Maryland: Sixth District

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R)

Roscoe Bartlett (R) Elected 1992, 8th term up
Born:	06-03-1926, Moreland, KY
Home:	Frederick
Education:	Columbia Union Col., B.A. 1947, U. of MD, M.S. 1949, Ph.D. 1952
Religion:	Seventh Day Adventist
Marital Status:	married (Ellen)
Professional Career:	Farmer; Prof., U. of MD, 1948–52; Asst. Prof., Loma Linda Schl. of Medicine, 1952–54; Asst. Prof., Howard U. Medical Schl., 1954–56; Research scientist, N.I.H., 1956–58; Research scientist, U.S. Naval Aerospace Medical Inst., 1958–62; Research scientist, Johns Hopkins U., 1962–67; Research Mgr., IBM, 1967–74; Pres., Roscoe Bartlett & Assoc., 1974–86.
DC Office	2412 RHOB, 20515 202-225-2721 Fax: 202-225-2193 Website: bartlett.house.gov
State Offices	Cumberland:301-724-3105; Frederick:301-694-3030; Hagerstown:301-797-6043; Westminster:410-857-1115;
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One of America’s first frontiers was in western Maryland, where the Appalachian ridges that cross the state diagonally from northeast to southwest cut through the long green sloping fields. These wheat fields were settled first by Pennsylvania Dutch and Scots-Irish hill people, not Chesapeake Bay tobacco growers. Maryland is where the fall line comes closest to an ocean port, where the 19th century’s great paths to the interior were staked out: The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which began operating in 1828, primarily to haul coal from western Maryland to the port of Georgetown in Washington; the National Road; and then the nation’s first railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, crossed the wide valleys of bounteous farms and climbed over the Catoctin Mountains. Towns grew up on narrow streets lined with row houses that today are overhung with telephone and streetcar wires, overlooking long vistas of cornfields, pastureland and mountains of ancient stone rising above the plains. Across this placid land moved vast armies during the Civil War. In Frederick, city officials paid Confederates $200,000 not to burn down the town, and near Sharpsburg, blue and gray-clad soldiers fought the Battle of Antietam, on the bloodiest day in American military history. A century later, on the steps of City Hall in Cumberland—near the western edge of the district in the coal-laced hills of Appalachia—President Lyndon Johnson declared his War on Poverty. Poverty fell here in the 1970s, but local conditions worsened in the 1980s with the closure of several large factories; recently, Cumberland has attempted to refashion itself as an arts community with dozens of studios. To the east, Carroll County in metro Baltimore, and Frederick County in metro Washington, have grown rapidly in recent years and have become new hubs for outward expansion.

The 6th Congressional District includes all of western Maryland, takes in a small part of northern Montgomery County and runs eastward across the northern farmlands and hunt country of Baltimore and Harford Counties all the way to the Susquehanna River. The political tradition in most of this area, unlike the rest of Maryland, is Republican. This was Union country in the Civil War and has been mostly Republican ever since. The new rush of settlement—which made this the fastest growing district in Maryland in the 1990s—is mostly made up of young families of modest incomes seeking respite from metropolitan life, strengthening the area’s already conservative leanings. Only eight of 24 counties in Maryland have more registered Republican voters than Democrats, and five of them are in this district.

The congressman from the 6th District is Roscoe Bartlett, a Republican “citizen legislator” first elected in 1992. He is a curious character, a descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a Seventh Day Adventist with 10 children (he and his wife each have four children from previous marriages). He was born in Kentucky and grew up in poverty in western Pennsylvania, where his father was a tenant farmer; but his family would not take welfare. After getting a bachelor’s degree in theology and biology, he earned a Ph.D. in physiology at the University of Maryland, where he also taught and wrote more than 100 scientific articles; over the years he has also operated a 145-acre dairy farm, where he still milks his goats. He was awarded 20 patents for inventing life-support equipment for pilots, astronauts, fire fighters, and respiratory patients needing oxygen supplies, and ran his own business. In 1999, the Aeronautics and Astronautics Institute gave him an award for his career contributions to the advancement of medical knowledge and technologies. When Bartlett was first elected, he was a 65-year-old retired University of Maryland professor who seemed to have no chance of winning. Democrat Beverly Byron had represented the district for 14 years and had a conservative voting record; when Bartlett challenged her in 1982, he lost 74%-26%. But in 1992 Byron was upset in the primary by a liberal who favored national health insurance and abortion rights. Bartlett’s conservative views and his attacks on his opponent’s perks in the state legislature won him a 54%-46% victory.

Bartlett has proved a surprisingly durable politician, though iconoclastic to the point of being quirky. Profiled in The Washington Post as Maryland’s Mr. Right, he described a visit to Iraq in 2004 when he visited the spider hole where Saddam Hussein was captured. “I was probably the only Congressman who laid down there. It’s very interesting dirt—it doesn’t collapse. The water table is at 17 feet throughout most of Iraq.” Bartlett is the most conservative member of the state’s congressional delegation, but his conservative views have sometimes not been consistent with Republican orthodoxy. “I'm not interested in politics,” he says. “I am a conservative who wants to help restore the limited federal government envisioned and established in the Constitution by our nation's founders.” He sometimes objects to Republican big spending, including George W. Bush’s education act, but he voted for the 2003 Medicare/prescription drug bill  He voted against normal trade relations with China, against trade promotion authority, and against renewal of the Patriot Act because he saw it as a threat to civil liberties. His fiscal prudence was reflected in his opposition to expanded federal funds for the local Interstate highway. He was one of 33 House Republicans to oppose renewal of the Voting Rights Act. “He believes that when a disease is cured, you don’t have to keep taking the same medicine,” a spokeswoman said. In July 2006, President Bush signed his bill to prohibit a condominium or other residential group from barring a member from displaying the American flag. As chairman of an Armed Services subcommittee, he claimed credit for a study on increasing efficiency in the shipbuilding industry and steps to review potential changes in the Navy fleet. As George Wilson wrote in Congress Daily, he suffers from sticker shock and has urged new thinking by the defense establishment, including smaller and cheaper ships. “He believes the Navy is not only pricing itself out of a fleet large enough to cover the world’s hotspots but also is making it easy for the bad guys to sink it by having so few ships.” In 2007, he became ranking member of the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee.

Bartlett has been reelected by solid margins. In 2004 he faced an unusual primary challenge from Frederick County State’s Attorney Scott Rolle, who criticized Bartlett for not supporting the Bush administration strongly enough. Bartlett responded by calling out a big gun. Before more than 700 loyalists at a breakfast in Hagerstown four days before the vote, Vice President Cheney said, “In this time of testing, the president and I have been grateful to have Congressman Bartlett at our side.” Bartlett won 70%-30% and carried Rolle’s Frederick County base 60%-40%.

Bartlett is the oldest member of the Maryland delegation but says he has no plans to retire. Republican Frank Nethken, a former mayor of Cumberland, announced he would challenge Bartlett in the 2008 primary, saying "God told me I'm going to be the next congressman." Democrat Andrew Duck, an Iraq War veteran who lost 59%-38% to Bartlett in 2006, is expected to seek a rematch.

Committees

• Armed Services (5th of 29 R)
  Seapower & Expeditionary Forces (RMM); Oversight & Investigations.
• Science & Technology (5th of 20 R)
  Energy & Environment; Research & Science Education.
• Small Business (2d of 15 R)
  Contracting & Technology; Rural & Urban Entrepreneurship.

Presidential Vote

District Demographics (More Info)

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: R +13
• Area size: 3,094 square miles
• Urban Population: 60.5%
• Rural Population: 39.5%
• Population 2000: 662,060
• Population 2005 (est): 724,685
• Median Income: $50,957
• Poverty Status: 6.7%
• Military Veterans: 14.0%
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 91.5% White; 4.8% Black; 1.0% Asian; 0.2% Native Am.; 0.0% Hawaiian; 0.9% Two+ races; 0.1% Other; 1.4% Hispanic Origin;
• Ancestry: 20.1% German%; 10.6% Irish%; 8.4% English%;
• Occupation: Blue collar 23.9%; White collar 61.5%; Gray collar 14.6%;