Rep. Wally Herger (R) Elected 1986, 10th term
Born:	May 20, 1945, Yuba City
Home:	Marysville
Education:	American River Comm. Col., A.A. 1967, CA St. U., 1968-69
Religion:	Mormon
Marital Status:	married (Pamela)
Elected  Office:	CA Assembly, 1980-86.
Professional Career:	Rancher; Owner, Herger Gas Inc., 1969-80.
DC Office	2268 RHOB20515, 202-225-3076; Fax: 202-226-0852; Web site: www.house.gov/herger
State Offices	Chico, 530-893-8363; Redding, 530-223-5898.
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Rising 14,000 feet over low foothills and the Central Valley, visible for 100 miles, is the snow-capped volcanic cone of Mount Shasta, one of a string of (supposedly) burnt-out volcanoes that march up and down the Pacific Coast states. This is the far northern end of California, where truck traffic on Interstate 5 is the only reminder of the choked metropolitan areas where most of the state's people live. This is lumber country mostly, where the mountains that rise on all sides--the Coast Range to the west, the Sierra Nevada to the east, the scattered mountains sealing off the Central Valley north of Redding--are carpeted with trees: rough flannel-shirt, two-lane-road country that was left behind economically when Los Angeles and San Francisco boomed after World War II. North of Shasta, the tiny town of Weed became a logging center and a noted locale for racial integration a half-century ago, but the loss of jobs has led younger blacks as well as whites to move out. Further south are the flat farm fields of the Sacramento Valley, spread across the 50 miles between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range. For more a decade, this northern end of California has been attracting people, mostly young families who come here to raise their children in a small town atmosphere, but also retirees looking for a calm atmosphere and low cost of living. This is one part of California that remains overwhelmingly white Anglo.

The 2d Congressional District of California covers most of this area. The district has three major population areas. One is around Redding, south of Mount Shasta. The second is further south, at the edge of the Sierra foothills, around the Butte County communities of Paradise and Chico, home to a state university campus and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Still further south are the farm counties of Colusa (the leading rice-producing county in the nation, and a source of local prosperity with its locally cultivated rice hybrids), Yuba and Sutter, not far north of Sacramento. The region has a Democratic heritage, but is culturally conservative, angry at the diktats of urban environmentalists. Until 1980, it elected rough-and-ready Democrats who pulled strings in Sacramento and Washington to build roads and dams. Since then it has elected abstemious Republicans who have solidly conservative voting records and tend to local needs. George W. Bush won 62% of the vote here in 2004, his best showing in a northern California district.

The congressman from the 2d District is Republican Wally Herger, a Republican first elected in 1986. He grew up in the farm country north of Sacramento and worked as a rancher and propane gas company owner. In 1980 he was elected to the California Assembly. In 1986 he was elected to the House after winning solid margins over the mayor of Redding in the primary and a Shasta County supervisor in the general. He has served quietly on the Ways and Means Committee, favoring balanced budgets and lower taxes. When federal budget deficits disappeared in the late 1990s, Herger was a leader of the battle to create lock boxes for the surpluses in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds; that discussion became moot with the return of big deficits. In 2001 he took over as chairman of the Human Resources Subcommittee, which gave him responsibility for reauthorizing the 1996 welfare act. The House has repeatedly passed the bill that he and other Ways and Means Republicans wrote to increase work requirements for recipients and incentives for states to reduce caseloads; it included provisions to encourage marriage and other Bush administration recommendations. But few House Democrats supported his version, and it has died in the Senate, where Democrats have demanded more money for the states; meanwhile, the landmark 1996 law has had several temporary extensions. With encouragement from Majority Leader Tom DeLay, he has proposed an overhaul of foster care to give states more flexibility to prevent abuse of children who become lost in the system. Herger ranks fourth in seniority among committee Republicans, but does not seem likely to be a candidate to succeed Bill Thomas as chairman.

On local issues, Herger tends to local water projects, lamenting the failure to shore up levees to prevent floods, and opposing the Central Valley Project for legislating "a permanent drought." He called for exemption of flood control programs from the Endangered Species Act. With Greg Walden of Oregon, he proposed full compensation of farmers and related businesses that suffered damages from the Klamath River flooding, but he rejected environmentalists' calls for management controls of the fisheries, which he called part of "an anti-agriculture agenda." He joined other California Republicans in urging the Forest Service to scale back controls on Sierra wildlife preservation because of the fire risk. In 2000, he helped to enact a five-year program to aid about 750 counties that have suffered from a loss of revenue from timber sales; in 2005, he worked to extend the relief. Herger advocated increased basing of Global Hawk unmanned spy planes at Beale Air Force Base, which already housed the older U-2 and SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft; the huge base, whose rocky pastures were used before June 1944 to practice the Normandy invasion and to simulate combat in a fake European town, is about 40 miles north of Sacramento and military officials are unhappy about the increased local development.

In this district, Herger has nothing to fear politically other than nuisance candidates. Since 1990, he has been consistently reelected with more than 60% of the vote against weak Democratic opponents, in what has become one of the safest Republican districts in the nation. In the 2002 primary, he won 89% of the vote against two opponents who criticized him for failing to support the gold standard and for backing free trade.

Committees

• Ways & Means (4th of 24 R): Human Resources (Chmn.); Trade.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	5	5	0	0	100	75	100	100	95	92	--
2003	5	--	0	5	--	68	97	88	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	0%	--	91%		0%	--	95%
Social	0%	--	95%		0%	--	91%
Foreign	30%	--	70%		25%	--	68%
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 Y 2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 3. Medicare/Rx Bill Y 4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. N 5. DC School Vouchers Y 6. Ban Human Cloning Y		7. Restrict Gun Liability Y  8. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage Y 10. Fund Iraq War Y 11. Bar Cuba Embargo Funds Y 12. Intelligence Reorg. Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2004 general	Wally Herger (R)	182,119	67%	$580,670
	Mike Johnson (D)	90,310	33%	$6,297
2004 primary	Wally Herger (R)	unopposed
2002 general	Wally Herger (R)	117,747	66%	$719,053
	Mike Johnson (D)	52,455	29%	$9,422
	Other	8,783	5%
Prior winning percentages: 2000 (66%); 1998 (63%); 1996 (61%); 1994 (64%); 1992 (65%); 1990 (64%); 1988 (59%); 1986 (58%)

2004 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 173,528 (62%) Kerry (D) 102,254 (37%)

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 150,196 (61%) Gore (D) 81,861 (33%)

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 +13
• District Size: 21,977 square miles
• Population in 2000: 639,087; 67.7% urban; 32.3% rural
• Median Household Income: $33,559; 17.0% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 23.2% blue collar; 54.9% white collar; 21.9% gray collar; 15.7% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 76.2% White, 1.2% Black, 3.6% Asian, 1.9% Amer. Indian, 0.1% Hawaiian, 2.8% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 14.0% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 11.8% German, 9.0% English, 8.9% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.