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GovernmentExecutive.com - Covering The Business Of The Federal Government
Arizona: Fourth District
Rep. Ed Pastor (D)
Last Updated June 7, 2005


Rep. Ed Pastor (D)
Rep. Ed Pastor (D)
Elected Sept. 1991, 7th full term
Born: June 28, 1943, Claypool
Home: Phoenix
Education: AZ St. U., B.A. 1966, J.D. 1974
Religion: Catholic
Marital Status: married (Verma)
Elected
 Office:
Maricopa Cnty. Bd. of Supervisors, 1976-91.
Professional Career: High schl. teacher, 1966-69; Asst., AZ Gov. Castro, 1975.
DC Office 2465 RHOB20515, 202-225-4065; Fax: 202-225-1655; Web site: www.house.gov/pastor
State Offices Phoenix, 602-256-0551.
Additional Info
Committees · Ratings · Key Votes · Election Results
District Demographics
More On Arizona
At A Glance · State Profile
District Map
Redistricting · Almanac Home
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Search the CongressDaily, Hotline, House Race Hotline, National Journal and Technology Daily archives using the form below:
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Phoenix is a new American metropolis, grown to huge metropolitan size within most Americans' lifetimes. Yet it is also an ancient city, or built on top of one. The Arizona Canal, several miles north of downtown Phoenix, runs along the route of a canal built about 600 years ago by the Hohokam people. They distributed irrigated water diverted from the Salt River in its wet moments to farmers in what Phoenicians today call the Valley of the Sun and made sophisticated astronomical observations from the mountains that jut up from the plains. This society disappeared, for reasons that are not known, less than half a century before the Spaniards arrived in North America. So today's Phoenix is the second civilization to grow in this desert. Its growth is recent. Phoenix and Maricopa County had 331,000 people in 1950 and 3.4 million in 2003. Half a century ago, Phoenix spread half a dozen miles north, west and east of the downtown and only a few miles south. Downtown was its single office and main shopping district, and people blew fans over boxes of ice to keep cool. Today from downtown Phoenix's office towers the city seems to spread as far as the eye can see, including other clumps of office towers to the north and northwest.

The 4th Congressional District of Arizona is centered on downtown Phoenix. It covers downtown, the Capitol in a rundown neighborhood a couple of miles to the west, and busy Sky Harbor International Airport in an industrial corridor several miles east. It includes most of southern Phoenix and its boundaries follow approximately the southern and western city limits; it extends as far north as Bethany Home Road and Northern Avenue. Geographically it covers most of the land between South Mountain and Camelback Mountain. The district was designed to be one of Arizona's two Hispanic districts; its population in 2000 was 58% Hispanic. The typical Latino neighborhood here is a collection of 1940s and 1950s bungalows, spaced out by empty lots. Here Habitat for Humanity built South Ranch, the largest low-income subdivision built by the organization in the U.S.; the idea was to cluster poor homeowners together and encourage them to stave off neighborhood decline collectively. Politically this is a solidly Democratic district, the most Democratic in Arizona.

The congressman from the 4th District is Ed Pastor, a Democrat who won a 1991 special election to replace Morris Udall at a time when the district's boundaries were quite different. He grew up in Claypool, a mining town in Gila County, where his parents "taught me the value of education, the need of tolerance and the responsibility of community service. But especially they taught me the reward of a hard day's work." Pastor is a career politician who does not seek much public attention. After teaching high school, he got a law degree at Arizona State, worked as an assistant to Governor Raul Castro in 1975, then was elected in 1976 to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, where he served until elected to Congress. In 1991, he beat Republican Pat Connor 56%-44%. He has not faced stiff competition since then.

Pastor has been a faithful follower of the Democratic leadership and has a mostly liberal voting record. He supported NAFTA, despite strong labor opposition, but he opposed normal trade relations with China. He vigorously opposed Arizona's English Only law and supports bilingual ballots, but says, "everyone acknowledges that English is the common language of our country." In 2002 he sponsored legislation to provide amnesty to immigrants who were in the U.S. prior to January 2000. After a trip to Cuba where he met with Fidel Castro for three hours in 2002, he urged the immediate end of the trade embargo. In July 2004, he narrowly lost in the Appropriations Committee on his proposal to remove a provision that prohibited banks from allowing the use of Mexican matricula consular identity cards.

Much of Pastor's work has been on the Appropriations Committee, where he often delivers projects of the kind that John McCain labels "pork." Home state demands on him and Appropriations Republican Jim Kolbe have been great because neither Arizona senator is an appropriator. On the Energy and Water Development and the Transportation Subcommittees, he does bring home the bacon--$32 million for the Rio Salado (Salt River) project to control flooding and restore wildlife habitat in Phoenix, $75 million for a light-rail transit project in Phoenix, $26.3 million for air traffic control facilities at the city airport, and $3 million for improvements to a visitors facility at the Grand Canyon. In 2000 he won enactment of his proposal to authorize a new international port of entry at the border in Yuma, with conveyance of 330 acres to the Greater Yuma Port Authority; the project was designed to relieve congestion that often caused delays of several hours for commercial vehicles at San Luis five miles to the west. Pastor is "not a headline maker," editorialized The Arizona Republic. "He is a congressman from the old school, congenial, collaborative, attuned to the needs of his district, with no grand ambitions other than helping his constituents."

In the 2004 presidential campaign, he was an early supporter of Dick Gephardt, but backed John Kerry in the Arizona primary after Gephardt dropped out. Kerry named him a co-chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

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Committees

  • Chief Deputy Minority Whip
  • .
  • Appropriations (14th of 29 D): Energy & Water Development & Related Agencies; Transportation, Treasury, HUD, the Judiciary & District of Columbia.

Group Ratings (More Info)
ADA ACLU AFS LCV ITIC NTU COC ACU NTLC CHC
2004 100 84 100 100 38 7 29 4 0 16 --
2003 80 -- 100 90 -- 21 37 21 -- -- --

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
2003 LIB -- 2003 CONS            2004 LIB -- 2004 CONS
Economic 74% -- 25%            85% -- 14%
Social 77% -- 23%            86% -- 12%
Foreign 84% -- 16%            90% -- 9%
For National Journal's complete 2004 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 108th Congress (More Info)

1. Drilling in ANWR N
2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts N
3. Medicare/Rx Bill N
4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. Y
5. DC School Vouchers N
6. Ban Human Cloning N

      

 7. Restrict Gun Liability N
 8. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion N
 9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage N
10. Fund Iraq War N
11. Bar Cuba Embargo Funds Y
12. Intelligence Reorg. N

Election Results (More Info)
Candidate Total Votes Percent Expenditures
2004 general Ed Pastor (D) 77,150 70% $624,271
Don Karg (R) 28,238 26%
Gary Fallon (Lib) 4,639 4%
2004 primary Ed Pastor (D) unopposed
2002 general Ed Pastor (D) 44,517 67% $679,772
Jonathon Barnert (R) 18,381 28% $3,112
Amy Gibbons (Lib) 3,167 5%

Prior winning percentages: 2000 (69%); 1998 (68%); 1996 (65%); 1994 (62%); 1992 (66%); 1991 (56%)

2004 Presidential Vote
Kerry (D) 71,805 (62%)
Bush (R) 43,967 (38%)

2000 Presidential Vote
Gore (D) 57,198 (63%)
Bush (R) 31,542 (35%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Fourth District, please see the Almanac 2000 online. Please note that these older returns reflect district lines as they existed prior to 2002 redistricting.

District Demographics (More Info)
  • Cook Partisan Voting Index: D +14
  • District Size: 199 square miles
  • Population in 2000: 641,329; 99.5% urban; 0.5% rural
  • Median Household Income: $30,624; 25.6% are below the poverty line
  • Occupation: 35.7% blue collar; 43.8% white collar; 20.5% gray collar; 9.6% military veterans
  • Race/Ethnic Origin: 29.3% White, 7.5% Black, 1.3% Asian, 2.4% Amer. Indian, 0.1% Hawaiian, 1.5% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 58.0% Hispanic origin
  • Ancestry: 5.8% German, 4.0% Irish, 3.4% English
  • Click here for statewide demographic data.

Teusday, September 6, 2005 [an error occurred while processing this directive]


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