California: Sixth District

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D)

Lynn Woolsey (D) Elected 1992, 8th term up
Born:	11-03-1937, Seattle, WA
Home:	Petaluma
Education:	U. of San Francisco, B.S. 1981
Religion:	Presbyterian
Marital Status:	divorced
Elected  Office:	Petaluma City Cncl., 1985–92, Vice Mayor, 1986, 1991.
Professional Career:	Human Resources Mgr., Harris Digital Telephone, 1969–80; Owner, Woolsey Personnel Svc., 1980–92.
DC Office	2263 RHOB, 20515 202-225-5161 Fax: 202-225-5163 Website: woolsey.house.gov
State Offices	San Rafael:415-507-9554; Santa Rosa:707-542-7182;
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When the Golden Gate Bridge was opened in 1937, San Francisco was one of the nation’s best-known cities, but few knew much about the land beyond the bridge’s north pier head. There were fewer than 50,000 people in Marin County then and another 65,000 just to the north in Sonoma County. For San Franciscans, Marin was known for the ferry terminus in Sausalito, a fishing village and art colony, and as the beginning of the Redwood Empire, with its giant trees in Muir Woods (the largest is 253 feet tall and 13 feet in diameter), with a dense concentration of spotted owls that demand quiet during the mating season. Near the Bay and adjacent to the I-580 bridge is the state prison at San Quentin, one of the oldest in the nation, with its famous gas chamber and crowded Death Row; plans for a $233 million overhaul of the facility led to local calls to demolish it and use the valuable land for more commercial enterprises. Farther north is the Point Reyes peninsula with its organic farming and recreational activities, and the wine country of Sonoma County, sunny valleys protected from the fog by the Coast Range. In one such valley was Santa Rosa, destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and later the site of agronomist Luther Burbank’s laboratory, a town that looked Middle American enough to be the set for dozens of movies. Politically, the area was then typical of the nation: traditionally Republican, but favoring Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.

Today this part of California is far more populous, with 249,000 people in Marin County and 467,000 in Sonoma, affluent beyond the dreams of post-World War II Americans, extreme in its cultural attitudes, and with relatively few racial minorities compared to other counties in the Bay Area. Until it was surpassed by the Silicon Valley in the late 1990s, it was the nation’s most expensive housing market. Santa Rosa is thriving, thanks to the wine and telecommunications industries. Trendy Marin, with its hot tubs and its fashionable people getting in touch with themselves, became a national caricature: economically affluent, culturally liberationist; this was the home of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh. When the war in Iraq began, “many of the same people who marched against the Vietnam War have held nightly peace vigils,” The Washington Post reported. They included a group of feminists who “bared witness” by using their nude bodies to spell out “PEACE.” After a while such an image feeds on itself; a place like Marin attracts affluent people who share its values, while those who don’t, go elsewhere—in the Bay Area to the more conservative San Ramon Valley, beyond the mountains east of Oakland. Indeed the Bay Area as a whole seems to attract liberals and repel conservatives, just as the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex does the opposite. Marin and Sonoma attract the most liberal of the liberal—averse to traditional religion, derisive of traditional sexual and marriage mores, viscerally anti-military.

The 6th Congressional District of California includes all of Marin County and all of Sonoma County except for its rural eastern border. These counties have been transformed politically over the past generation. In 1980 they voted for Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter by a 47%-36% margin. Then they moved left and voted in 1988 for Michael Dukakis over George H. W. Bush by 57%-41%. Now Republicans seem almost an endangered species here: in 2004 the two counties voted for John Kerry over George W. Bush by 69%-29%.

The congresswoman from the 6th District is Lynn Woolsey, a Democrat first elected in 1992. Woolsey grew up in the Pacific Northwest, moved to Marin and was a housewife with three children under 6 when her marriage ended in 1968. She went on welfare, got a low-paying job and left her children with 13 different babysitters in a year. Deliverance appeared in the form of a job with a high-tech startup firm where she rose to become a top executive. She remarried and moved to a house in Petaluma where her mother could live and look after the kids. She put herself through business school at night, earned a degree in human resources and started her own personnel service. In 1984 Woolsey won a seat on the Petaluma Council. In 1992 she won the House seat in a nine-candidate primary with 26%, well ahead of 19% for the runner-up. In the general she faced liberal Republican Assemblyman Bill Filante. But he had surgery for a brain tumor and stopped campaigning; she won 65%-34%.

An apt representative of her district, Woolsey has one of the most liberal voting records in the House. As the first former welfare recipient in Congress, she opposed the 1996 welfare law and supports easing work requirements and providing more child care; she wants mothers to be able to stay at home until their children are 11. She lobbied against banning gays in the military, accompanied by her son who is gay. Republicans sought to embarrass Democrats by calling for a vote on Woolsey’s bill to revoke the federal charter for the Boy Scouts because the group excludes gays; her bill was defeated 362-12. On the Science Committee, Woolsey worked to promote energy efficiency and increase support for alternative energy sources. She wants to repeal portions of the Patriot Act on civil liberties grounds, and sponsored a resolution in January 2005 for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq as part of a “complete reevaluation” of national security policy; it lost, 128-300. For President Bush’s State of the Union message in 2006, she gave a gallery ticket to antiwar protestor Cindy Sheehan, who was arrested during the speech. As co-chair of the Progressive Caucus in January 2007, Woolsey called for withdrawal in six months, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi was pushing for a 2008 deadline. She has failed to win Appropriations seats that have gone to more junior members. In the majority, she chaired the Education and Labor Subcommittee on Workforce Protections.

For her district, she got the House to authorize $15 million to renovate the immigration complex on Angel Island—now a state park in the Bay not far from Golden Gate Bridge, but a place where countless Chinese arrivals were detained in deplorable conditions—and turn it into an Ellis Island of the West. In 2004, she apologized for intervening on behalf of the son of an office aide who was convicted as a rapist; the victim rejected the gesture. Woolsey has been easily reelected. She was challenged in the 2002 primary by Santa Rosa Mayor Mike Martini, the founder of a winery in Sebastopol, who criticized her for lack of leadership, excessively liberal votes and failure to bring sufficient funds to the district. Woolsey responded that she had delivered $430 million since 1997, and defended her record on civil-liberties grounds; she won 80%-20%. Term-limited Assemblyman Joe Nation, who lost to Woolsey in the 1992 open seat primary, challenged her in 2006, calling her ineffective. Woolsey ran negative ads in the closing days before the vote, and won 66%-34%.

Committees

• Education & Labor (6th of 27 D)
  Workforce Protections (Chmn.); Early Childhood, Elementary & Secondary Education.
• Foreign Affairs (15th of 27 D)
  Africa & Global Health.
• Science & Technology (4th of 24 D)
  Energy & Environment.

Presidential Vote

District Demographics (More Info)

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: D +21
• Area size: 2,119 square miles
• Urban Population: 89.8%
• Rural Population: 10.2%
• Population 2000: 639,087
• Population 2005 (est): 637,563
• Median Income: $59,115
• Poverty Status: 7.7%
• Military Veterans: 12.2%
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 76.1% White; 2.0% Black; 3.7% Asian; 0.6% Native Am.; 0.2% Hawaiian; 2.7% Two+ races; 0.2% Other; 14.5% Hispanic Origin;
• Ancestry: 11.1% German%; 10.6% Irish%; 9.8% English%;
• Occupation: Blue collar 17.2%; White collar 68.0%; Gray collar 14.8%;