Rep. Susan Davis (D) Elected 2000, 3d term
Born:	Apr. 13, 1944, Cambridge, MA
Home:	San Diego
Education:	U.of CA at Berkeley, B.A. 1964, U. of NC, M.A. 1968
Religion:	Jewish
Marital Status:	married (Steven)
Elected  Office:	San Diego School Bd., 1983-92; CA Assembly, 1994-2000.
Professional Career:	Devel. Assoc., KPBS Radio, 1980-82.; Exec. Dir., Aaron Price Fellows, 1990-94.
DC Office	1224 LHOB20515, 202-225-2040; Fax: 202-225-2948; Web site: www.house.gov/susandavis
State Offices	San Diego, 619-280-5353.
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When the United States was dictating the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, after its successful war with Mexico, it made sure the southern boundary of its new California territory was just south of the port of San Diego. This is one of three splendid natural harbors on the Pacific Coast and in 1914 the Marine Corps established a base on North Island. This was just the first of many military bases in San Diego, with its mild climate, deep harbor and plentiful land for aircraft maneuvers. This has been the major West Coast U.S. Navy base for more than 50 years, and home to 22,000 active duty Navy and Marine personnel on shore, with $7.5 billion in payroll and contract grants, the second largest Navy port behind Norfolk. Also based here are the retired aircraft carriers Midway and Constellation, plus the Ronald Reagan, which is the Navy's newest carrier, with a flight deck that covers 4.5 acres.

The port and Navy base in the sheltered harbor remain the central focus of a metropolis that has grown tenfold over that time and now stretches far inland and to the north. On one side is downtown, booming with postmodern buildings like the Horton Plaza amid a few well-preserved early 20th century relics like the Spreckels Theatre. Across the harbor, on the sand spit that guards it against the ocean, is the white frame castle of the Hotel Del Coronado, with its surprisingly dark wooden interior--the U.S.'s largest wooden structure and a favored resort of past American presidents; the town of Coronado has long been a favorite retirement place for Navy admirals and captains. But San Diego is not all harbor and Navy. To the north, the Pacific waves pound against the beach beneath erose cliffs of unique rock formations that stride up and down the coast. Here stand some of San Diego's great cultural institutions: the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the University of California San Diego campus, the Salk Institute and the Torrey Pines reserve, home of this unique, wide-spreading pine tree. To the south are raffish Mission Beach, Ocean Beach, with its strong rip currents, and Point Loma, overlooking the entrance to the harbor. The weather--a sunny 70 degrees most of the time--has lured tourists and new residents to San Diego. But this is a working town as well, a sophisticated high-tech center with around 200,000 full and part-time students at its colleges and universities and growing biotech, electronics, software and telecommunications industries. It is a manufacturing center as well, with maquiladora factories clustering near the Mexican border.

The 53d Congressional District of California--the first and only 53d Congressional District in American history--consists of the center of San Diego, the San Diego beaches from Blacks Beach to Ocean Beach, the port that has become the home of several cruise lines, La Jolla beach (but not its interior) and Balboa Park. It includes the heavily Latino neighborhoods south and east of downtown, the Gaslamp District, with its glitzy night-life scene that has driven out most of the porn shops and the older neighborhoods of University Heights and East San Diego. Altogether, 85% of the district population is inside the San Diego city limits. It also includes Coronado and Imperial Beach, just north of the Mexican border, and the inland suburbs of La Presa and Lemon Grove, site of a celebrated school-desegregation case in the 1930s. Historically, this was a Republican district, but after Coastal California's trend toward cultural liberalism in the 1990s and the 2001 redistricting, it is now solidly Democratic. The Hispanic percentage is 29%, and John Kerry carried the district 61%-38%. Also in 2004, a local election captured national attention when surfer and write-in candidate Donna Frye fell about 2,000 votes short of defeating Mayor Dick Murphy with her outsider appeal and forced a three-month review of the vote; more than 5,500 ballots for her were disallowed because voters neglected to fill in the oval bubble next to the write-in, as required by state law. In April 2005, as the SEC and the U.S. Attorney's Office investigated whether he and other city officials concealed a $1.4 billion pension deficit from investors, Murphy announced his resignation. A special election was scheduled and Frye announced her candidacy.

The congresswoman from the 53d District is Susan Davis, a Democrat first elected in 2000. She grew up in Richmond, California, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and got a degree in social work at the University of North Carolina. Her father and husband have both been physicians. She moved to San Diego in 1973 and became president of the local League of Women Voters and a community producer for the local public television station. In 1983 she was elected to the San Diego school board. In 1990, she became the executive director of the Aaron Price Fellows Program, which helps teach leadership and citizen skills to high school students. She returned to politics in 1994, winning the first of three terms in the California Assembly. Barred from a fourth term by term limits, Davis in 2000 challenged Republican Brian Bilbray, who had won three close elections. She portrayed him as a conservative, even though he took liberal positions on abortion and the environment and made a point of not attending the Republican National Convention. He supported John McCain's campaign finance regulation bill and said that he was comfortable with votes to impeach a president he called "a perpetual liar." She attacked Bilbray for supporting bills that would deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants and that would allow private insurers to provide prescription drug benefits to seniors; she called for coverage under Medicare. The AFL-CIO ran so much advertising on her behalf that Davis requested it stop. Bilbray criticized Davis for her handling of utility deregulation, but Davis won 50%-46%.

In the House, she has had a moderate-to-liberal voting record, leaning to the center on foreign policy. Assigned to the Armed Services and Education and the Workforce committees, her priorities included higher military pay, increased aid for school districts with a large military presence, increased student loans and incentives for better teachers. She angered organized labor and some Democratic activists by voting for trade promotion authority, one of only 21 House Democrats to do so. She called the vote "agonizing," but in the interests of a city that has been built on trade; organized labor rescinded its endorsement. She crusaded against dietary supplements that contain the herbal stimulant ephedra, which has been said to cause heart attacks and strokes, and introduced legislation removing them from the marketplace. San Diego-based Metabolife was a leading producer of the supplements; the Food and Drug Administration eventually banned ephedra in 2004. With Republican Ginny Brown-Waite, she won House passage of a bill to increase the maximum loan amount that the Veterans Administration approves for home mortgages. Davis has been reelected easily.

Committees

• Armed Services (16th of 28 D): Military Personnel; Readiness.
• Education & the Workforce (15th of 22 D): 21st Century Competitiveness; Education Reform.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	100	75	100	100	70	12	43	4	3	7	--
2003	90	--	100	100	--	22	33	16	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	87%	--	9%		75%	--	24%
Social	78%	--	20%		78%	--	19%
Foreign	61%	--	37%		72%	--	27%
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 Y 11. Bar Cuba Embargo Funds Y 12. Intelligence Reorg. N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2004 general	Susan Davis (D)	146,449	66%	$387,177
	Darin Hunzeker (R)	63,897	29%	$68,081
	Other	11,090	5%
2004 primary	Susan Davis (D)	unopposed
2002 general	Susan Davis (D)	72,252	62%	$582,445
	Bill VanDeWeghe (R)	43,891	38%	$742,535
Prior winning percentages: 2000 (50%)

2004 Presidential Vote Kerry (D) 146,160 (61%) Bush (R) 89,890 (38%)

2000 Presidential Vote Gore (D) 114,435 (58%) Bush (R) 74,526 (37%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Fifty-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 +12
• District Size: 251 square miles
• Population in 2000: 639,087; 99.9% urban; 0.1% rural
• Median Household Income: $36,637; 20.2% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 16.3% blue collar; 64.6% white collar; 19.1% gray collar; 12.1% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 51.0% White, 7.2% Black, 8.3% Asian, 0.5% Amer. Indian, 0.4% Hawaiian, 3.1% Two+ races, 0.3% Other, 29.4% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 8.8% German, 7.4% Irish, 6.3% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.