Rep. Peter Deutsch (D) Elected 1992, 6th term
Born:	Apr. 1, 1957, New York, NY
Home:	Lauderhill
Education:	Swarthmore Col., B.A. 1979, Yale Law Schl., J.D. 1982
Religion:	Jewish
Marital Status:	married (Lori)
Elected  Office:	FL House of Reps., 1982-92.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1983-92.
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Fort Lauderdale, back when Connie Francis made it famous in the 1960 spring break movie Where the Boys Are, was just a small town with a strip of motels along the beach and some nice houses fronting canals. Now it is the center of a sprawling metropolitan area. In 1950, Fort Lauderdale and Broward County had fewer than 100,000 people; now they have more than 1.6 million. The land from the strip of beach along the Atlantic Ocean west to the Sawgrass Expressway and the Everglades Wildlife Management Area has filled up with subdivisions, shopping centers, office complexes, warehouses and trucking terminals. Broward County is no longer just vacation country; it is also a major port and business center with high-tech companies and startups that have become national giants, including Blockbuster Video.

As it has grown, the ethnic composition of Broward County has changed. In the 1950s, it was understood that Jews couldn't buy houses or rent hotel rooms this far north of Miami. Today, after four decades of Cubans moving into the Miami area and many Jews moving out, Broward County is the most heavily Jewish part of Florida, indeed one of the most heavily Jewish parts of the United States. Nearer the coast, especially in the huge high-rises of Hollywood and Hallandale, most of Broward's Jews are retirees from New York and other Northeastern metro areas. But inland, in towns like booming Davie, Plantation and Sunrise that didn't exist a few decades ago, there are many young Jewish parents raising families in communities that pride themselves on fine schools and high property values. Places like Weston, a 15,000-home development built in the mid-1980s over 16 square miles beyond the Sawgrass Expressway on the edge of the Everglades, drew affluent transplants to its gated communities, including, in Weston's case, many from Venezuela. This is one reason that in the 1990s the number of children in Florida rose more rapidly than the number of seniors, with school enrollment rising more than 35% in Broward alone.

The 20th Congressional District includes much of southeastern Broward County and the northern Biscayne Bay shoreline in Miami-Dade. Precinct by precinct, its computer generated borders are drawn to exclude relatively Republican areas and to include heavily Jewish areas and also most of Fort Lauderdale's large gay community. It includes much of Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Dania Beach on the coast, but its biggest blocks of territory are inland, around Davie, Plantation, Sunrise and Weston. It also includes part of Miami-Dade County, the shores of Biscayne Bay both on the Miami and Miami Beach side, with expensive homes and huge high-rises, the homes of most of the Jews still living south of Broward County. This is a strongly Democratic district. It cast only 31% of its votes for George W. Bush in 2000, and in 2002, as Floridians were reelecting Governor Jeb Bush to office by a solid margin, it voted heavily for Democrat Bill McBride.

The congressman from the 20th District is Peter Deutsch, a Democrat elected in 1992. Deutsch grew up in New York, graduated from Yale Law School in 1982, moved to Florida and five months later was elected to the legislature. Two years later, he was reelected with the largest percentage in Florida; he was unopposed in the next three elections. A Miami Herald reporter said that, in Tallahassee, Deutsch was "viewed by colleagues as bright but abrasive, and an expert at using procedural rules to advance or torpedo legislation." In 1992 a new 20th District, centered mostly in Broward, seemed tailor-made for Deutsch. Most of its voters were unfamiliar to Dante Fascell, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a 38-year veteran of the House; he decided to retire, and Deutsch won the primary by nearly 2-1 and the general election 55%-39%.

Deutsch has a moderate-leaning voting record and is a member of the New Democrat Coalition. In 1998, the strongly pro-Israel Deutsch charged that a United Nations agency was funding antisemitic textbooks in Palestinian schools, and got language in the State Department appropriation to end it. He supported the Helms-Burton Act, plus Radio and TV Marti, and criticized Fidel Castro for the burdens he has placed on his people. As ranking Democrat on the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce, he was a junior partner in the Republican investigation of Enron and introduced a bill to protect employees' retirement funds in the future. During the House debate in July 2001 on whether to ban cloning, he teamed with Republican Jim Greenwood on an alternative to permit restricted research and therapy, but they lost to proponents of an outright ban.

Deutsch has spent much time on Everglades restoration and water quality in the Keys (the Keys and much of the Everglades were in the 20th District before the 2002 redistricting), with considerable progress. On the eve of the 2000 election he helped to enact the Everglades Restoration Plan, which he calls the "largest ecosystem restoration project in the world." On the Florida Keys, he won House passage of a bill to improve water quality, and the Senate provided the requisite funding. Deutsch faced protests from a Conch Coalition of fishermen, real estate agents and treasure hunters opposed to government bureaucrats declaring, despite previous assurances, no-fishing zones in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

With no worries about reelection--he has not had Republican opposition since 1996--Deutsch has operated his campaign fund like a business. He invested $700,000 in January 1997 and it grew to $1.1 million 15 months later. Even after he contributed $250,000 to the Gore campaign--which he called "the largest hard-dollar contribution in U.S. history"--he had $2.5 million in the bank during the 2002 cycle. When party campaign strategists pressured him to increase his contribution to the DCCC, he wrote an angry letter to Minority Leader Richard Gephardt. During the Florida recount, Deutsch served as an official observer in Broward and an ever-ready voice for the Democratic party line on cable TV. He was the first member to protest on the House floor during the formal certification of the Electoral College vote. Like Robert Wexler in the neighboring 19th, he has talked about a statewide bid while waiting for the right opportunity. It may come if Senator Bob Graham chooses not to run for reelection in 2004.

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DC Office
2303 RHOB 20515, 202-225-7931; Fax: 202-225-8456; Web site: www.house.gov/deutsch

State Offices
Aventura, 305-936-5724; Pembroke Pines, 954-437-3936.

Committees

• Energy & Commerce (10th of 26 D): Commerce, Trade & Consumer Protection; Environment & Hazardous Materials; Oversight & Investigations (RMM); Telecommunications & the Internet.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	85	73	89	88	84	50	19	45	12	9	8
2001	90	--	100	100	--	--	15	43	8	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	77%	--	23%		67%	--	32%
Social	74%	--	23%		73%	--	27%
Foreign	70%	--	28%		58%	--	42%
For National Journal's complete 2002 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 107th Congress (More Info)
1. Approve Bush Tax Cuts N 2. Limit Patients' Bill of Rights N 3. Campaign Finance Reform Y 4. Ban ANWR Development Y 5. Faith-Based Charities N 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts N		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion N  8. Arm Commercial Pilots Y  9. Trade Promotion Authority N 10. Bar Funds for Intl. Court N 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Deny Home. Sec. Dept. Union N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Peter Deutsch (D)	unopposed
2002 primary	Peter Deutsch (D)	unopposed
2000 general	Peter Deutsch (D)	unopposed
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (100%); 1996 (65%); 1994 (61%); 1992 (55%)

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	161,154	69%
	Bush (R)	72,553	31%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Twentieth 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: D +19
• District Size: 218 square miles
• Population in 2000: 639,295; 99.7% urban; 0.3% rural
• Median Household Income: $44,034; 9.6% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 16.0% blue collar; 69.4% white collar; 14.6% gray collar; 11.3% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 66.9% White, 7.9% Black, 2.3% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.6% Two+ races, 0.3% Other, 20.6% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 7.9% Italian, 7.7% German, 7.5% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.