from the Capitol, huge petrochemical plants that convert coal tar into everyday products. This was a center of American high tech in the 1940s, when it produced all the nation's lucite, polyethylenes and nylon, as well as much of its artificial rubber and antifreeze. Today, the state boasts it is home to more polymer producers than any other place on the planet; the chemical industry makes products used in the manufacturing of cosmetics, detergents, shampoo, rubber, paints and coatings, fire retardants and agricultural products. Charleston is also West Virginia's white-collar and professional center, with a few downtown skyscrapers and some affluent residential districts. But like much of the state, it lost population in the 1990s. Politically, this is a Democratic district, though the eastern Panhandle has begun to vote like a Republican exurb. Still, George W. Bush carried the 2d 54%-44% in 2000--which helped him win the state's five electoral votes. It is a seat that has now twice in a row elected a Republican member of the House--the first West Virginia district to do that since the current member's father served in the House in the 1950s and 1960s.

The congresswoman from the 2d District is Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican who has confounded the political oddsmakers. She grew up in northern West Virginia and in the Washington area, when her father, Arch Moore, served in the House from 1957-69. He was elected governor in 1968 and (against Jay Rockefeller) in 1972, and then again in 1984; later he was convicted and served three years in jail for fraud and extortion. Shelley Moore Capito graduated from Duke University and the University of Virginia. She worked for two years as a career counselor at West Virginia State College, and then was director of the state's Educational Information Center from 1978-81, when Rockefeller was governor. She served two terms in the West Virginia state House. Her opportunity to follow in her father's footsteps came when Bob Wise, a Democratic congressman since 1982, ran for governor in 2000. She benefited from a divisive Democratic primary that was won by Jim Humphreys, a trial lawyer, former state senator and ally of labor unions, who made a fortune in asbestos litigation and spent $3 million of his own money to win the Democratic nomination. In the general, Humphreys spent another $3 million from his own pocket and focused on health care issues. Capito, who supported abortion rights, started as the underdog but Humphreys proved to be a poor candidate. Capito may have been one of the few congressional candidates in 2000 who benefited from George W. Bush's coattails: She won 48%-46%, with big margins in the eastern panhandle counties.

In the House, Capito got special attention from Republican leaders because of her precarious district. She helped to make the case for her party's prescription drug plan for seniors, and against the Democratic alternative. She joined a congressional delegation to Afghanistan in July 2002, and praised the determination of that nation's new leader Hamid Karzai; en route, she met more than a dozen West Virginians serving in tents or at sea. She demonstrated her partisan loyalty by voicing support for individual investment accounts as part of Social Security. In return, Capito was one of the few House Republicans to get a free pass from party leadership to vote against trade promotion authority.

In the 2002 election, Capito was an obvious Democratic target. But Democrats gave her a big break by again nominating Humphreys. Once again, he dug deep in his pockets to win the primary against Margaret Workman, a former state Supreme Court justice, who received national support from EMILY's List. Humphreys and Workman sliced up each other with more than $3 million in ads--money that the party could have spent more profitably elsewhere; Humphreys won 51%-49%. Discouraged national Democrats gritted their teeth; a new team of national consultants could not change his approach, and his 2002 campaign was even more ineffective than in 2000. Humphreys's big spending again made it easy for Capito to say he was trying to buy the seat, and she was probably helped by George W. Bush's late campaign visit to Charleston. She won 60%-40%, winning with 59% in Kanawha County, 67% in Putnam County to the west and 64% in fast-growing Berkeley County in the eastern panhandle. Humphreys carried only one small county, and redistricting, which sloughed off one small county each to the 1st and 3d Districts, made no difference.

Capito has said she does not regard her district as safe, and it's possible that she could be seriously challenged in 2004 or later. But she looks now to be a well-positioned incumbent, with some potential as a statewide candidate.

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DC Office
1431 LHOB 20515, 202-225-2711; Fax: 202-225-7856; Web site: www.house.gov/capito

State Offices
Charleston, 304-925-5964; Martinsburg, 304-264-8810.

Committees

• Financial Services (27th of 37 R): Capital Markets, Insurance & Government Sponsored Enterprises; Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit.
• Small Business (10th of 18 R): Rural Enterprises, Agriculture and Technology; Workforce, Empowerment & Government Programs.
• Transportation & Infrastructure (24th of 41 R): Economic Development, Public Buildings & Emergency Management; Highways, Transit & Pipelines; Railroads.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	15	7	11	50	8	62	49	85	76	72	75
2001	20	--	20	43	--	--	56	87	76	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	39%	--	61%		45%	--	55%
Social	43%	--	55%		44%	--	54%
Foreign	33%	--	60%		41%	--	56%
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 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 N 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	Shelley Moore Capito (R)	98,276	60%	$2,530,078
	Jim Humphreys (D)	65,400	40%	$8,150,237
2002 primary	Shelley Moore Capito (R)	unopposed
2000 general	Shelley Moore Capito (R)	108,769	48%	$1,288,226
	Jim Humphreys (D)	103,003	46%	$6,964,933
	John Brown (Lib)	12,543	6%

2000 presidential
	Bush (R)	118,839	54%
	Gore (D)	96,524	44%
	Other	4,787	2%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Second 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: 8,512 square miles
• Population in 2000: 602,243; 46.2% urban; 53.8% rural
• Median Household Income: $33,198; 14.8% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 28.9% blue collar; 55.1% white collar; 16.1% gray collar; 14.8% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 93.9% White, 3.6% Black, 0.5% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 0.9% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 0.8% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 14.7% USA, 11.7% German, 8.1% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.