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GovernmentExecutive.com - Covering The Business Of The Federal Government
Virginia: Eleventh District
Rep. Tom Davis (R)
Last Updated June 22, 2005


Rep. Tom Davis (R)
Rep. Tom Davis (R)
Elected 1994, 6th term
Born: Jan. 5, 1949, Minot, ND
Home: Annandale
Education: Amherst Col. B.A. 1971, U. of VA, J.D. 1975
Religion: Christian Scientist
Marital Status: married (Jeannemarie Devolites)
Elected
 Office:
Fairfax Cnty. Bd. of Supervisors, 1979-94, Chmn., 1991-94.
Military Career: Army, 1971-72; Army Reserves, 1972-79.
Professional Career: Vice Pres. & Gen. Cnsl., PRC Inc., 1977-94.
DC Office 2348 RHOB20515, 202-225-1492; Fax: 202-225-3071; Web site: tomdavis.house.gov
State Offices Annandale, 703-916-9610; Prince William, 703-590-4599.
Additional Info
Committees · Ratings · Key Votes · Election Results
District Demographics
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When author and Washington Post reporter Joel Garreau coined the term ''edge city'' to describe the autonomous urban centers developing on the rims of some of the nation's oldest municipalities, his prime example was Tysons Corner, Virginia. Rising on a hill west of Washington, Tysons Corner was a back-country intersection 50 years ago and a junction of several suburban roads 30 years ago; today it is home to the largest concentration of office space to be found anywhere between Washington and Atlanta, with a modern skyline and busy multi-lane avenues that serve as arteries to the Capital Beltway. Fairfax County, which includes all of Tysons Corner, has changed just as dramatically since the end of World War II. At first only a few District of Columbia residents seeking breathing room in the suburbs trickled into Northern Virginia; initially they went to Arlington and Alexandria. But that trickle became a rush as young marrieds with large families and whites avoiding the increasingly high-crime District pushed farther out into Fairfax. Now Fairfax County is no longer Washington's country cousin. By 2000 it had 969,000 residents, nearly twice D.C.'s. 572,000; it reached 1 million by 2003. It had in 1999 the nation's highest median household income ($81,050), over half its residents have a bachelor's degree or more and 71% of its households have two or more vehicles. Fairfax County is taking on most of the aspects of a city, with new high-density cluster developments around Metro stops and plenty of immigrants, from Koreans and Vietnamese to Afghanis and Africans, and with growth slowing because most of its land has been developed. There is even faster growth to the west in Loudoun County and to the south in Prince William County, growth not only in housing but in jobs; in 2003-04, the number of jobs in Prince William grew 8%, the most of any county in the nation, and not far behind were Loudoun (5.5%) and Fairfax (4.2%). Prince William is growing more affluent too, as megahouse subdivisions spring up in the western part of the county its median household income rose to Fairfax's high level.

The 11th Congressional District of Virginia consists of much of Fairfax County and most of Prince William County. The district straddles the Capital Beltway and includes Tysons Corner. Inside the Beltway are Baileys Crossroads and Annandale; beyond are Vienna, Fairfax, much of Springfield, Burke, Clifton, Centreville, part of Mount Vernon. In Prince William County it includes Woodbridge and Dale City and stretches west to Haymarket. This is a cosmopolitan district: 10% black, 9% Hispanic, 11% Asian in 2000; some 25% of residents speak a language other than English at home. The district is made up largely of two-income families, many with at least one spouse employed in one of the many divisions of high-tech companies that dot Fairfax County. The district was first created in 1991, after Virginia got a new seat in the 1990 Census. It was originally designed to be equally divided between the parties, and within its 1991 boundaries it voted 43%-42% for George H.W. Bush in 1992, 49%-47% for Bill Clinton in 1996 and 49%-47% for Al Gore in 2000. In its post-redistricting 2002 form, the district voted 52%-45% for George W. Bush in 2000 but only 50%-49% for him in 2004.

The congressman from the 11th District is Tom Davis, a Republican first elected in 1994. Davis was born in Minot, North Dakota, grew up in Northern Virginia, and was always interested in politics; by seventh grade he could name every member of the House. He got a job as a Senate page and was president of his class at the Capitol Page School; he was a roommate of David Eisenhower at Amherst College, where almost everyone else was a Democrat or something further left; he served on active duty in the Army before earning a law degree. He practiced law in Northern Virginia and was general counsel to computer services firm PRC. In 1979 he was elected to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, a high visibility position. In 1991 he was elected board chairman, something in the nature of a mayor.

In 1994 Davis ran for the 11th District seat against Democrat Leslie Byrne, who had won 50%-45% in 1992. Byrne had voted solidly for Clinton administration positions and called for discipline against members of the Democratic Caucus who did not; she had strong support from labor and feminist groups and spent $1.1 million. But Davis was able to raise and spend even more, $1.4 million. He won 53%-45%.

As soon as he arrived on Capitol Hill, Davis was handed by Speaker Newt Gingrich one of the hottest potatoes of the new Congress: Dealing with the affairs of the troubled District of Columbia government and its just re-elected mayor, Marion Barry. As chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee's D.C. Subcommittee, Davis first rejected Barry's request for massive federal aid, working closely with Gingrich and District Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton to cut District spending. Together they passed in April 1995 a law establishing a five-member control board to oversee the D.C. government. He tended to oppose the appropriators' detailed policy prescription as micromanagement, but went along with the 1997 law taking power over nine agencies from Barry and giving it to the control board. In February 1999 Davis and Norton sponsored a bill restoring full management powers to the District and its new mayor, Anthony Williams; it was speedily passed. Davis and Norton also passed a bill suggested by Washington Post publisher Donald Graham to enable District students to attend Virginia and Maryland public colleges and universities at in-state tuition rates.

In 2003 Davis became chairman of the Government Reform Committee and abolished the D.C. subcommittee, allowing him to take the lead on District issues himself. The tuition program has grown beyond expectations, and Davis got a two-year extension in 2004 after objections from Senator Jeff Sessions to the treatment of private schools and historically black colleges and universities threatened to end it. In 2003 Davis also pushed through, against opposition from Norton and teachers' unions, but with the support of Mayor Williams and D.C. school board head Peggy Cooper Cafritz, a voucher program for the District of Columbia. Congress has the power to govern the District and change D.C. laws, but Davis managed to get the House to agree to eliminate riders to D.C. appropriations bills and let Government Reform oversee them; he opposed the House's symbolic repeal of the District's gun laws (the Senate didn't go along) as a "dangerous assault on home rule." He was less successful on his attempt to give the District voting representation in the House. His idea, floated in spring 2003, was to add two members, one for the District and the other for the state entitled under the statutory formula to the 436th seat in the House, which after the 2000 Census just happened to be Utah; that pretty much guaranteed that the District's Democrat would be balanced by a Utah Republican. But Speaker Dennis Hastert said, "Davis floats things from time to time," and Majority Leader Tom DeLay said, "It would require a constitutional amendment." Norton, in favor of full House and Senate representation, declined to endorse it, and Government Reform's ranking Democrat opposed it; he feared the Utah legislature would produce a redistricting that would threaten the state's single Democrat, Jim Matheson. In November 2004 Davis got a legal opinion from conservative scholars that the proposal was constitutional, and Matheson won reelection by a wide enough margin in a Republican-leaning district to suggest he was impervious to challenge; perhaps Davis will have more success with the proposal in the 109th Congress.

Davis is a political buff with a detailed knowledge of political statistics across the country. When the chairmanship of the NRCC became an elective post after the November 1998 election, in which Republicans lost seats, Davis ran against incumbent John Linder and won 130-77. He raised and spent $1 million on 1999 state legislative races in Virginia, in which Republicans captured both houses and won control of redistricting; within a few months conservative incumbent Congressman Virgil Goode left the Democratic Party and announced he would caucus with Republicans and conservative Democrat Owen Pickett retired--a quick two-seat gain. In the 1999-2000 cycle Davis early on spotted open seats which had long voted Democratic but where conservative non-economic issues helped Republicans--Pennsylvania's 4th, West Virginia's 2d, Missouri's 6th, Michigan's 8th, Virginia's 2d--and won them all. Against party-switcher Michael Forbes in New York's 1st, he spent money on billboards thanking him for his solid support of Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America; Forbes was upset in the September Democratic primary, and the seat went Republican in November. He spotted the weakness of 20-year incumbent Democrat Sam Gejdenson in Connecticut's 2d, which led to another gain. The Republican nomination in the open seat in Florida's 8th was not determined until the October runoff; but for two months before the NRCC spent heavily on ads attacking the Democratic nominee, who lost 51%-49%. Only four Republican incumbents lost, three in California and one in the Arkansas 4th District (the one district where a vote for impeachment hurt).

Davis was re-elected campaign committee chairman in November 2000. Republicans far outraised Democrats in the 2001-02 cycle, and once again Davis did a fine job of targeting vulnerable seats, but his most valuable work was on redistricting. Not since the death of California Democrat Phillip Burton in 1983 has a member of Congress with such a detailed knowledge of the political demography of the entire country taken such a lead role in redistricting. Davis and White House political strategist Karl Rove persuaded the chief Democratic redistricter in California, Michael Berman, brother of Congressman Howard Berman, to settle for a plan that gave the state's one new seat to Democrats but otherwise maintained the status quo. After Democrats put through an aggressively partisan redistricting plan in Georgia, Davis worked to see that Republicans in Pennsylvania put through a similarly aggressive plan. As a result, Republicans gained seats in a state that lost two seats while Democrats failed to achieve the gains they expected in a state that gained two seats. Davis urged the appointment of Ohio Democrat Tony Hall to the UN's FAO in Rome; redistricting made Hall's seat more Republican, and a Republican won it easily. Republicans picked up five seats--the second time in a row the party in the White House gained seats.

After the 2002 elections the Republican Steering Committee chose Davis to chair the Government Reform Committee, though he started the year off as only ninth in seniority. This was in part a reward for his work as campaign committee chairman and in part a recognition of his expertise on civil service law. He has long been attentive to federal employee issues; he opposed the Contract with America tax cut in 1995 because it would have required higher pension payments by federal employees. He and Maryland's Steny Hoyer got the House to pass a bill giving U.S. Park Police and the Secret Service Uniformed Division the same locality pay as other federal workers and Davis worked to see that they could buy back credit for military service to increase their retirement benefits. He has pushed successfully for civilian employees to get the same percentage pay increase as the military and to have better dental and vision benefits offered on federal employees' health insurance policies; when the Medicare prescription drug bill was pending, he sponsored a guarantee that federal retirees would get the same prescription drug benefits as federal employees. Against the opposition of federal employees unions, Davis has backed the Bush administration policies for competitive sourcing in the Defense and Homeland Security Departments, with access to the GAO's protest forums, but he accepted not having these procedures in the new national intelligence director's office. He has sponsored bills to set standards for Internet sites selling prescription drugs and, with Henry Waxman, to protect the security and privacy of government employees' computers from file sharing programs. In 2003 he passed an amendment allowing Richard Nixon's presidential papers to be transferred outside the Washington area; this enabled the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California, to become part of the National Archives system.

Davis has also been attentive to local issues. Over several years he worked on getting federal financing for the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which totaled $1.58 billion in federal aid, and with Frank Wolf called for an extra outbound lane on I-66 in Arlington. He has obtained money for widening Route 123 and an engineering study for extending Metro to Reston. He has paid attention to the growing immigrant population in Fairfax County and has worked for amnesty and refugee status for Vietnamese immigrants and their children.

Fairfax County has been trending Democratic, but Davis has not been in political trouble in the 11th District. In 2001, Davis, Wolf and Moran drew new district lines for Northern Virginia that helped all three. In November 2002, with no Democratic opponent, he won with 83% of the vote; in 2004, against an underfunded Democrat, he won 60%-38%, even as George W. Bush became the first Republican to lose Fairfax County since 1964. As Davis said, "The city is moving out to the suburbs. We all recognized that Fairfax was going to turn. How big it would turn was unclear." Davis has made no secret that he has statewide ambitions, and might run for the Senate if John Warner retires in 2008. They may have been complicated by his strong support in April 2004 for Governor Mark Warner's tax increases. A minority of House of Delegates Republicans as well as almost all Senate Republicans provided critical support for the increases; one of them was Davis's wife, state Senator Jeannemarie Devolites. Five of six Republican legislators who supported the tax increases beat back challenges from anti-tax candidates in the June 2005 primary; the outcome of those battles might be an indicator of the viability of Davis's statewide ambitions.

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Committees

  • Government Reform (Chmn. of 23 R): Federal Workforce & Agency Organization; Government Management, Finance & Accountability.
  • Homeland Security (9th of 19 R): Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection & Cybersecurity; Management, Integration & Oversight.

Group Ratings (More Info)
ADA ACLU AFS LCV ITIC NTU COC ACU NTLC CHC
2004 10 10 25 18 89 53 100 80 63 66 --
2003 5 -- 0 30 -- 58 93 72 -- -- --

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
2003 LIB -- 2003 CONS            2004 LIB -- 2004 CONS
Economic 36% -- 64%            25% -- 75%
Social 49% -- 50%            51% -- 48%
Foreign 43% -- 56%            37% -- 62%
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 Tom Davis (R) 186,299 60% $1,835,379
Ken Longmyer (D) 118,305 38% $71,661
Other 4,629 1%
2004 primary Tom Davis (R) unopposed
2002 general Tom Davis (R) 135,379 83% $1,591,381
Frank Creel (CNP) 26,892 16% $8,797
Other 1,027 1%

Prior winning percentages: 2000 (62%); 1998 (82%); 1996 (64%); 1994 (53%)

2004 Presidential Vote
Bush (R) 161,104 (50%)
Kerry (D) 159,055 (49%)

2000 Presidential Vote
Bush (R) 140,961 (52%)
Gore (D) 123,702 (45%)

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.

District Demographics (More Info)
  • Cook Partisan Voting Index: R + 1
  • District Size: 404 square miles
  • Population in 2000: 643,509; 95.9% urban; 4.1% rural
  • Median Household Income: $80,397; 3.8% are below the poverty line
  • Occupation: 11.7% blue collar; 76.5% white collar; 11.8% gray collar; 15.9% military veterans
  • Race/Ethnic Origin: 66.8% White, 10.1% Black, 10.9% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.1% Hawaiian, 2.6% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 9.1% Hispanic origin
  • Ancestry: 11.5% German, 10.0% Irish, 9.4% English
  • Click here for statewide demographic data.

Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005 [an error occurred while processing this directive]


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