Rep. Mike Conaway (R) Elected 2004, 1st term
Born:	June 11, 1948, Borger
Home:	Midland
Education:	E. TX St. U., B.B.A. 1970
Religion:	Baptist
Marital Status:	married (Suzanne)
Elected  Office:	Midland Schl. Bd., 1985-88.
Military Career:	Army, 1970-72.
Professional Career:	Tax mgr., Price Waterhouse & Co., 1972-80; CFO, Keith G. Graham, 1980-81; CFO, Lantern Petroleum Comp., 1981; CFO, Arbusto Energy Inc./Bush Exploration Comp., 1982-84; CFO, Spectrum 7 Energy Corp., 1984-86; CFO, United Bank, 1987-90; Sr. VP, TX Comm. Bank, 1990-92; Board member, TX Bd. of Pub. Accountancy, 1995-2002, Chmn., 1997-2002; Owner, K. Michael Conaway, CPA, 1993-2004.
DC Office	511 CHOB20515, 202-225-3605; Fax: 202-225-1783; Web site: www.conaway.house.gov
State Offices	Brownwood, 866-882-3811; Llano, 325-247-2826; Midland, 432-687-2390; Odessa, 866-882-3811; San Angelo, 325-659-4010.
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More than 400 years ago, in the 1540s, the conquistador Francisco Coronado and his men rode their horses over the plains of the land they called the Llano Estacado, land that is now the plains of west Texas. What they saw was a vast empty land, gradually and imperceptibly rising in elevation to the west, with only scrub vegetation and small bands of Comanche Indians. What they did not see, lying far beneath the surface, was oil, discovered in the 1940s in large amounts in the Permian Basin. When oil was found, two tiny county seats 25 miles apart suddenly became small cities--Odessa, home of the roughneck oil well workers, and Midland, the more upscale town where oil entrepreneurs lived and started their own Petroleum Club. The Permian Basin boomed in the years just after World War II: in 1940, Ector and Midland Counties had a population of 26,000, in 1950 it was 67,000 and in 1960, 159,000. Since then growth has slowed, as new discoveries have grown fewer and oil prices, after shooting upward in the 1970s, fell; in 2000, Ector and Midland Counties had 237,000 people. It was to the Permian Basin in 1948 that George and Barbara Bush moved, in search of oil wealth and to raise a growing family. They moved around a lot, to three rented houses in Odessa (two since torn down and the third pretty grim) and then, after a year in Bakersfield, California, to three larger but by no means grand houses in Midland (typical 1950s ranches, one now a museum). Those houses, the Bushes' previous houses in New Haven and Houston and the Adams farmhouse in Braintree, Massachusetts, are the only houses in the United States where one president of the United States has raised another.

Midland in the 1950s was an affluent town by west Texas standards, but hardly a luxurious town to today's tastes; air conditioning had not yet become standard in homes or schools, and there were no mansions at the edge of town, just barren desert and oil derricks. There was a lively civic culture, with lots of volunteer organizations and new churches; today Midland has its own cultural institutions such as the Museum of the Southwest and the Petroleum Museum (the largest such museum in the world). And this small city in the 1950s was producing more than its share of the leaders of America today. Passing through the Midland public schools were George W. Bush, Laura Bush, former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and General Tommy Franks. Odessa, too, has gained its place in the modern culture. The popular movie Friday Night Lights, based on a non-fiction best seller, depicted the passion of its high school football though perhaps not to local liking.

The 11th Congressional District of Texas covers much of West Texas; Ector and Midland are its two biggest counties. The district sweeps 400 miles across much of the state, from the hills of fast-growing Burnet County just north of Austin and the Texas German country of Gillespie County, on the eastern edge of which you can find the LBJ Ranch, west across wide open space past San Angelo, Midland and Odessa to the New Mexico line at Loving County, which with 52 people in 2004 is the smallest county in Texas and, for that matter, the United States. There are 36 counties here; geographically the district is larger than 12 states; 54% of the population is in Midland, Ector and Tom Green (San Angelo) Counties; none of the other counties has more than 39,000 people. Politically, west Texas in the 1940s was, like every place in Texas except a few Texas German counties, almost totally Democratic. That began to change in the 1950s as Midland moved toward Republicans; newcomers like the Bushes were an important part of this trend. In 1962 a Republican was also elected to the U.S. House in a district then made up of the Permian Basin and El Paso, but that was mostly because the incumbent was ensnared in the Billie Sol Estes scandal, and he was defeated in 1964. That same year Midland elected a Republican to the state House, where he was outnumbered by Democrats by 149-1. He was replaced in 1968 by another Republican, Tom Craddick, who has remained in the legislature ever since and in January 2003 was elected Speaker; by this time Republicans outnumbered Democrats 88-62. The current 11th District was created in the October 2003 redistricting, and it was the first Texas district in which Midland and Odessa were dominant: Craddick insisted on that. It is also overwhelmingly Republican. When George W. Bush ran for the House in 1978, from a district that included Midland and Lubbock, he lost to Democrat Kent Hance: rural West Texas was still voting Democratic. That is no longer the case today. In 2004 the 11th District cast 78.3% of its votes for Bush: his highest percentage in the nation.

The congressman from the 11th District is Mike Conaway, a Republican elected in 2004. Conaway grew up in Odessa and graduated from East Texas State University, before it became known as Texas A&M-Commerce. He worked as a certified public accountant for, among others, George W. Bush and was Bush's business partner in Arbusto/Bush Exploration during the 1980s; Governor Bush named him to the state Board of Public Accountancy, and he later chaired the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy. In May 2003, he finished second in the all-party special primary election in the old 19th District, which included nearly half of the new 11th. In June, he lost by less than 600 votes in a hard-fought runoff with Randy Neugebauer of Lubbock. After the new redistricting plan was passed in October, he was the obvious frontrunner for this seat. Democrat Charles Stenholm, who represented much of this area in the old 17th District, decided to run against Neugebauer in the new 19th District. Conaway's Republican primary opponent Bill Lester was a political science professor who campaigned against Bush's proposed guest worker program. The plan called for allowing documented foreigners to work in the United States for a period of three years, so long as those jobs would have gone unfilled by Americans. Lester called for militarization of the border, with helicopter patrols. Conaway, a supporter of the Bush proposal, said that increased documentation would strengthen national security by separating "those who are seeking economic opportunity" from "those who would do us harm." Conaway won 75%- 25%. He carried 33 of the 36 counties, losing only in the eastern part of the district. In the general election he won 77%-22% over Wayne Raasch and carried every county.

Conaway scored well on committee assignments, with seats on Agriculture, Armed Services and Budget. He hasn't been shy about his personal connections. "I believe I will be more effective if the president knows my first name than if he didn't," he told his hometown newspaper.

Committees

• Agriculture (23d of 25 R): General Farm Commodities & Risk Management; Livestock & Horticulture.
• Armed Services (33d of 34 R): Military Personnel; Tactical Air & Land Forces.
• Budget (21st of 22 R).

Key Votes Of The 108th Congress (More Info)
1. Drilling in ANWR * 2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts * 3. Medicare/Rx Bill * 4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. * 5. DC School Vouchers * 6. Ban Human Cloning *		7. Restrict Gun Liability *  8. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion *  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage * 10. Fund Iraq War * 11. Bar Cuba Embargo Funds * 12. Intelligence Reorg. *

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2004 general	Mike Conaway (R)	177,291	77%	$1,573,274
	Wayne Raasch (D)	50,339	22%
	Other	3,347	1%
2004 primary	Mike Conaway (R)	38,792	75%
	Bill Lester (R)	13,255	25%

2004 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 188,929 (78%) Kerry (D) 52,174 (22%)

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 163,488 (75%) Gore (D) 55,244 (25%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Eleventh 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 +25
• District Size: 35,185 square miles
• Population in 2000: 651,620; 70.8% urban; 29.2% rural
• Median Household Income: $32,711; 15.8% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 26.8% blue collar; 54.8% white collar; 18.4% gray collar; 13.5% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 64.6% White, 4.0% Black, 0.5% Asian, 0.4% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 0.8% Two+ races, 0.0% Other, 29.6% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 9.5% German, 8.6% USA, 6.9% English
• Click here for statewide demographic data.