Rep. Tom Feeney (R) Elected 2002, 2d term
Born:	May 21, 1958, Abington, PA
Home:	Oviedo
Education:	PA St. U., B.A. 1980, U. of Pittsburgh, J.D. 1983
Religion:	Presbyterian
Marital Status:	married (Ellen)
Elected  Office:	FL House of Reps., 1990-94, 1996-2002, Speaker, 2000-02.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1983-2002.
DC Office	323 CHOB20515, 202-225-2706; Fax: 202-226-6299; Web site: www.house.gov/feeney
State Offices	Orlando, 407-208-1106; Port Orange, 386-756-9798; Titusville, 321-264-6113.
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In 1960, central Florida was a sleepy place: Orlando was a small city surrounded by citrus groves; the Atlantic Coast from Cape Canaveral north was a quiet winter vacation spot, with small motels lining U.S. 1 or along the beach on Highway A1A. Then two outsiders transformed this part of America, and made it in two different ways a leader in the world: John F. Kennedy and Walt Disney. Kennedy promised in 1961 to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade, and the Kennedy Space Center was built on an island near Cape Canaveral. This part of Florida suddenly became the Space Coast, from which Americans traveled directly to the moon. Disney in 1971 opened Disney World southwest of Orlando, near the Intersection of I-4 and Florida's Turnpike. Other theme parks followed, and metro Orlando became the number one tourist destination in the world. In the process, the populations of metro Orlando and the Space Coast have more than tripled since the 1960s. People from all over the United States and, more recently, immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere, have come here in large numbers and, with the aid of ubiquitous air conditioning, have transformed sleepy backwaters into vibrant metropolitan areas. This is a part of Florida that has attracted many more young families and people in their working years than retirees: people who have built all-American communities where there used to be orange groves and swamps.

The 24th Congressional District of Florida has about half its population in the Orlando area, much of it in affluent Orange and Seminole County suburbs north and northeast of Orlando-- all of Oviedo and parts of Maitland and Altamonte Springs. The other half is on the coast. The 24th includes the northern half of Brevard County, including the main grounds of the Space Center itself, the Canaveral National Seashore and the county seat of Titusville; the economy here has diversified to include commercial and military satellites, plus the East Coast surfing capital in nearby Cocoa Beach (which is in the 15th District). It also contains the southern half of Volusia County, including part of Daytona Beach, where NASCAR is a big employer and Bike Week and Speed Week are held every year, and New Smyrna Beach, founded as a colony by Andrew Turnbull, a Scotch doctor, where you can see the ruins of an 1820s sugar mill. In between is Ponce de Leon Inlet, near which 22 people were bitten by sharks in the summer of 2001: the sort of thing that made national news before September 11. This is as close as Florida gets to a typical suburban district: There are higher than average numbers of homeowners, families with children, working women and white-collar employees. This is on balance a Republican district; it voted 53% for George W. Bush in 2000 and 55% in 2004.

The congressman from the 24th District is Tom Feeney, a Republican first elected in 2002 who was a prominent political player in the Bush versus Gore machinations in Florida. His political career has been marked by ambition, impulsiveness and a quick rise through the ranks but with some bumps along the way. He grew up in Pennsylvania, the son of schoolteachers, and was an unsuccessful candidate to be a delegate for Ronald Reagan in 1980. After graduating from Penn State and University of Pittsburgh law school, he moved to Florida and practiced real estate law. In 1990 he was elected to the state House, where his early focus was on education. In 1994 Jeb Bush picked him as his lieutenant governor candidate. The statewide race was a sobering experience. Democrats zeroed in on Feeney's conservative voting record--he opposed abortion rights and favored school prayer and vouchers--and attacked him as an extremist bent on injecting religion into the public schools. Bush and Feeney lost to Lawton Chiles and Buddy MacKay 51%-49%.

In an April 1996 special election, Feeney was returned to the state House, in which Republicans won a majority that November. In November 2000, he became Speaker and suddenly found himself in the national spotlight. During the 36-day presidential recount he aggressively challenged the rulings of the Florida Supreme Court and supported Secretary of State Katherine Harris. When it was unclear whether the U.S. Supreme Court would review the Florida court's second decision, Feeney called a special session of the House to appoint presidential electors for Bush; that became moot after the U.S. Supreme Court decision on December 12. As Speaker, Feeney took a lead role on congressional redistricting. Central Florida's population had increased robustly in the 1990s, and it was the part of the state most obviously entitled to one of the two additional seats Florida had picked up in the 2000 Census. Feeney immediately started to run in the new 24th District and was unopposed in the Republican primary.

The Democratic nominee was Harry Jacobs, a wealthy trial lawyer who in November 2000 filed a lawsuit challenging the validity of some 16,000 absentee ballots in Seminole County. The weakness of the lawsuit was that even Jacobs conceded that the overwhelming majority of the ballots were valid, and there was no way to distinguish those that weren't from those that were. A trial judge appointed by a Democratic governor dismissed it. Jacobs spent $3.2 million of his own money on his 2002 campaign. He boasted about his work as a public school teacher and attacked Feeney's "questionable ethics." Feeney said that Jacobs tried to disenfranchise military voters with his lawsuit in 2000. He won 62%-38%.

In the House, Feeney usually sides with conservatives. On the Judiciary Committee, he enacted a controversial proposal to restrict judges from imposing sentences in sexual assault cases that are more lenient than federal guidelines. The question, he said, "is who should decide: the elected representatives of the people, or the individual judges." Chief Justice William Rehnquist criticized the proposal as an "unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges." Liberal lawmakers criticized the proposal, but many voted for it as part of the bill to create a nationwide "Amber Alert" system to recover abducted children. Feeney also sponsored a bill to prohibit federal judges from citing foreign laws in their rulings. After the death of Ronald Reagan, he called the former president "our Moses." Although he made an exception for NASA, he joined other conservatives who said that the federal government was spending too much money; "When push comes to shove, conservatives are becoming more willing to say, 'You'll have to get to 218 [votes] without us.'" Feeney ignored the pleas of Republican leaders, including George W. Bush, to vote for the Medicare/prescription drug bill in November 2003; while asking for his vote, Bush reportedly hung up when Feeney told him that he came to Washington to cut entitlements, not increase them. When the Ethics Committee admonished Tom DeLay in October 2004, Feeney said that the majority leader "stands strong as our leader." He secured a change in House rules to remove the prohibition on referring to the Senate or individual Senators. "The rule was antiquated," he said.

Feeney won a second term without opposition.

Committees

• Financial Services (24th of 37 R): Capital Markets, Insurance & Government Sponsored Enterprises; Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit.
• Judiciary (21st of 23 R): Crime, Terrorism & Homeland Security; The Constitution.
• Science (17th of 24 R): Space & Aeronautics.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	0	0	0	0	90	82	100	100	100	100	--
2003	10	--	14	10	--	74	93	100	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	27%	--	73%		0%	--	95%
Social	24%	--	71%		0%	--	91%
Foreign	21%	--	77%		4%	--	93%
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 N 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 N 12. Intelligence Reorg. Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2004 general	Tom Feeney (R)	unopposed
2004 primary	Tom Feeney (R)	unopposed
2002 general	Tom Feeney (R)	135,576	62%	$1,853,423
	Harry Jacobs (D)	83,667	38%	$3,989,408

2004 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 188,973 (55%) Kerry (D) 153,130 (45%)

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 133,531 (53%) Gore (D) 116,502 (47%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Twenty-Fourth 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 + 3
• District Size: 1,915 square miles
• Population in 2000: 639,295; 91.2% urban; 8.8% rural
• Median Household Income: $43,954; 8.7% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 19.4% blue collar; 65.3% white collar; 15.3% gray collar; 17.1% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 80.0% White, 6.3% Black, 2.0% Asian, 0.3% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.4% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 9.8% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 12.4% German, 10.5% Irish, 9.3% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.