Rep. Ralph Regula (R) Elected 1972, 17th term
Born:	Dec. 3, 1924, Beach City
Home:	Navarre
Education:	Mt. Union Col., B.A. 1948, William McKinley Law Schl., LL.B. 1952
Religion:	Episcopalian
Marital Status:	married (Mary)
Elected  Office:	OH House of Reps., 1964-66; OH Senate, 1966-72.
Military Career:	Navy, 1944-46 (WWII).
Professional Career:	Teacher & schl. principal, 1948-52; Practicing atty., 1952-73; OH Bd. of Educ., 1960-64.
DC Office	2306 RHOB20515, 202-225-3876; Fax: 202-225-3059; Web site: www.house.gov/regula
State Offices	Canton, 330-489-4414; Medina, 330-722-3793.
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A little more than a century ago, Canton, Ohio, was at the center of American politics. Canton was already an industrial city then, though not with the huge steel factories built in Youngstown or Cleveland. Its high-skill workers were fashioning new kinds of plows and reapers, making watches and, beginning in 1899, roller bearings. Canton did not attract masses of immigrants. Its factories did not run on harsh stopwatch discipline; there were not the class warfare politics here that would be seen later in other northern Ohio industrial cities. Instead Canton was united in admiring its first citizen, William McKinley, who rose to the rank of major at 22 in the Civil War, was elected congressman and governor, and chaired the House Ways and Means Committee. As Republican nominee for president in 1896, McKinley campaigned from his front porch in Canton, meeting with delegations brought in by train from all over the country. This spectacle, with its display of technological virtuosity and personal modesty, sounds an appealing and reverberating note in American politics, as does the McKinley platform--the "full dinner pail," the gold standard, the enforcement of law and order in labor relations--which has long been viewed as antiquated but still provides useful instruction. A century later Canton is a community still based on manufacturing, but one troubled by manufacturing job losses. Its largest employer, locally owned Timken, announced in May 2004 it would lay off 1,300 of its 4,800 workers over the next two years. Hoover won concessions from its union, then in June 2004 cut about 500 jobs. Less widely reported were new jobs in smaller factories, like an Alliance casting plant reopened to make rail car parts with 420 jobs. Canton may be suffering a net loss of jobs. But this is nothing like the closure of steel plants in the Mahoning Valley in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The 16th Congressional District of Ohio includes all of Canton and Stark County, plus Wayne County to the west and most of Ashland and Medina Counties. Wayne County is the site of the College of Wooster and the headquarters of Rubbermaid and Smuckers, which has acquired new brands from other food companies (Jif peanut butter, Hungry Jack pancakes, etc.) and doubled its sales and profits in recent years. In the southern part of the county (and in Holmes and Tuscarawas Counties to the south) is the largest Amish settlement in the world, where people drive horse-drawn tractors, eschew automobiles and electricity, quit school after the eighth grade and refuse to recognize daylight savings time. Ashland is a smaller, non-metropolitan county; Johnny Appleseed once lived on what is now the campus of Ashland University, known for its Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs. Medina County, north of Wayne, is part of the Cleveland metropolitan area, as young families buy houses in new subdivisions off I-71; its most heavily suburbanized northern townships, however, are in the 13th District. Politically, this area is generally Republican, though not always by wide margins. Stark County was something like ground zero in the 2004 presidential campaign, and was the only Ohio county which George W. Bush carried in 2000 but lost in 2004, both times by narrow margins. But the other counties kept the district in the Republican column and Bush carried it 53%-42% in 2000 and 54%-46% in 2004.

The congressman from the 16th District is Ralph Regula, a Republican first elected in 1972 and the dean of the Ohio delegation. He grew up in outer Stark County, the son of a farmer and coal mine operator; he served in the Navy in World War II, worked his way through the William McKinley School of Law while teaching elementary school, and was elected to the Ohio legislature in 1964, just before turning 40. He still has a cattle farm near Canton. When incumbent Frank Bow, first elected in 1950, retired in 1972, Regula ran for the House and was easily elected.

Regula is now the senior Republican member, but not the chairman, of the Appropriations Committee. From 1995 to 2001 he chaired the Interior Subcommittee. On the Interior Subcommittee, Regula was a counterweight to the Resources Committee and its chairman, Don Young of Alaska, who added riders to Regula's appropriations strongly opposed by environmental groups and the Clinton administration. Regula resisted these, and often gave them up in end-of-session conference committees when Clinton threatened a veto. Young and Regula also got into a fight over Mount McKinley. Young introduced a bill to rename the mountain Denali, an Alaska Native name; Regula, McKinley's successor in the House, replied heatedly that that controversy had already been settled in 1980, when the McKinley name stayed on the mountain but the park was renamed Denali National Park. In his last year as Interior chairman, Regula increased the appropriation by 26%, added a ban on the Interior Department moving callers into voice mail between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. and designated the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area a national park, but not subject to national park air standards. He has continued to nurture the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, with $2.5 million in the 2004 omnibus. He also created the Ohio & Erie National Heritage Corridor in 1996 along the old Ohio & Erie Canal and funded it with $7 million since 1997. In 1996 he established visitors' fees at recreation areas run by the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. These have sparked resentment in the West, but in the November 2004 omnibus appropriation he extended them for 10 years.

In January 2001 Regula took over the Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee, whose appropriation is second in size only to Defense. There he worked harmoniously with ranking Democrat David Obey and produced a $123 billion appropriation approved in October 2001. In summer 2002, Speaker Dennis Hastert was under pressure from conservative Republican Study Committee members to bring forward the Labor-HHS bill before any other appropriations; they wanted to hold it to the president's $129.9 billion level, while the Senate had voted $136.4 billion and Regula struggled to reconcile the demands of education and health constituencies. Regula argued that an appropriation under the Bush limit couldn't win a majority on the floor, and as a result all appropriations except Defense and Military Construction were postponed until after the election. In February 2003, when the appropriations were finally passed, Regula's bill provided increases for Title I and special education $500 million under the Bush figure. In February 2004 Regula said he was looking to see where programs weren't serving their purpose, but he did not impose major cuts. His appropriations included language encouraging NIH to consider making its research more affordable.

Regula is one of two cardinals (the term for Appropriations subcommittee chairmen) from Ohio; the other is Dave Hobson, and they both look after the interests of the state. In the 2001 defense bill he got a provision requiring the Defense Department to buy American-made gloves; the Ansell Perry plant in Massillon, the only surgical glove manufacturer in the United States, had shut down, but there were potential buyers and this would guarantee business. Regula has been chairman of the Congressional Steel Caucus and has often weighed in on trade issues.

In November 2002 the Republican Conference chose to give the Steering Committee a veto over the selection of Appropriations subcommittee chairmen; this tended to make cardinals more amenable to the demands of the Republican leadership and more assiduous in raising funds for other Republicans. Appropriations Chairman Bill Young would reach the end of his six-year term limit in January 2005, and Regula, first in line in seniority, competed hard for the position. His CARE PAC gave $553,000 to 87 Republican candidates, $15,000 to the House Republican campaign committee and $91,000 to 18 state Republican parties. He said that he would consider changing earmarks for Democrats and revamping the committee staff, a target of criticism by fiscally conservative Republicans. "Funding efforts have to reflect the goals of the leadership. This is what my promise is: I would push hard within the culture of the Appropriations Committee to provide good management." But all of this proved in vain. In January 2005, 26 of the 34 votes on the Republican Steering Committee were cast for Jerry Lewis of California. Regula, like the other competitor, Hal Rogers of Kentucky, was a good sport. "That is the way of elections. You win some, you lose some and you move on." This was a blow to both Regula and the Ohio delegation and Lewis named him vice chairman of the full committee; Speaker Dennis Hastert named him to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Smithsonian Board of Regents.

In 2004 Regula ran 13% ahead of George W. Bush and was reelected 67%-33%. When asked whether he win run again in 2006, when he will be 81, he said, "You never want to predict the future, but I still enjoy what I'm doing. I still have two years as chair of the labor, health, education and welfare … We do a lot of good for a lot of people." Local politicians say that he hopes his son, Stark County Commissioner Richard Regula will succeed him.

Committees

• Appropriations (Vice Chmn. of 37 R): Labor, Health and Human Services, Education & Related Agencies (Chmn.); Transportation, Treasury, HUD, the Judiciary & District of Columbia.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	0	0	13	9	90	48	100	88	68	84	--
2003	5	--	0	0	--	59	97	92	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	21%	--	75%		17%	--	80%
Social	30%	--	65%		31%	--	67%
Foreign	23%	--	71%		25%	--	68%
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 general	Ralph Regula (R)	202,544	67%	$606,430
	Jeff Seemann (D)	101,817	33%	$59,667
2004 primary	Ralph Regula (R)	unopposed
2002 general	Ralph Regula (R)	129,734	69%	$252,109
	Jim Rice (D)	58,644	31%
Prior winning percentages: 2000 (69%); 1998 (64%); 1996 (69%); 1994 (75%); 1992 (64%); 1990 (59%); 1988 (79%); 1986 (76%); 1984 (72%); 1982 (66%); 1980 (79%); 1978 (78%); 1976 (67%); 1974 (66%); 1972 (57%)

2004 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 171,561 (54%) Kerry (D) 146,066 (46%)

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 141,311 (53%) Gore (D) 112,270 (42%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Sixteenth 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 + 4
• District Size: 1,741 square miles
• Population in 2000: 630,730; 73.6% urban; 26.4% rural
• Median Household Income: $41,801; 8.3% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 30.5% blue collar; 54.7% white collar; 14.8% gray collar; 13.6% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 92.4% White, 4.8% Black, 0.6% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.1% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 0.9% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 21.9% German, 9.5% Irish, 7.3% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.