Rep. John Boehner (R) Elected 1990, 8th term
Born:	Nov. 17, 1949, Cincinnati
Home:	West Chester
Education:	Xavier U., B.S. 1977
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Debbie)
Elected  Office:	Union Township Bd. of Trustees, 1981-85, Pres., 1984; OH House of Reps., 1984-90.
Military Career:	Navy, 1969.
Professional Career:	Pres., Nucite Sales Inc., 1976-90.
DC Office	1011 LHOB20515, 202-225-6205; Fax: 202-225-0704; Web site: www.johnboehner.house.gov
State Offices	Troy, 937-339-1524; West Chester, 513-779-5400.
Additional Info
Committees · Ratings · Key Votes · Election Results District Demographics
More On Ohio
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 below:
[an error occurred while processing this directive]

The far west end of Ohio--where U.S. 40, the old National Road, heads straight as an arrow in its last miles across Ohio to Indiana, and the rail lines crisscross the land from Cincinnati to Dayton--has since the early 20th century housed some of the nation's prime industrial country. Here the Great and Little Miami rivers drain south into the Ohio; U.S. 40 jogs southward twice to go over the Miami and Stillwater River dams, built after the great flood of 1913 that killed 361 people in Dayton and caused $1 billion in damage. Around Dayton and Cincinnati, in large factory towns like Middletown and Hamilton and smaller factory towns like Troy and Piqua, Ohioans, after the recession of the early 1980s, adapted to new conditions and began to produce exports to Europe, Latin America and Asia as well as for the American market. At the same time people leaving the central cities of Dayton and Cincinnati moved into new subdivisions amid new shopping malls and office parks in Butler County, between those two cities. Hamilton, the Butler County seat founded in 1791 and named after the Treasury Secretary then, lost jobs when International Paper shut down a plant, but many more were created all around it. Hamilton has tried to rally; in the 1950s it refused to let I-75 through town, but recently it got the state to build Route 129 to link it with I-75 and the growth it has brought.

The 8th Congressional District of Ohio covers much of this territory. It includes all of Butler County (except four lightly populated townships), two counties to the north on the Indiana line and part of a third. It also includes Miami County north of Dayton and, added in redistricting in 2002, the northeastern corner of Montgomery County, including part of Dayton, all of Huber Heights and part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Politically, this is very Republican territory; the district voted 61% for George W. Bush in 2000 and 64% in 2004. In September 2004 Bush appeared at a rally here that attracted 50,000 people; some called it the largest political rally in Ohio history.

The congressman from the 8th District is John Boehner (pronounced BAY-ner), a Republican first elected in 1990 and now chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. Boehner grew up in Cincinnati, one of 12 children, and graduated from Xavier University, the only college graduate in his family. He moved to Butler County and started a plastics packaging company, served on the Union Township Board of Trustees, and in 1984, at 34, was elected to the Ohio House. He won the congressional seat in the 1990 primary, by beating not one but two of his predecessors--incumbent Buz Lukens, who inexplicably ran after he was convicted of having sex with a 16-year-old girl, and Tom Kindness, who gave up the seat to run against Senator John Glenn in 1986 and then, as Boehner put it, deserted the district to become a Washington lobbyist. Boehner won 49%, to 32% for Kindness and 17% for Lukens. Boehner has since been reelected without difficulty.

In the House, Boehner joined the Gang of Seven, young freshman Republicans who insisted on revealing the names of all 355 members who had overdrafts at the House bank, and then went on to assail Democratic leaders and Republican go-alongers on the pay raise and the House Post Office scandal. Boehner's Gang of Seven infuriated House veterans, but they struck a chord around the nation. In the process Boehner became a top lieutenant of Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, raising money for Republican candidates and managing Gingrich's campaign for Republican leader. He was a major player in drafting and championing the 10-point Contract With America. After the 1994 election, he ran for chairman of the Republican Conference and, with Gingrich's backing, beat California's Duncan Hunter 122-102.

That made Boehner number four in the Republican leadership, and he worked hard to prepare the party message and to enforce discipline on issues from repealing the assault weapons ban to fielding ethics charges against Gingrich. Boehner also pushed for the Freedom to Farm bill in 1996, which purported to phase out most subsidies. But starting in 1998 Congress started voting disaster relief for farmers; Boehner led the fight against the House's 2002 farm bill, which restored subsidies.

The Gingrich years were a turbulent time for Boehner. The ethics investigation on Gingrich placed Boehner in the middle of a legal altercation after a Florida couple taped Boehner's cell phone conversation with Republican leaders while he was driving through the state. The couple, Democratic activists, presented the tape to their congresswoman, Karen Thurman, who suggested they turn it over to Jim McDermott of Washington, senior Democrat on the House ethics committee, who then made the contents available to The New York Times. In 1998 Boehner sued McDermott in federal court for invasion of privacy; the trial judge ruled that the suit would infringe First Amendment rights, but the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision. McDermott appealed to the Supreme Court, which decided another case instead and sent this one back to the D.C. Circuit, which sent it to District Court. McDermott attempted to settle the case, but the two could not agree on terms. In October 2004 the judge ruled that McDermott must pay Boehner $60,000 plus attorney's fees; the next month the 7th District's Dave Hobson filed an ethics committee complaint against McDermott.

After Republicans lost five seats in the 1998 election, Boehner was challenged for the conference chairmanship by J.C. Watts. Some Republicans believed that Boehner had been part of the July 1997 coup against Newt Gingrich, and Boehner's fate was probably sealed when Dick Armey held the majority leadership even though he had misled members about his role in the coup. Someone had to go, and it was Boehner, who lost 121-93. After such a loss many members withdraw from legislative work. But Boehner plunged into action as chairman of the Employer-Employee Relations Subcommittee. By June 1999 the subcommittee passed eight bills restructuring managed care and health insurance; Speaker Dennis Hastert, pleased by Boehner's initiative and dismayed that other committees had not acted, adopted these as the Republican health care agenda.

After the 2000 election Boehner sought the chairmanship of the Education and the Workforce Committee. Incumbent William Goodling was retiring; also seeking the job were second ranking Republican Tom Petri and the less senior Pete Hoekstra. Boehner got Armey's support and Hastert told him, "If I were you, I'd go ahead." He helped Ralph Regula oust Bud Shuster from his post on the Steering Committee, which in turn chose him. Boehner, like many others, had long considered the committee a "partisan pit." Since 1960 Democrats had assigned only union loyalists to the committee and most Republican members took stands on employment issues opposed by industrial unions and stands on education opposed by teachers' unions. The basic education bill was up for reauthorization in 1999, but the committee was unable to produce a bill. Boehner knew that that would be the committee's first order of business and that George W. Bush's education proposals were one of his top priorities. So he tried to encourage a sense of bipartisanship. When Bush aides failed to invite the committee's ranking Democrat, George Miller, to a December 21 meeting in Austin on education, Boehner got him on the guest list and Senator Judd Gregg switched place cards at the lunch tables so that Miller sat next to Bush. In the past committee Democrats had concentrated on pumping more money into schools and opposing anything the unions disliked. But Miller had been teaching school dropouts and believed that current programs weren't teaching disadvantaged children what they should, and he became convinced that Bush and Boehner shared his concern.

So Boehner and Miller worked together on the House bill. Boehner knew he could not pass it with Republicans alone, because some were opposed to nationally required tests, a central feature of Bush's program. Committee Republicans wanted to push their Straight A's concept, replacing categorical programs with block grants. Miller said this would be anathema to committee Democrats, and Boehner agreed to drop it. Instead he backed a provision by Democrat Tim Roemer to give school districts more flexibility. Jim DeMint offered Straight A's as an amendment, but Bush talked him out of it; he had gotten Edward Kennedy to agree to greater flexibility in funding in the Senate version and didn't want to drive away Democrats in the House. The bill did include Bush's principles of annual testing and accountability. It passed committee with six Republicans and one Democrat opposed and passed on the floor 384-45 in May 2001. The Democratic takeover of the Senate in June actually helped the bill's chances. Jim Jeffords as committee chairman was fixated on getting huge funding increases for special education and had to be worked around, while Kennedy, the new chairman, was committed to compromise and accepted amendments that gave school districts flexibility and provided, in place of vouchers, private tutoring for disadvantaged students in failing schools.

Negotiations continued during summer and fall between Boehner, Miller, Kennedy and ranking Senate Republican Judd Gregg. Annual testing for grades 3-8 stayed in, but tests other than the NAEP were allowed. Some flexibility stayed in: except for Title I funds, districts could reallocate 50% of funding to suit their needs, and seven states and 150 school districts would get demonstration projects with more flexibility. The number of education programs was reduced from 55 to 45, as opposed to 70 in the Senate bill. The final agreements came in November, and in December the House passed the bill 381-41, with most of the nays from Republicans, and the Senate 87-10. Bush came to Hamilton High School to sign the bill in January 2002. After working on the bill, Boehner seemed to be increasingly concerned about children in central city schools. In May 2004 he shocked an audience of Dayton city leaders when he said, "I don't see the commitment in the Dayton area to fixing the Dayton public schools. Giving those kids on the West Side a chance is the right thing to do."

In 2003 and 2004 Boehner worked on reauthorization of IDEA, the special education act. This again was a bipartisan undertaking. Teacher's unions were seeking a relaxation of IDEA's requirement that administrators take special ed students' disabilities into account when disciplining them and that Individualized Education Programs be submitted annually for each special ed student. The House version, passed 251-171 in April 2003, relaxed the discipline requirement; the Senate version, passed 95-3 in May 2004, didn't. The differences were ironed out in conference committee after the November 2004 election. The final bill retained the requirement that disabilities be taken into account on discipline, provided stronger certification requirements and provided for withholding of state funds if local districts fail to comply with the act. Waivers were authorized for 15 states on paperwork requirements and on allowing Individualized Education Programs to be required every three years rather than every year. To complaints that Congress has funded only 19% of special ed costs, rather than the 40% authorized by the first IDEA in 1975, Boehner agreed to discretionary targets to increase the percentage up through 2011.

Another issue covered by the committee is pensions. In October 2003 Boehner steered to passage by 397-2 a bill requiring employers to use a blend of corporate bond rates when calculating payments funding their pension plans. As bankrupt airlines handed over their pension obligations to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, Boehner in January 2005 said, "We have a huge pension underfunding problem," and called for bipartisan action. But when the AFL-CIO encouraged unions to keep pension funds away from financial service firms that backed the Bush Social Security changes, Boehner charged the unions would be making illegal investment decisions based on politics. On student loans, Boehner has backed the status quo in which government direct loans compete with private lenders. In October 2004 he got the House to pass unanimously a bill to end the guaranteed return of 9.5% to private lenders, though not retroactively as some Democrats wanted; it also provided for $17,500 in loan forgiveness for math, science and special ed teachers. In early 2005 Boehner set out to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, on a budget-neutral basis. But he and Miller showed little interest in George W. Bush's proposal to extend the No Child Left Behind approach to high schools.

The addition of part of Montgomery County to the district required some political adjustment; Boehner carried the area with only 56% of the vote in 2002 while winning districtwide with 71%. In 2004 he was reelected 69%-31%, with 54% in Montgomery County. He lost some campaign money along the way: his campaign treasurer pleaded guilty in October 2003 to embezzling $618,000 because of a gambling habit. When Tom DeLay was under attack for supposed ethics violations in early 2005 and some supposed that he might step down as majority leader, there was talk that Boehner might fill that position. But for the moment he remained a busy committee chairman.

Committees

• Agriculture (Vice Chmn. of 25 R): General Farm Commodities & Risk Management; Livestock & Horticulture.
• Education & the Workforce (Chmn. of 27 R): 21st Century Competitiveness; Employer-Employee Relations.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	0	0	0	0	100	70	100	100	83	91	--
2003	5	--	0	5	--	63	100	88	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	0%	--	91%		8%	--	92%
Social	17%	--	79%		33%	--	66%
Foreign	11%	--	80%		0%	--	96%
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 * 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 general	John Boehner (R)	201,675	69%	$1,407,907
	Jeff Hardenbrook (D)	90,574	31%	$41,184
2004 primary	John Boehner (R)	unopposed
2002 general	John Boehner (R)	119,947	71%	$1,226,866
	Jeff Hardenbrook (D)	49,444	29%	$18,186
Prior winning percentages: 2000 (71%); 1998 (71%); 1996 (70%); 1994 (100%); 1992 (74%); 1990 (61%)

2004 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 199,265 (64%) Kerry (D) 109,374 (35%)

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 155,132 (61%) Gore (D) 91,744 (36%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Eighth 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 +12
• District Size: 2,031 square miles
• Population in 2000: 630,730; 78.1% urban; 21.9% rural
• Median Household Income: $43,753; 8.8% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 29.9% blue collar; 56.0% white collar; 14.0% gray collar; 13.8% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 91.8% White, 4.4% Black, 1.2% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.1% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 1.3% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 22.0% German, 9.8% USA, 8.9% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.