Ohio: Eighth District

Rep. John Boehner (R)

John Boehner (R) Elected 1990, 9th term up
Born:	11-17-1949, Cincinnati
Home:	West Chester
Education:	Xavier U., B.S. 1977
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Debbie)
Elected  Office:	Union Township Bd. of Trustees, 1981–85, Pres., 1984; OH House of Reps., 1984–90.
Military Career:	Navy, 1969.
Professional Career:	Pres., Nucite Sales Inc., 1976–90.
DC Office	1011 LHOB, 20515 202-225-6205 Fax: 202-225-0704 Website: www.johnboehner.house.gov
State Offices	Troy:937-339-1524; West Chester:513-779-5400;
Additional Info
Committees · Ratings · Key Votes · Election Results District Demographics
More On Ohio
At A Glance · State Profile District Map Redistricting ·Almanac Home
Recent News Coverage
Search the CongressDaily, Hotline, House Race Hotline, and National Journal archives using the form above:

The far west end of Ohio—where U.S. 40, the old National Road, heads straight as an arrow in its last miles across Ohio to Indiana, and the rail lines crisscross the land from Cincinnati to Dayton—has since the early 20th century housed some of the nation’s prime industrial country. Here the Great and Little Miami rivers drain south into the Ohio; U.S. 40 jogs southward twice to go over the Miami and Stillwater River dams, built after the great flood of 1913 that killed 361 people in Dayton and caused $1 billion in damage. Around Dayton and Cincinnati, in large factory towns like Middletown and Hamilton and smaller factory towns like Troy and Piqua, Ohioans, after the recession of the early 1980s, adapted to new conditions and began to produce exports to Europe, Latin America and Asia as well as for the American market. At the same time people leaving the central cities of Dayton and Cincinnati moved into new subdivisions amid new shopping malls and office parks in Butler County, between those two cities. Hamilton, the Butler County seat founded in 1791 and named after the Treasury Secretary then, lost jobs when International Paper shut down a plant, but many more were created all around it. Hamilton has rallied: In the 1950s it refused to let I-75 through town, but it got the state to build Route 129 to link it with I-75 and the growth it has brought. The result has been retail development and a new hospital satellite center.

The 8th Congressional District of Ohio covers much of this territory. It includes all of Butler County (except four lightly populated townships), two counties to the north on the Indiana line and part of a third. It also includes Miami County north of Dayton and the northeastern corner of Montgomery County, including part of Dayton, all of Huber Heights and part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Politically, this is very Republican territory; the district voted 61% for George W. Bush in 2000 and 64% in 2004. In September 2004 Bush appeared at a rally here that attracted 50,000 people; some called it the largest political rally in Ohio history.

The congressman from the 8th District is John Boehner (pronounced BAY-ner), a Republican first elected in 1990 and now the House Minority Leader. Boehner grew up in Cincinnati, the second oldest of 12 children in a home with two bedrooms; his father ran Andy’s Café, a neighborhood bar. Playing at a much heavier weight than he is now, he was a linebacker for Cincinnati’s Archbishop Moeller high school on a team coached by Gerry Faust, before Faust went to Notre Dame.

Boehner graduated from Xavier University, the first college graduate in his family. He moved to Butler County and became financially comfortable after working for and eventually taking over a small business that sold plastics for packaging; he had a knack for attracting new customers. He served on the Union Township Board of Trustees, and in 1984, at 34, was elected to the Ohio House. He won the congressional seat in the 1990 primary, by beating not one but two of his predecessors—incumbent Buz Lukens, who inexplicably ran after he was convicted of having sex with a 16-year-old girl, and Tom Kindness, who gave up the seat to run against Senator John Glenn in 1986 and then, as Boehner put it, deserted the district to become a Washington lobbyist. Boehner won 49%, to 32% for Kindness and 17% for Lukens. Boehner has since been reelected without difficulty.

In the House, Boehner joined the Gang of Seven, young freshman Republicans who insisted on revealing the names of all 355 members who had overdrafts at the House bank, and then went on to assail Democratic leaders and Republican go-alongers on the pay raise and the House Post Office scandal. Boehner’s Gang of Seven infuriated House veterans, but they struck a chord around the nation. In the process Boehner became a top lieutenant of Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, raising money for Republican candidates and managing Gingrich’s campaign for Republican leader. He was a major player in drafting and championing the 10-point Contract With America. After the 1994 election, he ran for chairman of the Republican Conference and, with Gingrich’s backing, beat California’s Duncan Hunter 122–102.

That made Boehner number four in the Republican leadership, and he worked hard to prepare the party message and to enforce discipline on issues from repealing the assault weapons ban to fielding ethics charges against Gingrich. Boehner also pushed for the Freedom to Farm bill in 1996, which sought to phase out most subsidies. But in 1998 Congress started voting disaster relief for farmers; Boehner led the fight against the House’s 2002 farm bill, which restored subsidies.

The Gingrich years were a turbulent time for Boehner. The ethics investigation of Gingrich placed Boehner in the middle of a legal altercation after a Florida couple taped Boehner’s cell phone conversation with Republican leaders while he was driving through the state. The couple, Democratic activists, presented the tape to their congresswoman, Karen Thurman, who suggested they turn it over to Jim McDermott of Washington, senior Democrat on the House ethics committee, who then made the contents available to The New York Times. In 1998 Boehner sued McDermott in federal court for invasion of privacy; the trial judge ruled that the suit would infringe First Amendment rights, but the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision. McDermott appealed to the Supreme Court, which decided another case instead and sent this one back to the D.C. Circuit, which sent it to District Court. Despite attempts to settle the case, the two could not agree on terms. In October 2004 the judge ruled that McDermott must pay Boehner $60,000 plus attorney’s fees; the next month the 7th District’s Dave Hobson filed an ethics committee complaint against McDermott. In December 2006, the committee concluded that McDermott’s actions were “not consistent with the spirit of the [ethics] rules,” but it did not call for sanctions. In July 2007, after the D.C. appeals court ruled 5–4 in favor of Boehner, McDermott said that he would take his case to the Supreme Court on the grounds that it raises First Amendment issues.

After Republicans lost five seats in the 1998 election, Boehner was challenged for the conference chairmanship by J.C. Watts of Oklahoma. Some Republicans believed that Boehner had been part of the July 1997 coup attempt against Newt Gingrich, and Boehner’s fate was probably sealed when Dick Armey held the majority leadership even though he had misled members about his role in the coup. Even though Gingrich had resigned, someone else had to go; it was Boehner, who lost 121–93. After such a loss many members withdraw from legislative work. But Boehner plunged into action as chairman of the Employer-Employee Relations Subcommittee. In six months, the subcommittee passed eight bills restructuring managed care and health insurance; Speaker Dennis Hastert, pleased by Boehner’s initiative and dismayed that other committees had not acted, adopted these as the Republican health care agenda.

After the 2000 election Boehner sought the chairmanship of the Education and the Workforce Committee. Incumbent William Goodling was retiring; also seeking the job were second ranking Republican Tom Petri and the less senior Pete Hoekstra. Boehner got Armey’s support and Hastert told him, “If I were you, I’d go ahead.” Boehner, like many others, had long considered the committee a “partisan pit.” Since 1960 Democrats had assigned only union loyalists to the committee and most Republican members took stands on employment issues opposed by industrial unions and stands on education opposed by teachers’ unions. The basic education bill was up for reauthorization. Boehner knew that that would be the committee’s first order of business and that George W. Bush’s education proposals were one of his top priorities. So he tried to encourage a sense of bipartisanship. Miller had been teaching school dropouts and believed that current programs weren’t teaching disadvantaged children what they should, and he became convinced that Bush and Boehner shared his concern. So Boehner and Miller worked together on the House bill, which ended up including Bush’s principles of annual testing and accountability. It passed committee with six Republicans and one Democrat opposed and passed on the floor 384–45.

Negotiations continued during summer and fall between Boehner, Miller, Senator Edward Kennedy and ranking Senate Republican Judd Gregg. The final agreements came in November, and in December the House passed the bill 381–41, with most of the nays from Republicans (including Tom DeLay), and the Senate 87–10. Bush came to Hamilton High School to sign the bill in January 2002. As a sign of Boehner's enduring partnership with Kennedy, the two sponsored an annual dinner in Washington that raised more than a million dollars for underfunded Roman Catholic schools in Washington, D.C., and featured motivational speakers (including Laura Bush) and good-natured ribbing between the two hosts.

In 2003 and 2004 Boehner worked on reauthorization of IDEA, the special education act. This again was a bipartisan undertaking. Teacher’s unions were seeking a relaxation of IDEA’s requirement that administrators take special ed students’ disabilities into account when disciplining them and that Individualized Education Programs be submitted annually for each special ed student. The House version relaxed the discipline requirement; the Senate version didn’t. The differences were ironed out in conference committee after the November 2004 election. The final bill retained the requirement that disabilities be taken into account on discipline, provided stronger certification requirements and withholding of state funds if local districts fail to comply with the act. Waivers were authorized for 15 states on paperwork requirements. To complaints that Congress has funded only 19% of special ed costs, rather than the 40% authorized by IDEA in 1975, Boehner agreed to discretionary increases through 2011.

The committee also tackled the complex issue of pensions. In 2003, Boehner steered bipartisan passage of a bill requiring employers to use a blend of corporate bond rates when calculating payments funding their pension plans; the Senate passed the measure in January 2004 and Bush signed it into law in April. As bankrupt airlines handed over their pension obligations to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, Boehner in January 2005 said, “We have a huge pension underfunding problem,” and called for bipartisan action. But when the AFL-CIO encouraged unions to keep pension funds away from financial service firms that backed the Bush Social Security changes, Boehner charged the unions would be making illegal investment decisions based on politics. With bipartisan support, he renewed his push for a comprehensive plan. Months of painstaking House-Senate negotiations were required, with Boehner playing an instrumental role. The eventual reforms, passed in summer 2006,  “represent the most sweeping changes to American pension laws in more than 30 years,” he said. The legislation closed loopholes that had permitted many companies to underfund their plans by an estimated $450 billion, and set deadlines for them to make payments, with additional time for financially-strapped airlines. It also included provisions such as automatic enrollment in 401(k) plans for many workers, and Boehner-backed steps to make information more available to employees. It was one of the rare moments in recent legislative history when a party leader was instrumental in enacting his own major legislation, which had been several years in the making.

On student loans, Boehner set out to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, on a budget-neutral basis. He and Miller showed little interest in George W. Bush’s proposal to extend the No Child Left Behind approach to high schools. But they failed to reach their own agreement while Boehner was chairman.

When a Texas grand jury indictment forced Tom DeLay to step aside as Majority Leader in September 2005, Boehner publicly remained mum as Hastert tapped Majority Whip Roy Blunt to serve as acting leader. But he quietly stepped up his planning for a showdown that he had been expecting for many months. His contest against Blunt officially began on Jan. 7, 2006, when DeLay announced that he would abandon efforts to regain his leadership post. Blunt had styled himself as heir apparent, but Boehner believed that restiveness among House Republicans might support an insurgency-type challenge. “You have to know where you are going,” he said in a veiled challenge to increasingly reactive GOP leadership. He offered a 37-page campaign manifesto, “A Majority that Matters,” on which he had worked with aides and advisers for more than a year. It included a call for “one big, bold goal” each year, plus more deference to committees by GOP leaders. He sought to invigorate a tired—and, as became clear later that year, defensive—leadership. In the three-candidate race, John Shadegg was forced out after the first ballot when he got 40 votes to 110 for Blunt and 79 for Boehner. But Boehner got most of the Shadegg vote plus some of Blunt’s first-ballot support and won 122–109.

Profiles often focus on his stylistic differences with Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay, and tend to depict Boehner as a Barclay-smoking, eternally-tanned golfer—true enough, including the fact that his Ohio home backs onto the tenth green of his golf course. Indeed, he is more outgoing than Hastert and less of an ideologue than DeLay. But Boehner is at least as much of a partisan and legislative activist as either of them. As Majority Leader, after taking some time to establish a working relationship with Hastert, Boehner soon focused on lobbying reform legislation. Like many Republicans, he was less enthusiastic about Hastert’s call for strict limits on privately-funded travel for lawmakers. Instead, Boehner wanted to restrict the explosion of spending earmarks, especially from the Appropriations Committee. He proudly noted that he had never sought an earmark for his own district, though he did not seek to impose that standard for the entire House. On immigration reform, he dropped his earlier advocacy of a middle ground rather than buck most House Republicans, who insisted on a harder line. He remained an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq as part of the fight against terrorism, and he told reporters in September 2006, “I wonder if [Democrats] are more interested in protecting terrorists than protecting the American people.” After the resignation of Congressman Mark Foley following revelations of his e-mails with House pages, Boehner got into an awkward situation when he told reporters that he was "99 percent" sure he had earlier relayed to Hastert a warning about Foley from another House Republican. In October, he visited the districts of many endangered House Republicans and made numerous national media appearances, largely in a bid to turn out the Republican vote. Although he was disappointed by the party’s loss of House control, he took some satisfaction that Ohio's House Republicans kept their losses to one seat. After Hastert said that he was stepping down from GOP leadership, Boehner was challenged by Mike Pence for Minority Leader. Despite Pence’s efforts to appeal to grass-roots conservatives, Boehner won in a breeze, 168–27. “To earn our majority back, House Republicans must rededicate ourselves to the spirit of reform and we must regain our confidence and courage to tackle the big issues the American people care about,” he said following his selection.

Committees

• Minority Leader.
  

Presidential Vote

District Demographics (More Info)

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: R +12
• Area size: 2,031 square miles
• Urban Population: 78.1%
• Rural Population: 21.9%
• Population 2000: 630,730
• Population 2005 (est): 644,530
• Median Income: $43,753
• Poverty Status: 8.8%
• Military Veterans: 13.8%
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 91.8% White; 4.4% Black; 1.2% Asian; 0.2% Native Am.; 0.0% Hawaiian; 1.1% Two+ races; 0.1% Other; 1.3% Hispanic Origin;
• Ancestry: 22.0% German%; 9.8% USA%; 8.9% Irish%;
• Occupation: Blue collar 29.9%; White collar 56.0%; Gray collar 14.0%;