Spencer Bachus

Spencer Bachus
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Alabama's 6th district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 1993
Preceded by	Ben Erdreich
Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee
In office January 3, 2011 – January 3, 2013
Preceded by	Barney Frank
Succeeded by	Jeb Hensarling
Member of the Alabama House of Representatives from the 46th district
In office January 3, 1984 – January 3, 1987
Preceded by	Bryant Melton
Succeeded by	William Slaughter
Member of the Alabama Senate from the 17th district
In office January 3, 1983 – January 3, 1984
Preceded by	Doug Cook
Succeeded by	Mac Parsons
Personal details
Born	(1947-12-28) December 28, 1947 Birmingham, Alabama
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Linda Bachus
Children	5
Residence	Vestavia Hills, Alabama
Alma mater	Auburn University, University of Alabama School of Law
Occupation	attorney
Religion	Southern Baptist
Military service
Service/branch	United States Army National Guard
Years of service	1969–1971
Unit	Alabama

Spencer Thomas Bachus III (born December 28, 1947) is the U.S. Representative for Alabama's 6th congressional district, serving since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party and the senior member of the Alabama U.S. House delegation. The district includes most of the wealthier portions of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, along with most of their suburbs. In 2012, his record of stock and option trades (including during the 2008 financial crisis) drew scrutiny and accusations of insider trading, charges that he was subsequently cleared of by the Office of Congressional Ethics.

Early life, education, and pre-political career

Bachus was born in Birmingham, Alabama to Edith Wells and Spencer Thomas Bachus, Jr. He currently lives in Vestavia Hills, a Birmingham suburb. He graduated from Auburn University in 1969 where he became a member of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. He served in the Alabama National Guard from 1969 to 1971, during the Vietnam War, while attending law school; he earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Alabama Law School in 1972. Prior to his political career, he owned a sawmill and practiced law until 1992.

State politics

Bachus was elected to the Alabama Senate in 1982, but served only one year as new legislative elections were scheduled for 1983 when the existing district lines were declared unconstitutional. He then was elected to a seat in 1983 in the Alabama House of Representatives serving one three-year term. In 1986, he was elected as the first Republican on The Alabama State Board of Education serving just one four-year term from the 6th District. In 1990, he ran unsuccessfully for attorney general of Alabama. He became chairman of the Alabama Republican Party in 1991, serving in that position until his campaign for election to Congress.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

The 6th District and its predecessors had been based in Birmingham for over a century, but after the 1990 United States Census, the Justice Department required the state to have a black-majority district. The state legislature failed to act, and a federal court drafted a plan that significantly reconfigured both the 6th District and the neighboring 7th District. The new map shifted most of the predominantly black portions of Birmingham (which is over 60 percent black) to the 7th, which had been based in Tuscaloosa for over a century.

In the process, however, the court plan shifted most of the whiter and wealthier portions of Tuscaloosa to the 6th. Also added was Shelby County, a wealthy suburban county near Birmingham. The new 6th was almost 97 percent white, and on paper was one of the most Republican districts in the nation. Bachus immediately jumped into the race. Despite being state party chairman, he only won 39 percent of the vote in the five-candidate primary and was forced into a runoff with party activist Marty Connors. In the runoff, however, Bachus won handily with 59 percent of the vote.

Bachus then moved to the general election against five-term Democratic incumbent Ben Erdreich. Although Erdreich outspent Bachus by more than 2 to 1, he could not overcome the new district's heavy Republican tilt, as well as the fact that he was running in territory he did not know and that did not know him. Ultimately, Bachus defeated Erdreich by seven points. George H. W. Bush carried the new 6th with a staggering 71 percent of the vote, proving just how Republican this reconfigured district was. However, conservative Democrats continued to hold many local offices well into the 1990s.

Since 1992, Bachus has been re-elected nine times without anything resembling serious opposition. After defeating three underfunded Democrats with 70 percent or more of the vote, he did not face Democratic opposition at all from 2000 to 2010. John McCain carried the district in 2008 with 77 percent of the vote, his highest percentage in the nation.

Bachus was challenged in the 2004 Republican primary by Phillip Jauregui, a member of former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's legal team. Since no other party ran a candidate, victory in the Republican primary was tantamount to election in November. Jauregui claimed that Bachus wasn't doing enough to curb "judicial activism." However, Bachus won the primary easily, effectively clinching a seventh term.

In the 2010 midterm elections Bachus easily turned back a challenge from tea party activist Stan Cooke in the Republican primary, winning 75% of the vote. For the fourth election in a row, no other party even put up a candidate, assuring Bachus of a 10th term.

2012

See also: United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama, 2012#District 6

Bachus decided to run for re-election after redistricting to the newly redrawn 6th district. In the Republican primary, he drew three challengers, most notably State Senator Scott Beason. Beason ran to Bachus' right and called for "true conservative leadership." Bachus heavily outspent him. The incumbent spent over $1.5 million, outspending Beason 45-1. Bachus defeated him 59%–27%. He won every county in the district.
For the first time since 1998, faced a Democratic challenger. Colonel Penny Bailey defeated William Barnes to become the Democratic nominee.

Tenure

Bachus has a mostly, but not totally, conservative voting record, with a lifetime rating of 92 from the American Conservative Union. During his tenure as Chairman of the Banking Oversight Committee, he uncovered the Community Development Financial Institute (CDFI) incident during the Clinton administration, which led to the resignation of the top two CDFI officials. Although less adversarial during the Bush administration, he has remained an active legislator, helping to amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to curtail identity theft and ease consumer access to their credit reports. He also has a reputation for good constituent service.

On November 4, 1999, Bachus voted in favor of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which some economists, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, believe helped create the 2007 financial crisis.

On December 14, 2005 he voted for the reauthorization of the U.S. Patriot Act. On June 29, 2005 he voted for the increase of funds by another $25 million for anti-marijuana print and TV ads. On October 6, 2005 he voted for the Department of Homeland Security.

Bachus is a staunch advocate of a federal prohibition of online poker. In 2006, he cosponsored H.R. 4411, the Goodlatte-Leach Internet Gambling Prohibition Act and H.R. 4777, the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act. In 2008, he opposed H.R. 5767, the Payment Systems Protection Act (a bill that sought to place a moratorium on enforcement of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act while the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve defined "unlawful Internet gambling").

In the 1990s he became an advocate of international debt relief for the Third World, and joined a broad coalition of activists in a one-day fast to demand action, which was ultimately successful. He criticized the Bush administration in 2002 over negotiations with the genocidal regime in Sudan, and has urged Bush to stop payment of oil revenues to the Sudanese government.

In 2005, Bill Maher commented about the Army missing its recruiting goal by 42 percent in April, saying, "More people joined the Michael Jackson fan club. We've done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit, and now we need warm bodies." Bachus responded to Maher's comments, saying "I think it borders on treason. In treason, one definition is to undermine the effort or national security of our country."

Bachus also has been active in advancing the search for Natalee Holloway, who went missing while on a senior trip to Aruba. Holloway attended high school in Mountain Brook, an affluent Birmingham suburb in the congressman's district.

Bachus is a signer of Americans for Tax Reform’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge, however he did endorse what would have been Alabama's largest tax increase in history in 2003.

Stock trading

In 2007, Bachus made trades with a number of short term stock options, betting that stocks would rise or fall for a quick profit or loss. Bachus made up to $160,000, including a bet in March that the stock market would drop that earned him between $15,000 and $50,000. Most members of Congress hold some stocks or mutual funds, but Bachus' rapid-fire trades are unusual for a leading member of Congress, particularly one with the key role of ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services.

From July through November 2008, Bachus traded in options at least forty times, making money from betting against the market as it collapsed that year. During this period, Bachus was one of the Congressional leaders getting private briefings from Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke about the worsening financial crisis. Bachus said that he "never trades on non public information, or financial services stocks".

Bachus bought option funds that would go up in value if the financial market went down right before the Financial Crisis in 2008 directly following a closed door session with Fed Chairman and Treasury Secretary, in which he was informed of the pending financial crash. 60 Minutes detailed the event. On April 30, 2012 the Office of Congressional Ethics announced that they had found no evidence of violations of insider-trading rules and recommend that the case against him be closed.

Socialists claim

On April 9, 2009, Bachus claimed "Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists," later stating that 17 members of the House of Representatives are socialists.

Criticism of Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell

On November 4, 2010, while in the midst of a battle for the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee with Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) and immediately following the 2010 general election, Bachus told the South Shelby (Ala.) Chamber of Commerce that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and candidates she endorsed cost the Republican Party control of the U.S. Senate. “The Senate would be Republican today except for states (in which Gov. Palin endorsed candidates) like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware,” Bachus said. “Sarah Palin cost us control of the Senate.” He went on to say that Tea Party candidates did well in U.S. House races, but in the U.S. Senate races, “they didn’t do well at all.” Bachus would later backtrack from his comments.

Conservative writers and lawmakers including Hugh Hewitt, BigGovernment.com's Rich Muny, and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) immediately defended both Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, crediting them with gains in both the House and the Senate. Hewitt and Muny further demanded that Bachus not be awarded chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. Palin responded with criticism of the "Bachus bigger government agenda," citing Bachus' support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and "Cash for Clunkers."

Congress' relationship to banks

In an interview where he spoke about the outlook he would bring to his chairmanship of the Financial Services Committee, Bachus received criticism for suggesting that it was government's role to "serve the banks". To the Birmingham News, Bachus said "In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks." Bachus later clarified his words by saying that he meant that regulators should set guidelines for banks but not micromanage them.

Committee assignments

Spencer Bachus as Chair of the House Financial Services Committee

• Committee on Financial Services (Chairman Emeritus)

Caucus memberships

• Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus
• Congressional Caucus on Turkey and Turkish Americans
• Congressional Cement Caucus
• Congressional China Caucus
• Congressional Fire Services Caucus
• Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus
• Congressional Steel Caucus
• Friends of Switzerland Caucus
• House Cancer Caucus
• International Conservation Caucus
• Passenger Rail Caucus
• Republican Study Committee

Personal life

Bachus and his wife Linda are the parents of five children.

Electoral history

Alabama's 6th congressional district: Results 1992–2010

Year		Democrat	Votes	Pct		Republican	Votes	Pct		3rd Party	Party	Votes	Pct		3rd Party	Party	Votes	Pct
1992		Ben Erdreich	126,062	45.00%		Spencer Bachus	146,599	52.23%		Carla Cloum	Independent	4,521	1.61%		Mark Bodenhausen	Libertarian	2,836	1.01%	*
1994		Larry Fortenberry	41,030	20.91%		Spencer Bachus	155,047	79.02%											*
1996		Mary Lynn Bates	69,592	27.31%		Spencer Bachus	180,781	70.93%		T. Franklin Harris	Libertarian	2,293	0.90%		Diane Susan Vogel	Natural Law	2,113	0.83%	*
1998		Donna W. Smalley	60,657	28.14%		Spencer Bachus	154,761	71.79%											*
2000		(no candidate)				Spencer Bachus	212,751	87.94%		Terry Reagin	Libertarian	28,189	11.65%		Write-ins		977	0.41%
2002		(no candidate)				Spencer Bachus	178,171	89.83%		J. Holden McAllister	Libertarian	19,639	9.90%		Write-ins		536	0.27%
2004		(no candidate)				Spencer Bachus	264,819	98.80%		Write-ins		3,224	1.20%
2006		(no candidate)				Spencer Bachus	163,514	98.33%		Write-ins		2,786	1.68%
2008		(no candidate)				Spencer Bachus	280,902	97.79%		Write-ins		6,335	2.21%
2010		(no candidate)				Spencer Bachus	205,288	98.05%		Write-ins		4,076	1.95%

*Write-in and minor candidate notes: In 1992, write-ins received 121 votes. In 1994, write-ins received 145 votes. In 1996, write-ins received 80 votes. In 1998, write-ins received 164 votes.

External links

• U.S. Congressman Spencer Bachus official U.S. House site
• Spencer Bachus for U.S. Congress official campaign site
• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Biography at Ballotpedia
• Biography, voting record, and interest group ratings at Project Vote Smart
• Congressional profile at GovTrack
• Congressional profile at Roll Call
• Congressional profile at OpenCongress
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Financial information (federal office) at OpenSecrets.org
• Staff salaries, trips and personal finance (federal office) at LegiStorm.com
• Issue positions and quotes at On the Issues
• Voting record at The Washington Post
• Appearances on C-SPAN programs
• Collected news and commentary at The Washington Post
• Profile at SourceWatch
• Collected news and commentary from Politico
• Spencer Bachus On Rethinking Regulation, Brian Wingfield, Forbes, September 21, 2009
• Rep. Spencer Bachus to Politico: "Slow Down" Reform Process (video), Mike Allen, GOP.gov blog, June 15, 2010, interview about financial reform

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by Ben Erdreich	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Alabama's 6th congressional district 1993 – present	Succeeded by Incumbent
Political offices
Preceded by Barney Frank Massachusetts	Chairman of House Financial Services Committee 2011–2013	Succeeded by Jeb Hensarling Texas
United States order of precedence
Preceded by Jim Cooper D-Tennessee	United States Representatives by seniority 49th	Succeeded by Xavier Becerra D-California