Rep. Judy Biggert (R) Elected 1998, 4th term
Born:	Aug. 15, 1937, Chicago
Home:	Hinsdale
Education:	Stanford U., B.A. 1959, Northwestern U., J.D. 1963
Religion:	Episcopalian
Marital Status:	married (Rody)
Elected  Office:	Hinsdale Bd. of Ed., 1982-85; IL House of Reps., 1992-98.
Professional Career:	Clerk, U.S. Ct. of Appeals, 1963-64; Practicing atty., 1975-98.
DC Office	1317 LHOB20515, 202-225-3515; Fax: 202-225-9420; Web site: judybiggert.house.gov
State Offices	Willowbrook, 630-655-2052.
Additional Info
Committees · Ratings · Key Votes · Election Results District Demographics
More On Illinois
At A Glance · State Profile District Map Redistricting · Almanac Home
Recent News Coverage
Search the CongressDaily, Hotline, House Race Hotline, National Journal and Technology Daily archives using the form above:
[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Most residents of Chicagoland now live not in the city but in the suburbs, and increasingly not even in Cook County but in the Collar Counties all around. DuPage County, straight west of Chicago, had 103,000 residents in 1940; in 2003, there were 925,000, with new subdivisions still springing up at the western edges. Nor are these just bedroom communities. Since 1970 DuPage County has generated nearly half the new jobs in metro Chicago. Here in Oak Brook are the headquarters of Ace Hardware, Federal Signal, the Spiegel catalog, Molex and, most famously, McDonald's and its Hamburger University, an 80-acre campus where more than 73,000 trainees have received Bachelor of Hamburgerology degrees since it was founded in 1961. Nearby are gracefully older railroad commuter towns like Hinsdale and Downers Grove, but also Naperville, once a country village, now an edge city, with a school district ranked number one in the world in science in an international exam and a top-rated public library. The Argonne National Laboratory has sparked numerous private research firms along the Sanitary and Ship Canal, the Des Plaines River and the Illinois and Michigan Canal, built way back in 1848.

The 13th Congressional District of Illinois includes the southern part of DuPage County (including Oak Brook, Downers Grove and Naperville), a small section of southwest corner of Cook County and the northern slice of Will County (including Bolingbrook, Romeoville and Lockport). Politically, this has been a heavily Republican area, suspicious of the motives and operations of Chicago Democrats, devoted to free enterprise and hostile to higher taxes. Republican margins shrunk in DuPage County as the Chicago suburbs became more Democratic in the 1990s, but the 13th District has not been in danger of going Democratic.

The congresswoman from the 13th District is Judy Biggert, a Republican first elected in 1998. She grew up in Kenilworth, on the affluent North Shore (as did Mark Kirk of the 10th District), graduated from New Trier Township High School, Stanford and Northwestern Law School and clerked for a federal appeals judge. She raised four children in Hinsdale, practicing estate and real estate law out of her home, served on the Hinsdale Township Board of Education, was chairman of the Visiting Nurses Association of Chicago--a "former car pool mom and assistant soccer coach," as her campaign put it. In 1992 she was elected to the state House, and was soon part of the leadership.

Biggert started running for the U.S. House in 1997 when incumbent Republican Harris Fawell announced his retirement; he endorsed her in November 1997. She said she supported abortion rights and opposed most gun control measures for constitutional reasons, though she had campaigned for gun control in 1992. She had primary opposition from state Representative Peter Roskam, who moved into the district to run. Biggert put in $402,000 of her own money and got support from Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign. She won the March 1998 primary by 45%-40% and the November the general election 61%-39%.

In the House, Biggert has had a moderate voting record on cultural issues but has been more conservative on economic and foreign matters. On the Education and the Workforce Committee, she was the prime sponsor of a bill to allow employees to take compensatory time rather than overtime, a measure she said would allow flexibility especially necessary for working mothers. The House passed similar bills in 1996 and 1997, but in June 2003 the AFL-CIO lobbied heavily against it, and the Republican leadership cancelled a roll call after it was apparent they didn't have the votes. A year later Biggert and other committee members sought to amend the transportation bill to remove Davis-Bacon and other labor provisions inconsistent with committee policy. Less controversially, she and Harold Ford passed a bill to allow church pension plans to pool their funds in collective trusts.

Biggert has been a strong supporter of the Argonne National Laboratory. In 2002 she gathered 64 cosponsors, including others with national laboratories in their districts, for her bill to reorganize the Energy Department's Office of Science in line with the American Physical Society's recommendations to emphasize energy research. In February 2004 she sponsored a bill authorizing $180 million for university nuclear science and engineering programs, and later she inserted a 65% funding increase for the Office of Science into the energy bill. In June 2004 she sponsored a bill to fund the Energy Department with $165 million over three years to build a supercomputer with a sustained performance of 100 trillion teraflops (floating-point operations per second). It passed the House and, in different form, the Senate and became law in November 2004. Biggert has also sponsored bills to make sure homeless children get schooling, to help children with eating disorders and to finance school construction. She has paid heed to local issues, getting Lake Michigan water for Downers Grove when wells were contaminated there.

Biggert's attempts to move into the Republican leadership have been less successful. In November 2000 she ran for secretary of the Republican Conference and lost to Barbara Cubin of Wyoming, 122-73. In July 2002, when Cubin was moving up to another position, she ran for one day for the same post, but withdrew when it became clear that John Doolittle of California had the votes. In October 1999 Biggert abandoned her pledge to serve only three terms. She has been reelected easily ever since. In July 2004 Republican leaders asked if she wanted the vacant nomination for the U.S. Senate; she passed.

Committees

• Education & the Workforce (9th of 27 R): Education Reform; Workforce Protections (Vice Chmn.).
• Financial Services (18th of 37 R): Capital Markets, Insurance & Government Sponsored Enterprises; Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade & Technology (Vice Chmn.); Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit.
• Science (11th of 24 R): Energy (Chmn.); Environment, Technology & Standards.
• Standards of Official Conduct (2d of 5 R).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	35	30	0	18	100	60	100	64	70	61	--
2003	10	--	13	25	--	58	100	64	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	27%	--	71%		33%	--	65%
Social	52%	--	47%		57%	--	43%
Foreign	46%	--	52%		55%	--	44%
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 N 6. Ban Human Cloning N		7. Restrict Gun Liability Y  8. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage N 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	Judy Biggert (R)	198,823	65%	$542,733
	Gloria Schor Andersen (D)	106,525	35%	$42,129
	Other	4	0%
2004 primary	Judy Biggert (R)	46,861	100%
	Other	231	0%
2002 general	Judy Biggert (R)	139,546	70%	$464,054
	Thomas Mason (D)	59,069	30%
Prior winning percentages: 2000 (66%); 1998 (61%)

2004 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 175,705 (55%) Kerry (D) 142,397 (45%)

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 148,621 (55%) Gore (D) 113,450 (42%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Thirteenth 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 + 5
• District Size: 362 square miles
• Population in 2000: 653,647; 98.8% urban; 1.2% rural
• Median Household Income: $71,686; 2.9% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 15.8% blue collar; 74.9% white collar; 9.4% gray collar; 9.9% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 81.6% White, 4.9% Black, 6.6% Asian, 0.1% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.2% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 5.5% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 16.5% German, 13.1% Irish, 10.0% Polish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.