Rep. Lois Capps (D) Elected March 1998, 4th full term
Born:	Jan. 10, 1938, Ladysmith, WI
Home:	Santa Barbara
Education:	Pacific Lutheran U., B.S. 1959, Yale U., M.A. 1964, U. of CA at Santa Barbara, M.A. 1990
Religion:	Lutheran
Marital Status:	widowed
Professional Career:	Staff nurse, Visiting Nurses Assn., 1963-64; Head nurse, Yale New Haven Hospital, 1960-63; Instructor, Santa Barbara City Col., 1983-95; Nurse, Santa Barbara Schl. Dist., 1979-96.
DC Office	1707 LHOB20515, 202-225-3601; Fax: 202-225-5632; Web site: www.house.gov/capps
State Offices	Oxnard, 805-385-3440; San Luis Obispo, 805-546-8348; Santa Barbara, 805-730-1710.
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Santa Barbara is one of California's most paradisiacal places, a collection of red tile roofs and leafy live oaks, sheltered by towering mountains just above the sea. The impression is a bit misleading, for Santa Barbara has its problems, and its Spanish style is a creation not of 18th century Mission culture, but of the 20th century. Most of its white stucco buildings were put up after a 1925 earthquake leveled much of the town and the most distinguished of the Spanish Revival buildings were designed by an architect with the marvelously un-Latin name of George Washington Smith. Santa Barbara, like Disneyland, does not reproduce the past but presents a bigger, more attractive, cleaner version of it, maintained not by a company but by an architectural review board. But Santa Barbara's affluence isn't ersatz. This has long been one of the nation's richest retirement communities, and one determined to preserve its environment and serenity. Both features came under threat spectacularly in 1969, when an underwater oil well ruptured, coating the beach with oil; pictures of the oil slick in the channel and of volunteers trying to wash oil off grounded birds, helped to launch the environmental movement. Almost all the wells are closed now (though some old 19th century wells still send globs of oil to the beach at nearby Summerland), but the oil spill did leave a residue in Santa Barbara's politics--and helped obscure the fact that the environment also causes some of Santa Barbara's problems, as when in early 2005 torrential storms caused mud slides and destroyed many homes. This was once a mostly Republican community, uninterested in redistribution of wealth, but very concerned about the environment (it has built the nation's largest desalination plant) and moderate to liberal on cultural issues. Like most of coastal California, it moved decisively to the left in the past decade. But some of those changes have not gone smoothly, as pressures grew to split Santa Barbara into two counties of roughly equal population: a proposed Mission County to the west and north, which would be more conservative; and the residue in the more liberal Santa Barbara County.

The 23d Congressional District of California is a thin strip of Pacific coastline, from two to 12 miles deep, from the industrial ports of Oxnard and Port Hueneme southeast of Santa Barbara to the north end of San Luis Obispo County on the Big Sur coast, just north of William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon. There are nodes of populated territory. The largest city is Oxnard, in Ventura County, which is anything but upscale, with a large number of immigrants; overall the district is 42% Hispanic. Santa Barbara and nearby Montecito are far more upscale. Much of the Santa Barbara coastline is occupied by Vandenberg Air Force Base, which launches unmanned government and commercial satellites into polar orbit. The largest towns in northern Santa Barbara County, like San Luis Obispo to the north, are pleasant, comfortable places, as untrendy as you can find in coastal California. This was a marginal district, seriously contested several times in the 1990s. Now, after redistricting, it is safely Democratic.

The congresswoman from the 23d District is Lois Capps, a Democrat first chosen in a March 1998 special election to replace her late husband Walter Capps. Lois Capps grew up in Wyoming and Montana, the daughter of a Lutheran minister; she graduated from college with a nursing degree and was head nurse at Yale New Haven Hospital where she met Walter Capps, a student at Yale Divinity School. In 1964 he became a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Lois Capps became the head elementary school nurse for the Santa Barbara school system, director of the county's teenage pregnancy and parenting project and a part-time instructor at Santa Barbara City Community College. In 1994, when Republican Michael Huffington gave up the seat after one term to run for the Senate, Walter Capps ran and lost 49.3%-48.5% to Andrea Seastrand, a conservative Republican assemblywoman from San Luis Obispo County. Capps ran again in 1996 and won 48%-44%, but died of a heart attack in October 1997. Speaker Newt Gingrich encouraged the candidacy of Assemblyman Brooks Firestone--an heir to the Firestone tire fortune and successful winemaker and a centrist in favor of abortion rights and gun control. But also running was Assemblyman Tom Bordonaro, the favorite of Christian conservatives. Bordonaro, a paraplegic since a car accident in college, emphasized his "blue-collar roots and common values" and attacked Firestone's wealthy status. Tom DeLay steered about $30,000 to Bordonaro. Lois Capps ran with support from many of Walter Capps's admirers as well as from labor and environmental groups. In the January 1998 all-party primary she finished first with 45%, to 29% for Bordonaro and 25% for Firestone. In the runoff Bordonaro suffered from lingering animosity of Firestone supporters plus voter backlash against the outside groups' advertising. Capps won by a surprisingly large 53%-45% margin. The same two candidates were on the ballot in November. But national Republicans had few hopes of winning this time, and it was not a priority race. Capps won 55%-43%.

With her seat on Energy and Commerce and background as a health care professional, Capps has focused on HMO regulation and protecting the privacy of medical records, including genetic tests. She began as less of a down-the-line liberal than her husband, and she scored more legislative successes than the typical California Democrat. After she voted for normal trade relations with China, the Teamsters claimed that Capps betrayed them and withdrew their endorsement. When George W. Bush took over, she patched things up with labor by opposing trade promotion authority and her voting record became more liberal. She stood by George W. Bush's side during a White House signing ceremony of her bill to attract more students into the nursing profession. When the AARP endorsed Bush's Medicare prescription drug bill, Capps said that she was "stunned and offended" and resigned from the group. In 2004, the House passed her amendment for a comprehensive inventory of oil and gas resources beneath the Outer Continental Shelf; she opposed the Bush administration plan for drilling in the Los Padres National Forest. She gained unwanted national attention after getting funds for gang-related tattoo removal in San Luis Obispo. The $50,000 program initially received little attention at home, but it became the butt of jokes and criticism from national conservative and anti-pork groups. Capps defended the program for working with "people in our community to help erase this social stigma."

In 2000, Capps had serious competition from moderate Republican Mike Stoker, a former Santa Barbara County Supervisor and California Agricultural Labor Relations Board chairman. Capps had a big fundraising edge and won 53%-44%. In 2002, after redistricting, she won 59%-39%. After promising in 1998 to serve only three terms, she announced in 2003 that she would run again in 2004. Voters showed little reaction and she was reelected easily. Her biggest problem in the 2004 campaign was that law enforcement officials discovered that a former finance director had embezzled $200,000 from her campaign.

Committees

• Budget (7th of 17 D).
• Energy & Commerce (17th of 26 D): Energy & Air Quality; Environment & Hazardous Materials; Health.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	100	80	100	100	60	9	24	0	0	7	--
2003	100	--	100	100	--	22	33	12	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	87%	--	9%		89%	--	8%
Social	84%	--	13%		86%	--	12%
Foreign	80%	--	19%		89%	--	10%
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 * 11. Bar Cuba Embargo Funds Y 12. Intelligence Reorg. N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2004 general	Lois Capps (D)	153,980	63%	$1,009,290
	Don Regan (R)	83,926	34%	$148,631
	Other	6,391	3%
2004 primary	Lois Capps (D)	unopposed
2002 general	Lois Capps (D)	95,752	59%	$1,461,132
	Beth Rogers (R)	62,604	39%	$1,844,444
	Other	3,866	2%
Prior winning percentages: 2000 (53%); 1998 (55%); 1998 (53%)

2004 Presidential Vote Kerry (D) 147,361 (58%) Bush (R) 101,817 (40%)

2000 Presidential Vote Gore (D) 119,795 (53%) Bush (R) 90,550 (40%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Twenty-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 + 9
• District Size: 2,479 square miles
• Population in 2000: 639,088; 98.0% urban; 2.0% rural
• Median Household Income: $44,874; 15.7% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 20.3% blue collar; 57.3% white collar; 22.4% gray collar; 11.0% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 48.7% White, 1.9% Black, 4.9% Asian, 0.5% Amer. Indian, 0.2% Hawaiian, 2.0% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 41.7% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 8.3% German, 7.2% English, 6.5% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.