Rep. Richard Baker (R) Elected 1986, 10th term
Born:	May 22, 1948, New Orleans
Home:	Baton Rouge
Education:	LA St. U., B.A. 1971
Religion:	United Methodist
Marital Status:	married (Kay)
Elected  Office:	LA House of Reps., 1972-86.
Professional Career:	Real estate developer, 1972-86.
DC Office	341 CHOB20515, 202-225-3901; Fax: 202-225-7313; Web site: www.baker.house.gov
State Offices	Baton Rouge, 225-929-7711.
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Baton Rouge is the central node of Louisiana, on the boundary between the French-speaking, Catholic Cajun country and the heavily Baptist Deep South, its skyscraper Capitol and Exxon refinery sitting just beyond the levees that line the Mississippi River. Baton Rouge still bears the impress of the man who dominated Louisiana politics for much of the 20th century, Huey P. Long. Here Long became governor at 36 in the old (and still-standing) Gothic Capitol, when Baton Rouge had only 30,000 people, and was assassinated in 1935 in the hallway of the 34-story Art Deco Capitol he built, next door to the Governor's Mansion, which he also built. To the south are the buildings of Louisiana State University, much of which he built, in an amazingly short time. Today Baton Rouge is the center of a metro area of 728,000, almost all on the east bank of the Mississippi, and reaching far inland to Livingston Parish. This is one of the faster-growing parts of Louisiana: from 1990 to 2004, the population of East Baton Rouge Parish rose 9% and the populations of Livingston and Ascension Parishes increased 50%, the most of any parishes in the state. Baton Rouge tries to maintain all of Louisiana's traditions; according to James Carville, who comes from nearby Carville in Iberville Parish (where three generations of his family served as postmaster), it has ''the best restaurants per capita of any city in the United States.''

The 6th Congressional District of Louisiana includes just about all of metropolitan Baton Rouge, plus three small mostly rural parishes to the north. The city of Baton Rouge itself in 2000 had a 50% black majority; suburban East Baton Rouge Parish was 40% black and Livingston Parish 4% black. Overall the district is 33% black. Historically, all of this territory was Democratic. In the 1980s the Baton Rouge area moved toward the Republicans and in the 1990s it was fairly closely balanced. In 2004 East Baton Rouge Parish voted 54% for George W. Bush and Livingston Parish 77% for Bush; overall the 6th District voted 59% for Bush.

The congressman from the 6th District is Richard Baker, a Republican first elected in 1986. Baker has spent most of his adult life in public office. He came to Baton Rouge to attend LSU, then in 1972, at 23, was elected as a Democrat to the Louisiana House from a blue-collar district in Baton Rouge. He became a Republican in 1985, and in 1986, when Baton Rouge Republican Congressman Henson Moore ran for the Senate, Baker ran for the House and beat a Democratic state senator 51%-46%. In 1992 he was redistricted in the same district with Republican Congressman Clyde Holloway. The new district lines put Baker at a disadvantage, and he trailed 37%-33% in the September primary. But he won the November runoff 51%-49%.

Baker has had a conservative voting record and is chairman of the Capital Markets and Insurance Subcommittee of the Financial Services Committee. He worked on financial services deregulation, one of the most heavily lobbied issues in the 1990s; the issue was how, under what terms and conditions, to dismantle the wall separating banks and other institutions created by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Baker generally favored deregulation, and served on the conference committee that finally reached agreement in November 1999.

Baker's greatest legislative enterprise has been to change the operation of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which purchase and securitize home mortgages. These are for-profit enterprises, yet the fact that they each have $2.25 billion lines of credit with the U.S. Treasury creates an impression in the marketplace that the government will bail them out if they become insolvent. Baker admitted that they were well-managed and not at risk, and argued that that was the best time for reform. In February 2000 Baker introduced legislation to create a new regulatory agency for the GSEs and terminate their line of credit, increase disclosure requirements, toughen capital mandates and give regulators more say in approving new activities. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac vigorously opposed the bill and predicted it would never pass. In October they reached agreement. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac agreed to increase their equity capital and subordinated debt to 4% of assets and to disclose more information to investors. By February 2001 Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines was praising Baker, but they still disagreed: Baker still wanted an independent regulator, while Raines was opposed. In summer 2001 Baker introduced a bipartisan bill to require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to register their stock with the SEC; they agreed to do so voluntarily, but did not issue SEC prospectuses for the securitized instruments they sell to investors--who are, they say, sophisticated enough to evaluate them. The GSEs seemed to have fended off a new regulator. But new developments weakened their position. In September 2004 OFHEO issued a report charging that Fannie Mae had manipulated earnings. After the OFHEO report was issued, Baker said, "The outrageous conduct outlined in OFHEO's report suggests that for too long Fannie Mae has acted as if it were somehow above the law while arrogantly flouting all accountability to the Congress, and that must come to an end." Fannie Mae increased its capital level and in December 2004 its CEO was forced to resign. In January 2005 Baker demanded that Fannie Mae executives return the huge bonuses they made which turned out to result from flawed accounting. "The arrogance of this is incredible to me. They got their enormous bonuses based on manipulated financial [statements]. It seems more egregious than even I thought." In April 2005, Baker introduced legislation calling for a new regulator, renaming OFHEO and moving it within the Treasury Department rather than HUD.

In 2000 Banking Chairman Jim Leach reached the end of House Republicans' six-year term limits, and Baker sought the chairmanship over the more senior Marge Roukema. But in the days after the November 2000 election, Baker presented a fallback position to the Republican leadership. An even bigger chairmanship struggle was going on in the Commerce Committee, between Louisiana's Billy Tauzin and Mike Oxley. Baker would support Oxley for the Banking Committee chairmanship, with Commerce's jurisdiction over securities and insurance transferred to Banking. Baker would keep his Financial Services subcommittee chair plus the securities jurisdiction; Roukema would get another subcommittee. And so it happened: Baker was in a position to continue his work on the GSEs, Oxley got a chairmanship and Roukema decided to retire in 2002. On two major bills in the next two years Baker and Oxley worked together. One was terrorism insurance, proposed after the September 11 attacks; after much negotiation, agreement was reached in November 2002.

The other big issue was auditor independence. Oxley and Baker avoided flamboyant hearings; they cancelled a hearing after former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay said he would take the Fifth Amendment. In February 2002 they rolled out a bill which would create an accounting oversight board inside the SEC, require far more disclosure and would bar external auditing firms from doing certain financial systems consulting and internal auditing. Ranking Democrat John LaFalce criticized the bill for not completely separating accounting and consulting and for not placing the oversight board outside the SEC; he also called for CEOs to sign certified financial reports subject to criminal penalties. The committee approved the Oxley-Baker approach in April 2002 and the bill passed the House later that month. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Banking Committee Chairman Paul Sarbanes was preparing a bill with bipartisan support which went farther than Oxley and Baker but not as far as LaFalce. That bill was languishing when disclosure of the WorldCom accounting scandal in June propelled it forward. It passed the Senate by a wide margin and in conference, at the prodding of the Bush White House, Oxley and Baker yielded on most points of disagreement; the bill was passed and signed before the August recess. In the process, Baker proposed a Federal Account for Investor Restitution (FAIR) Fund, with money raised from monetary penalties levied against corporations and funds disgorged from executives guilty of fraud or malfeasance to be paid over to defrauded investors; this was included in what became the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In July 2003 the committee approved a bill regulating corporate fraud, with limits on state enforcement actions, but in February 2004 it passed another without such limits and called for better communication between federal and state regulators.

In 2003 Baker supported legislation to require that mutual fund board chairmen be independent of managers, and in November the House passed a bill by 418-2 cracking down on certain mutual fund practices. In 2004 Baker opposed the trade-through rule imposed by SEC Chairman William Donaldson. "In the 21st century investors should be able to choose speed, anonymity and certainty over what is seen as an advertised but not a guaranteed best price. I do not believe that choice should be taken away from investors." He has taken an "incrementalist approach" to legislation imposing uniformity on regulation of insurance, which historically has been left to the states. In 2004 he got the House to pass a law delaying the FASB rule requiring expensing of stock options, but Senate Banking Chairman Richard Shelby opposed it and it did not become law. In 2007 Oxley will have reached House Republicans' six-year term limit; Baker is next in line in seniority to be chairman of the full committee.

With one major exception, Baker has not had difficulty winning reelection since 1992. That exception was in 1998, when he was challenged then by Democrat Marjorie McKeithen, the granddaughter of former Governor (1964-72) John McKeithen and daughter of Secretary of State Fox McKeithen, and won by only 50.7%-49.3%. Since then Baker has been reelected by wide margins.

Committees

• Financial Services (3d of 37 R): Capital Markets, Insurance & Government Sponsored Enterprises (Chmn.); Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit; Housing & Community Opportunity.
• Transportation & Infrastructure (13th of 41 R): Aviation; Highways, Transit & Pipelines; Water Resources & Environment.
• Veterans' Affairs (7th of 16 R): Economic Opportunity; Health.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	5	0	0	0	90	58	100	88	81	92	--
2003	5	--	0	10	--	65	100	92	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	17%	--	81%		28%	--	72%
Social	17%	--	79%		20%	--	80%
Foreign	0%	--	89%		17%	--	78%
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 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 primary	Richard Baker (R)	189,106	72%	$1,090,347
	Rufus Craig (D)	50,732	19%	$17,346
	Edward Galmon (D)	22,031	8%
2002 primary	Richard Baker (R)	146,932	84%	$790,953
	Rick Moscatello (I)	27,898	16%
2000 primary	Richard Baker (R)	165,637	68%	$916,205
	Kathy J. Rogillio (D)	72,192	30%
	Other	5,649	2%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (51%); 1996 (69%); 1994 (81%); 1992 (51%); 1990 (100%); 1988 (100%); 1986 (100%)

2004 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 172,080 (59%) Kerry (D) 117,255 (40%)

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 142,239 (55%) Gore (D) 111,602 (43%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Sixth 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 + 7
• District Size: 3,210 square miles
• Population in 2000: 638,324; 75.5% urban; 24.5% rural
• Median Household Income: $37,931; 16.6% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 23.6% blue collar; 61.5% white collar; 15.0% gray collar; 11.2% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 62.7% White, 33.2% Black, 1.4% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 0.7% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 1.6% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 10.3% French, 7.4% USA, 6.3% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.