Sen. Michael Enzi (R) Elected 1996, 2d term up 2008
Born:	Feb. 1, 1944, Bremerton, WA
Home:	Gillette
Education:	George Washington U., B.S. 1966, Denver U., M.B.A. 1968
Religion:	Presbyterian
Marital Status:	married (Diana)
Elected  Office:	Gillette Mayor, 1975-82; WY House of Reps., 1986-90; WY Senate, 1990-96.
Military Career:	WY Natl. Guard, 1967-73.
Professional Career:	Owner, NZ Shoes, 1969-95; Dir. & Chmn., First WY Bank of Gillette, 1978-88; Accounting Mgr. & Computer Programmer, Dunbar Well Service, 1985-97; Educ. Comm. of States, 1989-93; Dir., Black Hills Corp., 1992-96; Western Interstate Comm. for Higher Educ., 1995-96.
DC Office	379-A RSOB20510, 202-224-3424; Fax: 202-228-0359; Web site: enzi.senate.gov
State Offices	Casper, 307-261-6572; Cheyenne, 307-772-2477; Cody, 307-527-9444; Gillette, 307-682-6268; Jackson, 307-739-9507.
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Mike Enzi, the junior senator from Wyoming, was first elected in 1996 and is now chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP). Enzi grew up in Thermopolis and Sheridan, the son of a shoe salesman, got degrees in accounting and marketing, moved to Gillette and became an oil well servicing company accountant and founded NZ Shoes. In the 1970s, at a Jaycees meeting, he met Senator Alan Simpson, who was impressed by his volunteerism and asked him to consider running for public office. In 1975 Enzi was elected mayor of Gillette, the center of Wyoming's coal belt and its fastest-growing town, and served eight years. In 1986 he was elected to the state House and in 1990 to the state Senate. After Simpson announced his retirement in December 1995, Enzi was one of nine Republicans and two Democrats to run for the seat. With support from a grass roots network of conservatives, Enzi finished first in a straw poll at the May 1996 Republican state convention; in second place was John Barrasso, an orthopedic surgeon from Casper who had appeared on statewide TV discussing health issues for 12 years. Their chief difference was on abortion; Barrasso supported and Enzi opposed abortion rights. Barrasso had more money, but Enzi won 32%-30%. The Democratic nominee was former Secretary of State Kathy Karpan, who opposed gun control and abortion. But she had the liabilities of having supported the presidential candidacies of Bill Clinton in 1992 and Bruce Babbitt (unpopular in Wyoming as Clinton's Interior Secretary) in 1988. Enzi led in polls all the way and won 54%-42%.

Enzi started off in the Senate by presiding for 100 hours in the chair by July and seeking permission to bring his laptop on the floor: a workhorse. The Rules Committee said no by a 6-1 vote; Enzi renewed his request in June 2002, noting that even the Senate is in a new century but the rule still stands. He has opposed meatpacker ownership of livestock and has pushed for country of origin labeling of meat.

In 2002, his sixth year in the Senate, Enzi was still little known in most of Washington, but he played a key role on a major piece of legislation. The issue was corporate accountability, and as the only accountant in the Senate Enzi could claim special expertise. In July 2000 he was one of 13 senators who signed a letter urging then-SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt to delay a decision on his proposal to bar accounting firms from doing auditing and consulting work for the same corporation. After the Enron bankruptcy in December 2001 raised questions about accounting, Enzi still urged caution and said he feared overregulation. Banking Chairman Paul Sarbanes held extensive hearings on the issue and Enzi, the fifth ranking Republican, paid close attention. The bill Sarbanes introduced to the committee did not go so far as the Levitt proposal, but did go farther than the bill passed by the House in April 2002. It included an accounting board independent of the SEC with power to set rules, investigate, punish violations and conduct regular inspections of accounting firms' work. Enzi worked closely with lobbyists for the big accounting firms but kept the perspective of a Wyoming small business accountant. He decided that some bill needed to be passed and Sarbanes, not wanting to report a bill supported only by Democrats, consulted him. On the evening of June 17, Enzi flew in from Wyoming and went to Sarbanes's office where they negotiated a compromise. Enzi got Sarbanes to agree that two of the four members of the board must be accountants, that the board could adopt rules favored by the accounting industry and that the board would not be financed by accountants. Disciplinary proceedings would be confidential. On June 18 in the office of Phil Gramm, the ranking Republican on the committee, Enzi told committee Republicans that he would vote for Sarbanes's bill. Others agreed: six of the 10 Republicans supported it. On June 26 the WorldCom accounting scam was made public. The Senate wanted to act, and Sarbanes could go to the floor with bipartisan support. On July 15 the Senate approved the bill 97-0. House negotiators got minor concessions from the Senate side in the conference committee, and the bill was passed and signed before the August recess.

In January 2005 Enzi became chairman of the HELP Committee; the last time a Wyoming senator chaired it was in the 1890s. It was not unprecedented that a relatively junior senator rose thanks to seniority to this chairmanship; Orrin Hatch did so after only four years in the Senate in 1981. Hatch was one of several former chairmen on the committee; the others were Judd Gregg (who left the chair to become chairman of Budget), James Jeffords and Edward Kennedy, now (as he was when Hatch became chairman 24 years before) ranking minority member. On the committee Enzi had become known as a hard worker, knowledgeable about the details of legislation and the views of those affected, not always following the lead of the Bush administration. As chairman, he worked to put together a reauthorization of the Carl Perkins vocational and technical education bill that passed the Senate 99-0 in March 2005. Enzi has argued that in an economy where workers will typically hold 14 jobs over a lifetime, 10 of them in careers that are not yet invented, lifelong education is crucial. The Carl Perkins act is one leg, he argued, of a three-legged stool; the others are his Workforce Investment Act, a version of which passed the Senate unanimously in 2004, and reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, a more controversial matter. He hoped to reauthorize Head Start, also a controversial matter since many Republicans want it to have a more academic approach. He called the 2005 Bush administration pension proposal a "starting point."

Enzi was a co-sponsor of the Genetic Nondiscrimination Act, which passed the Senate in February 2005 but faced serious opposition in the House. On health care issues says he has favored marked-oriented solutions with consumer choice and more information; an example is a bill funding state high risk pools. He has supported federal medical malpractice bills and funding states to test alternatives to current tort law. He has favored changes in FDA regulation of drugs and patient safety legislation. One of his priorities was to follow up the BioShield act to protect against bioterrorism by funding vaccines and treatments. He has sponsored worker safety legislation to provide for third party consultants to OSHA, certificates of compliance for employers, posting of sample material safety data sheets and hazard information. He has co-sponsored Judd Gregg's prescription drug reimportation bill; he says he wants to ensure the security of drugs and to allow imports to begin on a staggered basis.

Enzi did not have serious opposition in 2002. He won the Republican primary 86%-14% and the general election 73%-27%.

Committees

• Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs: Housing & Transportation; International Trade & Finance; Securities & Investment.
• Budget.
• Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (Chmn.).
• Small Business & Entrepreneurship.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	5	22	0	0	92	77	100	96	90	100	--
2003	5	--	0	0	--	76	100	80	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	18%	--	77%		4%	--	95%
Social	0%	--	59%		0%	--	84%
Foreign	22%	--	68%		0%	--	67%
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. Ban Drilling in ANWR N 2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 3. Medicare/Rx Bill Y 4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. N 5. Energy Bill Y 6. Support Roe v. Wade N		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  8. Assault Weapons Ban N  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage Y 10. Ban Bunker-Buster Bomb N 11. Fund Iraq War Y 12. Restrict Missile Defense N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Michael Enzi (R)	133,710	73%	$884,114
	Joyce Corcoran (D)	49,570	27%	$8,467
2002 primary	Michael Enzi (R)	78,612	86%
	Crosby Allen (R)	12,931	14%
1996 general	Michael Enzi (R)	114,116	54%	$953,572
	Kathy Karpan (D)	89,103	42%	$814,258
	Other	7,858	4%