Rep. Jerry Costello (D) Elected Aug. 1988, 9th full term
Born:	Sept. 25, 1949, E. St. Louis
Home:	Belleville
Education:	Belleville Area Col., A.A. 1971, Maryville Col., B.A. 1973
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Georgia)
Elected  Office:	Chmn., St. Clair Cnty. Bd. of Supervisors, 1980-88.
Professional Career:	Dir., IL Court Svcs. & Probation, 1973-80; Chmn., Region's Cncl. of Govts., 1980-84.
DC Office	2269 RHOB20515, 202-225-5661; Fax: 202-225-0285; Web site: www.house.gov/costello
State Offices	Belleville, 618-233-8026; Carbondale, 618-529-3791; Chester, 618-826-3043; E. St. Louis, 618-397-8833; Granite City, 618-451-7065; West Frankfort, 618-937-6402.
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The nation's two mightiest rivers, the Mississippi and Missouri, their waters roiling together, join just a few miles above St. Louis and just a few miles below Alton, Illinois. Most views of this center of the Mississippi Valley focus on the Gateway Arch and the buildings of downtown St. Louis. But the Mississippi shoreline of Illinois is worthy of attention as well. Alton's 19th century buildings recall its turbulent history, when it was the home of the anti-slavery agitator Elijah Lovejoy, who was murdered by a mob. More recently it was the longtime home of conservative crusader and columnist Phyllis Schlafly. Nearby in Hartford, Lewis and Clark spent five months preparing their team and collecting supplies for their journey westward. Just across from the Gateway Arch is East St. Louis, where dozens of rail lines and highways funnel into bridges over the river. Once a rail and stockyards center second only to Chicago, East St. Louis is now almost entirely black and one of America's poorest and most troubled cities, a half-abandoned slum with one of the nation's highest crime rates and a rapidly declining tax base, almost entirely dependent on a riverboat casino and an adjacent waterfront hotel for its tax revenue. After peaking at 82,000 in 1960, its population is now less than 32,000--down 9,000 in the 1990s. East St. Louis is in St. Clair County, long heavily Democratic; Alton is in Madison County, politically more marginal and famous as a prime locale for trial lawyers to file tort suits. George W. Bush came here in January 2005 to campaign for changes in tort law.

South of East St. Louis and the industrial area around Belleville, the river counties are lightly inhabited, but they were not always unimportant. This was the site of the French Kaskaskia settlement that became Illinois's first capital in 1818, but repeated flooding turned it into an island and reduced its population to 9 people and many more egrets. Farther south, the river abuts coal country and is not far from Carbondale, once a coal center but now, as the home of Southern Illinois University, bustling with students from Downstate Illinois and Chicago. The land here is sometimes known as Egypt, the southern end of Illinois where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi: flat, fertile farmland, protected by giant man-made levees because it is susceptible to yearly floods. The marshy landscape has created the Sinkhole Plain, with more than 10,000 sinkholes. There is more than a touch of Dixie here: The unofficial capital of Egypt, Cairo (pronounced KAY-roh), is a declining town closer to Mississippi than to Chicago. In his 1842 work, American Notes, Charles Dickens described the town in these unflattering terms: "The hateful Mississippi circling and eddying before it, and turning off upon its southern course a slimy monster hideous to behold; a hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulchre, a grave uncheered by any gleam of promise: a place without one single quality, in earth or air or water, to commend it: such is this dismal Cairo." A more enticing locale not far from Cairo is the Shawnee National Forest, which has preserved Native American sites that are 10,000 years old; the Cherokee Nation left here in the 1830s on its devastating forced march to Oklahoma, which became known as the Trail of Tears.

The 12th District of Illinois covers all of this riverfront from Alton south to Cairo, with some inland territory as well. Most of its population is in the Metro East area in St. Clair and Madison Counties. The largest employer in southern Illinois is Scott Air Force Base near Belleville, where local officials hoped that a relocation of planes for the 932d Airlift Wing would give the facility protection in the 2005 base-closing review. Senator Richard Durbin admitted that "things looked pretty bleak"; Governor Rod Blagojevich lobbied for the base with top Pentagon officials after the 2004 election. When the Defense Department's recommendations were released in May 2005, there was joy in Belleville: Scott ended up gaining 797 jobs and 12 refueling tankers.

The congressman from the 12th District is Jerry Costello, a Democrat first elected in 1988. He grew up in a St. Clair County political family, worked for the courts after college, then became chairman of the St. Clair County Board of Supervisors. He waited with some impatience for the retirement of Congressman Mel Price, first elected in 1944; Price died in office in April 1988. Experienced, well connected, supported by organized labor, Costello was the obvious successor. Yet he received only 51% of the votes in the special election and 53% for a full term.

Costello is a practical-minded politician with a voting record more liberal on economics than on cultural and foreign issues. Seniority has moved him toward top posts on the Science plus Transportation and Infrastructure Committees, where he is ranking Democrat on the Aviation Subcommittee. Concern over their local economic impact led him to oppose the Clean Air Act and NAFTA. He voted against authorizing to use force against Iraq in January 1991 and October 2002; his son was a paratrooper during the 1991 war. Costello was instrumental in creating the Mid-America Airport at Scott Air Force Base; although it has no scheduled airline service, local officials have taken steps to make it a cargo hub. Attempting to revive his district's largely dormant high-sulfur coal mines, he authored several provisions for expanded clean-coal research and development that the House included in its 2003 energy bill; he also got $18 million from the House Appropriations Committee for a projected FutureGen clean coal power plant, which is designed to burn coal without releasing pollutants. Costello has worked for authorization in highway legislation of a $1.6 billion Mississippi River bridge slightly north of the current congested bridge on Interstate 70, which would require hundreds of millions more for highway relocation; the existing Poplar Street bridge serves three interstates in the St. Louis area.

For a while, a cloud hung over Costello. In 1996 federal prosecutors indicted and won a conviction of Amiel Cueto, Costello's longtime friend and business partner, for trying to stop an investigation of a gambling operation run by a client and for conspiring to get himself installed as St. Clair County state's attorney. Although a federal judge ruled that Costello was an unindicted co-conspirator and government attorneys said he was a silent partner in a plan to build an Indian casino, Costello denied it all. In 2004 the chief prosecutor said that Costello was never the target of the investigation.

Costello was opposed in 1998 by Bill Price, an orthopedic surgeon and son of Mel Price, who switched parties and ran as a Republican. Costello won by a solid 60%-40%. Since then, he has been reelected without significant opposition. In 2004 Costello was reelected against a 28-year-old opponent, whose 1993 Ford Mustang died three times on the campaign trail, 69%-29%.

Committees

• Science (2d of 20 D): Energy.
• Transportation & Infrastructure (4th of 34 D): Aviation (RMM); Railroads; Water Resources & Environment.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	70	45	88	64	10	15	38	36	12	61	--
2003	80	--	100	70	--	34	38	44	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	63%	--	37%		62%	--	38%
Social	55%	--	44%		53%	--	46%
Foreign	61%	--	37%		67%	--	33%
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 Y		7. Restrict Gun Liability Y  8. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage Y 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	Jerry Costello (D)	198,962	69%	$637,567
	Erin Zweigart (R)	82,677	29%	$15,983
	Other	4,796	2%
2004 primary	Jerry Costello (D)	56,397	90%
	Kenneth Wiezer (D)	6,265	10%
2002 general	Jerry Costello (D)	131,580	69%	$466,184
	David Sadler (R)	58,440	31%
Prior winning percentages: 2000 (100%); 1998 (60%); 1996 (72%); 1994 (66%); 1992 (71%); 1990 (66%); 1988 (53%); 1988 (51%)

2004 Presidential Vote Kerry (D) 152,055 (52%) Bush (R) 139,710 (48%)

2000 Presidential Vote Gore (D) 144,548 (54%) Bush (R) 116,724 (43%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Twelfth 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 + 5
• District Size: 4,556 square miles
• Population in 2000: 653,647; 76.7% urban; 23.3% rural
• Median Household Income: $35,198; 15.0% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 26.2% blue collar; 55.1% white collar; 18.7% gray collar; 15.3% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 79.7% White, 16.3% Black, 0.8% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.0% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 1.8% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 18.6% German, 8.7% Irish, 6.6% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.