Rep. Jim Langevin (D) Elected 2000, 3d term
Born:	Apr. 22, 1964, Warwick
Home:	Warwick
Education:	RI Col., B.A. 1990, Harvard U., M.P.A. 1994
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	single
Elected  Office:	RI House of Reps., 1988-94; RI Sec. of State, 1994-2000.
DC Office	109 CHOB20515, 202-225-2735; Fax: 202-225-5976; Web site: www.house.gov/langevin
State Offices	Warwick, 401-732-9400.
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The 2d Congressional District is the western half of Rhode Island. While the 1st includes many mill towns, the 2d has most of its population in towns like working-class Cranston and more upscale Warwick which, despite their British names, are inhabited mostly by people with Irish, Italian, French and Portuguese surnames. The 2d also includes the fastest-growing part of the state: South County, which is not an official place but the common name for Rhode Island south of East Greenwich, including the affluent suburbs and beachfront communities to the south along Narragansett Bay, the Kingston home of the University of Rhode Island, and the area around Westerly, where many residents work at the Electric Boat shipyards in Groton, Connecticut. It includes Rhode Island's rolling farm land, though there is not that much acreage, and the communities along the Bay and the Ocean, where many people still make their living building boats and catching fish. Although this remains a heavily Democratic district, George W. Bush cut the Democratic margin from 60%-33% in 2000 to 57%-41% in 2004.

The congressman from the 2d District is Jim Langevin, a Democrat first elected in 2000. Langevin grew up in Warwick, and as a boy hoped to become an FBI agent. But in 1980, at age 16, when he was a police cadet in the Boy Scout Explorer program, he was shot by a police officer when a gun accidentally discharged. The bullet went through his upper back and throat and damaged the upper part of his spinal column; ever since, he has been a quadriplegic, getting around in a wheelchair, the first to serve in Congress. He received $2.2 million in a settlement with the city of Warwick and currently hires a home health care aide; it takes him two and a half hours to get dressed each morning. This tragic accident focused attention on him, at first unwanted, but he says it made him determined to make something of his life. He worked as an intern in the State House and for Senator Claiborne Pell. In 1988, while he was a student at Rhode Island College, he was elected to the state House of Representatives, where he styled himself as a reformer; his 1st District colleague Patrick Kennedy was also elected that year to the state House as a college student. While in the state House Langevin graduated from college and received a master's degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard. In 1994 Langevin was elected Rhode Island's secretary of state.

When Congressman Bob Weygand ran for the Senate in 2000, Langevin decided to run for his House seat. It was a four-way race in the Democratic primary, and Langevin's most strenuous opposition came from Kate Coyne-McCoy, executive director of the Rhode Island Association of Social Workers. Langevin had support from many Democratic Party leaders and some unions, and won the party endorsement at the April convention, from which Coyne-McCoy angrily withdrew. But she waged an aggressive campaign, financed by unions, health care workers and EMILY's List. "There's no such thing as being too liberal," Coyne-McCoy said. Langevin called her positions "unrealistic and extreme." He favored less stringent forms of gun control and said, "No one has to tell me how dangerous weapons can be." Coyne-McCoy attacked Langevin for opposing abortion rights. He said, "because of what happened to me, I became aware of how precious life is … I'm pro-life." He spoke often of the accident that paralyzed him: "Certainly, being disabled is part of who I am, but it doesn't define me." In the primary, he led Coyne-McCoy 47%-29%. In the general, his chief opposition came from Rodney Driver, nominee of the Conscience for Congress Party, a retired mathematics professor who spent $300,000 of his retirement savings. Langevin won 62%-21%.

In the House, Langevin has been liberal on economic issues and more centrist on cultural and foreign issues: an apt representative of his district's ethnic communities. The House chamber was made wheelchair-accessible for Langevin, with two of the fixed seats in the front of the chamber removed to give him space to maneuver and talk to colleagues. Because he has only limited use of his hands, Langevin was unable to cast a secret ballot until Rhode Island purchased special voting machines. Despite the opposition of anti-abortion groups, he urged George W. Bush to support embryonic stem-cell research, arguing that it might alleviate suffering from certain diseases and injuries, and assist infertile couples to have children; he voted against the bill to permit therapeutic cloning. He sponsored several gun control bills. On the Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, he focused on internal threats and getting more resources to first responders. Langevin called universal health care coverage his overriding priority, and sponsored a bill to mandate the federal government to provide all Americans the health care choices available to federal employees to be financed by an increase in the payroll tax. In March 2005 he was one of two House Democrats from New England who supported federal judicial review in the Terri Schiavo case. He has won reelection easily.

In early 2005, a statewide poll showed Langevin ahead of Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee. In December 2004 1st District Democrat Patrick Kennedy said he would not run against Chafee and urged Langevin to do so. Other Rhode Island and national Democrats weighed in, as did DSCC Chairman Charles Schumer. But abortion rights groups objected to an anti-abortion candidate in Rhode Island. In March 2005 Langevin surprised many Democrats when he said he would not run for the Senate; he said he had important work to do in the House and did not rule out a later run for statewide office. As for Secretary of State Matt Brown, who announced in February that he was running for the seat, Langevin said he "does not have the experience to be a United States senator" and "I would certainly encourage Matt to get out of the race." In April 2005, Brown University political scientist Jennifer Lawless, a Rhode Island resident for two years, said she would run against Langevin the 2006 Democratic primary because of his anti-abortion position and his unwillingness to take a political risk by challenging Chafee.

Committees

• Armed Services (17th of 28 D): Projection Forces; Terrorism, Unconventional Threats & Capabilities.
• Homeland Security (14th of 15 D): Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection & Cybersecurity; Intelligence, Information Sharing & Terrorism Risk Assessment; Prevention of Nuclear & Biological Attack (RMM).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	85	53	100	100	44	15	45	25	6	46	--
2003	85	--	100	100	--	22	27	20	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	81%	--	18%		74%	--	26%
Social	61%	--	38%		59%	--	40%
Foreign	81%	--	17%		65%	--	34%
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 N  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	Jim Langevin (D)	154,392	75%	$727,295
	Chuck Barton (R)	43,139	21%	$49,633
	Other	9,634	5%
2004 primary	Jim Langevin (D)	unopposed
2002 general	Jim Langevin (D)	129,312	76%	$774,848
	John Matson (R)	37,740	22%	$5,964
	Other	2,323	1%
Prior winning percentages: 2000 (62%)

2004 Presidential Vote Kerry (D) 128,515 (57%) Bush (R) 91,566 (41%)

2000 Presidential Vote Gore (D) 124,314 (60%) Bush (R) 69,076 (33%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Second 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 +13
• District Size: 980 square miles
• Population in 2000: 524,162; 86.3% urban; 13.7% rural
• Median Household Income: $44,129; 11.9% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 22.6% blue collar; 60.8% white collar; 16.6% gray collar; 13.1% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 81.2% White, 3.9% Black, 2.6% Asian, 0.5% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.6% Two+ races, 0.3% Other, 9.8% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 16.7% Italian, 14.4% Irish, 9.8% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.