Rep. Rob Bishop (R) Elected 2002, 2d term
Born:	July 13, 1951, Salt Lake City
Home:	Kaysville
Education:	U. of UT, B.A. 1974
Religion:	Mormon
Marital Status:	married (Jeralyn Hansen)
Elected  Office:	UT House of Reps., 1978-94; Speaker, 1993-94.
Professional Career:	H.S.teacher, 1974-2002.
DC Office	124 CHOB20515, 202-225-0453; Fax: 202-225-5857; Web site: www.house.gov/robbishop/
State Offices	Ogden, 801-625-0107.
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In May 1869, a motley crowd of Irish and Chinese laborers, teamsters, engineers, train crews, officials and guests from California and Salt Lake City gathered at Promontory Summit, Utah, to watch the opening of the transcontinental railroad. The Union Pacific train was late and Leland Stanford's raised hammer totally missed the golden spike, but an alert telegrapher mimicked the sound over the wire and a photographer recorded the scene for posterity: United at last were the civilized East and the mostly untamed West. Here, beyond sight of the snow-capped mountains crossed by Mormon pioneers, where the rail line was bypassed a century ago, the salt flats still stretch out endlessly.

In Salt Lake City, the center of the Mormon Church--and of Utah--is Temple Square, illuminated by 300,000 lights during Christmas week and nestled beneath the towering mountains that flank Salt Lake City. Here you can find the Mormon Tabernacle, home of the famous choir, and the Temple itself, crowned with the golden angel Moroni. This place has been the focal point of Utah since Brigham Young, looking down at this valley, said, "This is the place." Ironically, this part of Salt Lake City is the least Mormon and most cosmopolitan part of Utah, with the state university and businesses bringing in outsiders who, flouting Mormon strictures, keep purveyors of alcohol and caffeine in business. Salt Lake County voted 60% for George W. Bush in 2004, up from 55% in 2000, but still modest compared to the rest of the state.

The 1st Congressional District of Utah consists of the northern end of the state. It includes most of Salt Lake City's historic downtown, its distinctive Avenues District and the airport, but little of the fast-growing suburbia that stretches south of the city. More than half the people in the district live in the stretch of the Wasatch Front, between the mountains and the lake, just north of Salt Lake City, in Davis and Weber Counties. Davis County is suburban and fairly affluent; Ogden in Weber County is an old working class railroad town, an industrial center that depends on nearby Hill Air Force Base. Farther north in the Cache Valley is Logan, home of Utah State University. This is farming country and very heavily Mormon. Over the mountains to the east of Salt Lake City is Park City, the old mining town that is now an increasingly fashionable ski resort and home of the Sundance Film Festival. West of Salt Lake City are the Great Salt Lake, with a new 4,000 acre wetlands sanctuary, and the desolate Bonneville Salt Flats, where land speed records have been set. This land of stark beauty, much of it federally owned, has been used roughly by man: as a repository for hazardous wastes at civilian and military dumps in Tooele County and as a place for military experimentation on the Dugway Proving Ground, where scientists test defenses against chemical and biological agents, and the Wendover Range, where the designs of "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" were assessed before being dropped on Japan; new suburbs out Interstate 80 have made Tooele the state's second-fastest growing county. With the continuing delay in making Yucca Mountain in Nevada the nation's nuclear-waste repository, the Skull Valley temporary storage site--near Dugway--is beginning to look less and less temporary. Politically this is a heavily Republican area, with patches of Democratic strength. The district's portions of Salt Lake County are trendy and working class Democratic; they were kept out of the 2d District by Republican redistricters who wanted to beat a Democratic incumbent. Park City is on its way to becoming another Aspen, Democratic with leftist third party voters; farmers to the east of Park City complain that the county has given too much influence to the newcomers. The Cache Valley is very heavily Republican, though, and overall the district voted 68% for George W. Bush in 2000 and 73% in 2004.

The congressman from the 1st District is Rob Bishop, a Republican first elected in 2002. He grew up in Davis County and graduated from the University of Utah. He became a high school history and government teacher in Box Elder County. In 1978, at 27, he was elected to the state House; in 1993 and 1994 he was Speaker. He also served as state Republican chairman from 1997 to 2001. He continued working as a teacher after leaving the legislature and also worked as a lobbyist for state Republicans and for the National Rifle Association (though he does not own a gun). When Congressman Jim Hansen decided to retire after 22 years, Bishop ran and so did former House Majority Leader Kevin Garn. As a former state party chair, Bishop won 58% of the vote at the Republican nominating convention in May. The two had similar conservative views, and the difference came down to a contentious local issue in Utah, the ongoing battle between banks and credit unions. The credit union lobby endorsed Bishop who, as a lobbyist in 1999, helped defeat legislation to curtail the credit unions' tax-exempt status. Garn, as the wealthy chairman of a Layton bank, had the support of Utah bankers. The credit unions turned out to be the more valuable ally: They poured at least $100,000 in independent expenditures into an anti-Garn campaign, which helped even the financial balance since Garn outspent Bishop by 4-1. Bishop won the June primary 60%-40%. Democrats believed they had a chance in the general with the candidacy of Dave Thomas, a wealthy advertising executive and an anti-abortion Mormon bishop who presented himself as a fiscal conservative and "a regular guy" not tied to special interests. But Bishop won by a wider margin than expected, 61%-37%. Thomas carried Salt Lake County and Park City's Summit County, but they cast less than 15% of the votes.

In the House, Bishop has usually been a reliable conservative vote. With a few other House Republicans, he switched his vote under pressure from party leaders to help defeat an amendment that sought to deny funding to the Patriot Act provision authorizing access to library records. Although he voted for the constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriages, he preferred a statute that would deny federal courts jurisdiction over state definitions of marriage. He worked on several local issues: He helped to enact a measure to adjust boundaries of the Mount Naomi Wilderness area. He sponsored a bill to block nuclear waste disposal on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation; he complained that the proposal was killed by members of the Nevada delegation, who were unhappy about support by the Utah delegation for the Yucca Mountain disposal site and opposed to the precedent of shipping the waste by rail to other parts of the Utah site. He sought to protect Hill Air Force Base from the base-closing review; it was not slated for closure under the Pentagon's May 2005 recommendations. He was criticized at home for supporting a change in federal law to permit Envirocare of Utah to dispose in Utah additional radioactive waste material from a bomb plant in Ohio; Envirocare, which was a client of his former lobbying firm, dropped the proposal after three months of controversy, including opposition from Utah Democrat Jim Matheson. Jim Hansen told the Salt Lake Tribune that Bishop had a sharp mind and a maverick streak. One example: Bishop, who is one of the few members of Congress who regularly plays on his office softball team, said, "I really get frustrated when they have votes on softball night." He was reelected easily in 2004, though he again lost Salt Lake and Summit Counties. In January 2005, Speaker Dennis Hastert signaled that Bishop had favorably impressed party insiders by giving him for a seat on the Rules Committee.

Committees

• Rules (8th of 9 R): Legislative & Budget Process.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	5	0	0	0	75	73	95	100	95	90	--
2003	0	--	0	5	--	65	100	92	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	0%	--	91%		24%	--	75%
Social	16%	--	83%		17%	--	81%
Foreign	0%	--	89%		22%	--	77%
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	Rob Bishop (R)	199,615	68%	$435,494
	Steven Thompson (D)	85,630	29%
	Other	8,716	3%
2004 primary	Rob Bishop (R)	unopposed
2002 general	Rob Bishop (R)	109,265	61%	$670,302
	Dave Thomas (D)	66,104	37%	$704,616
	Other	4,043	2%

2004 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 220,869 (73%) Kerry (D) 75,728 (25%)

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 167,716 (68%) Gore (D) 66,792 (27%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the First 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 +22
• District Size: 22,700 square miles
• Population in 2000: 744,389; 88.7% urban; 11.3% rural
• Median Household Income: $45,058; 9.5% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 26.2% blue collar; 58.7% white collar; 15.1% gray collar; 11.7% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 83.3% White, 1.1% Black, 1.6% Asian, 0.7% Amer. Indian, 0.6% Hawaiian, 1.4% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 11.1% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 20.9% English, 8.3% German, 5.0% USA
• Click here for statewide demographic data.