Jim Moran

This article is about the U.S. Congressman from Virginia. For other people named James Moran, see James Moran (disambiguation). For his brother, see Brian Moran.

Jim Moran
Official Congressional portrait from 2006
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 8th district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 1991
Preceded by	Stanford Parris
Mayor of Alexandria, Virginia
In office 1985–1990
Preceded by	Charles E. Beatley
Succeeded by	Patsy Ticer
Personal details
Born	(1945-05-16) May 16, 1945 Buffalo, New York, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	LuAnn L. Bennett (m. 2004) Mary Howard (1988–2003)
Relations	James Patrick Moran (father) Brian Moran (brother)
Children	Four
Residence(s)	Arlington, Virginia, U.S.
Alma mater	College of the Holy Cross (B.A.) University of Pittsburgh (M.P.A.)
Occupation	Investment broker Federal employee
Signature
Website	Official House website Campaign website

James Patrick "Jim" Moran, Jr. (/mˈræn/; born May 16, 1945) is the U.S. Representative for Virginia's 8th congressional district, serving since 1991. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district is located in Northern Virginia and includes the cities of Falls Church and Alexandria, as well as a portion of Fairfax County and all of Arlington County.

Jim Moran was the mayor of Alexandria, Virginia for five years from 1985 to 1990, when he resigned to run for Congress. He defeated Republican incumbent Stanford Parris in the general election on November 6, 1990, and was sworn in the following January. Since then he has served ten consecutive terms as a member of the Congress. He is of Irish American descent and is the brother of former Virginia State Delegate and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brian Moran who currently serves as Chairperson of the Democratic Party of Virginia, as well as the son of professional football player James Patrick Moran, Sr.

Early life, education and career

Moran, one of seven children, was born in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in Natick, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. His parents, James Patrick Moran, Sr., a professional Football player for the Boston Redskins in the 1930s, and Dorothy, were both Roosevelt Democrats and supporters of the New Deal.

Moran attended Marian High School in Framingham, Massachusetts, before earning a B.A. in economics (1967) at the College of the Holy Cross, where he played college Football, and a Master of Public Administration (1970) at the University of Pittsburgh. Moran admitted in 1992 that he had experimented with marijuana during his early twenties.

Moran secured an internship in financial management at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and spent five years there as a budget officer. He was a senior specialist for budgetary and fiscal policy at the Library of Congress, and then was on the staff of U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations from 1976 to 1979 under Warren Magnuson's sponsorship.

He was elected to the Alexandria, Virginia, City Council in 1979. He was deputy mayor from 1982 until his resignation in 1984 as part of a nolo contendere plea bargain to a misdemeanor conflict of interest charge, which courts later erased. The incident stemmed from charges that Moran had used money from a political action committee to rent a tuxedo and buy Christmas cards; both of which were later judged by the Commonwealth Attorney to "fit the definition of constituent services", and were dismissed. In 1985 Moran was elected Mayor of Alexandria.

U.S. House of Representatives

Committee assignments

• Committee on Appropriations
  • Subcommittee on Defense
  • Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies (Ranking Member)

Caucus memberships

• LGBT Equality Caucus (member)
• Congressional Progressive Caucus (member)
• Congressional Bike Caucus (member)
• New Democrat Coalition (co-founder)
• Sudan Caucus (member)
• Sportsmen's Caucus
• International Conservation Caucus

Congressional career

Moran represents Virginia's 8th congressional district, an area in Northern Virginia that is just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.; the district includes Arlington county, and the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church. The redistricting that followed the 2000 census also gave Moran a portion of Reston, Virginia. His district is located in the Dulles Technology Corridor and is the home of many federal defense contractors as well as a significant number of those who work in the information technology industry. Many federal employees also reside within the district, mostly due to its proximity to Washington and because both the United States Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, among others, are headquartered there.

File:Jim Moran on C-SPAN.png

Moran speaking on the House floor in 1993, shown in a C-SPAN broadcast.

During the mid nineties, Moran co-founded and later co-chaired the Democratic Leadership Council, a coalition of Democratic lawmakers who report to be moderates when considering commerce, budgeting, and economic legislation, but will vote as a liberal would on social issues. Moran is also a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), the largest caucus operating within the Democratic caucus, which works to advance progressive issues and opinions. He joined the caucus prior to the 111th Congress.

In 1995, Moran had to be restrained by the Capitol Police after a shoving match with California Republican Duke Cunningham on the house floor over President Bill Clinton's decision to send U.S. troops to Bosnia. "I thought he had been bullying too many people for too long, and I told him so," Moran recalled. "He said he didn't mean to be so accusatory... After that, he would bring me candy from California." Moran claims that after the encounter he later found Cunningham crying in the cloakroom.

Moran was critical of the President during the final years of the Clinton administration: In 1998, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Moran was one of only 31 House Democrats to support launching a formal impeachment inquiry into President Bill Clinton. He told Time magazine that "This whole sordid mess is just too tawdry and tedious and embarrassing... It's like a novel that just became too full of juicy parts and bizarre, sleazy characters." Moran is also reported to have told First Lady Hillary Clinton that if she had been his sister, he would have punched her husband in the nose. Moran eventually decided not to vote for impeachment, explaining that Clinton had not compromised the country's security, and that he still respected him for what he had accomplished as President. He still proposed a resolution demanding that Clinton confess to a pattern of "dishonest and illegal conduct" surrounding his sexual involvement with Monica Lewinsky.

Moran has been voted High Technology Legislator of the Year by the Information Technology Industry Council and has been voted into the American Electronics Association Hall of Fame for his work on avoiding the Year 2000 crisis and his support of the IT Industry and defense contractors in Northern Virginia. He cosponsored failed bills in 2005 to provide the District of Columbia with a House seat and to prohibit slaughter of horses.

Jim Moran and Sheila Jackson Lee protesting outside the Sudanese embassy

On April 28, 2006, Moran, along with four other members of Congress, the now-deceased Rep. Tom Lantos of California, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, and James McGovern and John Olver of Massachusetts; as well as six other activists, was arrested for disorderly conduct in front of the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C., and spent 45 minutes in a jail cell before being released. They were protesting the alleged role of Sudan's government in ethnic cleansing in Darfur. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Their protest and civil disobedience was designed to embarrass the military dictatorship's ongoing genocide of its non-Arab citizens."

The day after the Virginia Tech Massacre in 2007, Moran told a local radio station that the assault weapons ban should be reinstated and blamed the National Rifle Association, which he accused of getting a "free ride", and President George W. Bush for blocking gun control legislation. He further warned that if gun control legislation was not passed, then shootings such as the one at Virginia Tech will happen "time and time again." He later dismissed charges that he was politicizing the shooting, telling Politico that "as a legislator, your immediate reaction is to think something could be done to avoid this. I don't know why the idea of figuring out how to avoid it is a political partisan issue."

A few days before the 2008 Virginia Democratic primaries, Moran endorsed Senator Barack Obama of Illinois for the presidency over New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Explaining his endorsement, he told a local newspaper that the long term goal of closing Alexandria's coal-fired power plant would be more attainable under Obama than under Clinton. Obama later won the primaries and later the general election to win the presidency.

Moran, accompanied by his wife, LuAnn Bennett, being sworn into a tenth term in the House of Representatives by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2007.

In May 2009, Moran introduced a bill that would restrict broadcast advertisements for erectile dysfunction or male enhancement medication. He said that such ads were indecent and should be prohibited on radio and television between the hours of 6 am and 10 pm, in accordance with Federal Communications Commission policy. Later that year, Moran and former presidential candidate and former Governor of Vermont Howard Dean held a town hall meeting on the issue of Health Care at South Lakes High School in Reston, Virginia. The meeting was interrupted several times by protesters, most notably anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, who, along with about half a dozen supporters, caused such a commotion that he had to be escorted out by police. The incident was replayed several times over the next few weeks on television as an example of the tension at town halls that fall.

The following February he made a call on the House floor for the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the military policy of discharging soldiers on active duty who are openly homosexual. He spoke about a letter penned by a gay soldier who was then serving in the Afghanistan War, who had "learned that a fellow soldier was also gay, only after he was killed by an IED in Iraq. The partner of the deceased soldier wrote the unit to say how much the victim had loved the military; how they were the only family he had ever known... This immutable human trait, sexual orientation, like the color of one's skin, does not affect one’s integrity, their honor, our commitment to their country. Soldiers serving their country in combat should not have their sacrifices compounded by having to struggle with an antiquated Don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Let's do the right and honorable thing and repeal this policy."

Moran is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, a position he uses to allocate federal funding to projects in Northern Virginia, usually in the technology and defense industries. He also assisted in authorizing the replacement of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, a bridge between Alexandria, Virginia, and Prince George's County, Maryland, which had gained a reputation over the years among Northern Virginia residents as the site of numerous rush-hour traffic jams.

On March 9, 2010, Moran was named to succeed Norm Dicks of Washington as the chairman of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. Dicks ceded the chairmanship of the Interior Appropriations subcommittee in order to replace the recently deceased John Murtha as the chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The chairmanship gave Moran authority over appropriations to the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts; among other things. Moran said he was excited to be able to play a role in protecting the environment and conserving natural resources. Moran became the ranking member of the subcommittee after the Democratic Party lost control of the House of Representatives following the 2010 midterm elections.

After President Obama's 2011 State of the Union Address, Moran was interviewed by Alhurra, an Arab television network. During the interview, he said, "a lot of people in [the United States of America]...don't want to be governed by an African-American" and that the Democrats lost seats in the 2010 election for "the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States...the Southern states, particularly the slaveholding states, didn't want to see a president who was opposed to slavery." The remarks received national media attention. The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin said the remarks were "beyond uncivil" and "obnoxious".

Moran occasionally makes appearances on MSNBC, usually on Hardball with Chris Matthews and The Ed Show.

Political positions

Economy and budget

Moran often breaks with his party on economic issues, supporting Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and other free trade agreements, harsher bankruptcy laws, and increased restrictions on the right to bring class action suits.

He supports attempting to strengthen Social Security, calling it "a safe, stable, and dependable source of financial assistance for retirees and their families." He also states that he strongly opposes privatizing Social Security, saying that it would "cripple the system". It is his position that any changes to the current system must "promote its long-term solvency without disrupting the core principles on which the program was founded."

Moran says he supports Federal oversight of financial institutions. He voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Reform and Accountability Act. He says he supports pay-as-you-go budgeting and believes "that the American government needs to strive to build up a surplus when possible, so that there are funds to support and sustain our country during tough financial times." Moran has also called former President George W. Bush "Fiscally irresponsible."

Moran has said he supports the redistribution of wealth, saying that "We have been guided by a Republican administration who believes in this simplistic notion that people who have wealth are entitled to keep it and they have an antipathy towards the means of redistributing wealth." He also says on his website that the recession was largely "a result of the imbalance in the distribution of wealth over the last eight years and an absence of oversight and accountability."

Public welfare and defense

Moran has expressed support for Universal Healthcare and more specifically the public health insurance option, saying at a town hall meeting in Reston, Virginia, in August 2009 that "It could do the most to bring down long-term medical costs and to adequately insure every American." Moran voted for the Affordable Health Care for America Act, which passed on November 7, 2009, saying about the bill on his website that the "cost of doing nothing is simply too high for the American people to carry who today pay more than twice what people everywhere else on earth pay but yet live no longer nor healthier lives".

Moran does not support granting statehood to the District of Columbia. However, he has voted to allow Washington, D.C., to send a voting representative to the United States Congress.

Moran voted against authorizing the Iraq War in 2002 and did not support the troop increase for the Afghanistan War proposed by President Barack Obama in 2009, saying first that he appreciated Obama's "careful consideration regarding the U.S.'s engagement in Afghanistan", but later defining the issues on which he and the President disagreed:

"Our security concern is Al-Qaeda, not the Taliban. Eight years ago we went into Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaeda and the “safe haven” that Afghanistan’s Taliban were providing the terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda has no significant presence today in all of Afghanistan.... Instead of increasing our troop presence, the U.S. should limit its mission in Afghanistan to securing strategic Afghan population centers with the troops currently on the ground."

Moran has listed the environment as one of his top issues, citing his high marks from the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club. He has used his positions as a member of the Appropriations Committee and as chairman of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee to allocate federal funding for hiking trails and wildlife reserves in his district.

He has also voted to ban logging on federal lands and for stronger prohibitions of animal fighting. He has criticized the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for inaction on climate change, saying that "EPA had a historic opportunity to tackle head-on one of the greatest threats to our existence—global warming. Instead they balked under pressure from the administration, concluding the problem is so complex and controversial that it cannot be resolved." He has also endorsed and voted for the Clean Air Act and says that global warming is an important issue to him. In 2010, Moran also expressed discontent with President Barack Obama's decision to allow oil drilling off the coast of the United States.

Social issues

Moran speaking at an event for Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Moran has voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, the Federal Marriage Amendment, and he is in favor of repealing the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. He also supports gun control, voting for the Brady Bill and supporting a reinstatement of the Assault Weapons Ban. At different times he has voted to ban flag-burning and partial-birth abortions, though he has reversed his positions on both issues. On education, he has expressed support for the public education system, universal pre-kindergarten, and full funding for the No Child Left Behind program. Moran has been given a 100% rating by the NARAL and 0% by the National Right to Life Committee, indicating a pro-choice voting record. He also voted to expand research of embryonic Stem Cells and to allow minors to go across state lines to receive abortions.

On immigration, Moran supports a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants and does not support decreasing the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country or the enforcement of federal immigration laws by state and local police. He was a cosponsor of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform ASAP Act of 2009 (H.R.4321), which the House did not pass. He has been given an overall immigration reduction grade of D by NumbersUSA. The American Immigration Lawyers Association has scored him as having voted 31 times for the organization's position and 7 times against the organization's position.

He was one of the only 75 members of the House of Representatives to vote no on a bill that would cease federal funding for community organizer ACORN in September 2009.

Controversies

Reputed conflicts of interest

MBNA loan

Moran's support for harsher bankruptcy law provisions and sponsorship of stricter bankruptcy legislation brought allegations in 2002 that his support came in return for financial favors by financial institutions which could benefit from such laws. In January 1998, one month before he introduced the legislation, credit card bank MBNA advocated that it would restrict the ability of consumer debtors to declare bankruptcy. Moran received a favorable debt consolidation loan from the bank that allowed him to avoid personal bankruptcy arising from credit card and stock market losses. The $447,000 loan at a favorable interest rate was the largest loan to an individual MBNA issued in 1998. Its belated disclosure triggered a Federal Elections Commission investigation into whether or not it constituted an improper contribution.

The Lieutenant Governor of Virginia at the time, Tim Kaine, joined Republican lawmakers in calling for a House Ethics Committee investigation into the loan, saying that Moran had made "an error in judgment" by accepting it. In his own defense, Moran said that the timing of the legislation's introduction was coincidental and had nothing to do with the loan. MBNA spokesman Brian Dalphon said that the bank had offered the mortgage package not knowing that Moran was a member of Congress, and that the loan "made good business sense" because with the mortgage loan, "we improved our position by getting security for an unsecured loan.... He had credit cards with us, he was having financial difficulties; this put him in a better position to be able to pay us back from a cash-flow standpoint."

PMA Group

The House Ethics Committee investigated several members of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, including Moran, Peter J. Visclosky, Norm Dicks, Marcy Kaptur and the late John Murtha, who was the chairman at the time, for a conflict of interest in the allocation of the government contracts to PMA Group, which donated nearly a million dollars to Moran's political action committee, as well as a significant amount of money to the gubernatorial campaign of Moran's younger brother, Brian. Moran defended himself; saying that he was unaware of "who made donations", and "how much they gave", and therefore was not affected by the donations when allocating the funding. The panel cleared Murtha (albeit posthumously), Moran, and the rest of those under investigation in February 2010, saying that they violated no laws. The panel concluded that "simply because a member sponsors an earmark for an entity that also happens to be a campaign contributor... does not support a claim that a member's actions are being influenced by campaign contributions" in a 305-page report. After PMA's founder, Paul Magliocchetti, plead guilty to campaign finance fraud, Moran faced calls to return $177,700 in PMA Group-related donations that he has received over twenty years, but he refused.

AIPAC and the Iraq War

Comments prior to the Invasion of Iraq

Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Moran told an antiwar audience in Reston, Virginia, that if "it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this. The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should". This brought criticism from many of his own party, including, among others, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle and Senator Joe Lieberman. Nancy Pelosi, who was House Minority Leader at the time, remarked that "Moran's comments have no place in the Democratic Party."

Moran apologized for the remarks, saying that "I should not have singled out the Jewish community and regret giving any impression that its members are somehow responsible for the course of action being pursued by the administration, or are somehow behind an impending war... What I was trying to say is that if more organizations in this country, including religious groups, were more outspoken against war, then I do not think we would be pursuing war as an option."

Criticism of AIPAC

Moran was criticized by Jewish groups again in 2007 for remarks made in an issue of Tikkun, a California-based Jewish magazine, which were said to have placed blame for the Iraq War on the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. Moran told Tikkun that AIPAC is "[t]he most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning. I don't think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful - most of them are quite wealthy - they have been able to exert power."

Moran's remarks were criticized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the National Jewish Democratic Council. Ronald Halber, executive director of the first group, said that Moran "uses several age-old canards that have been used throughout history that have brought violence upon Jews... He uses clearly anti-Semitic images such as Jewish control of the media and wealthy Jews using their wealth to control policy." He was also criticized by many House Democrats, including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Energy and Commerce committee chairman Henry Waxman, who said that Moran's remarks were inaccurate and "deeply offensive". House Republican Whip, the sole Republican Jewish member of Congress, and fellow Representative from Virginia Eric Cantor said that Moran's remarks were "bigoted".

However, Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun, defended Moran's position, writing in the September–October issue of his magazine that "It's the kind of statement I would have made to any religious community, or to any labor movement audience, citing their own failures to act as a critical factor in why we had gotten involved." Moran stood by his remarks in the interview, saying in a separate interview that the pro-Israel lobby had not represented mainstream U.S. Jewish opinion in recent years, most notably with its Middle East policies, which he characterized as directly aligned with those of the Bush administration. In a statement Moran further affirmed that it was not his position American Jews were responsible for the Iraq War, and that his remarks to the magazine were directed solely at AIPAC. It stated that Moran "recognizes the progressive nature of the Jewish community as a whole, and notes that if the rest of America voted the way Jews vote, the U.S. would not be in the war in Iraq today, and would have health care for all, and would not be involved in discriminatory treatment of gays or of immigrants."

"Taliban ticket"

In 2009 Moran was speaking at a get out the vote rally for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds when he said "I mean, if the Republicans were running in Afghanistan, they'd be running on the Taliban ticket as far as I can see." Moran was referring to the Virginia Republican ticket of Bob McDonnell, Bill Bolling, and Ken Cuccinelli. A McDonnell spokesperson said the comment was "negative" and "vicious".

2011 town hall incident

Moran held an emergency town hall meeting in April 2011 to discuss the possibility of a government shutdown. A person who identified himself as a 27-year military veteran asked why Moran wasn't working in Congress to prevent the shutdown, and whether members of the military would be paid during the shutdown. Moran said the question was "caustic", at which point the veteran said he took exception to labeling his comment as caustic. A heated exchange began, and Moran told the veteran to "sit down...or you can leave". Conservatives heavily criticized Moran for his reaction.

Political campaigns

Moran first won election to the United States House of Representatives in 1990, after defeating Republican incumbent Stanford Parris. During the campaign, Parris compared Moran to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein; saying that "The only three people I know who support Saddam Hussein's position are Moammar Gadhafi, Yasser Arafat and Jim Moran." Moran angrily responded by saying that Parris was a "a deceitful, fatuous jerk", and that he wanted "to break his nose". Moran's well-financed campaign also focused on Parris' opposition to abortion. Moran upset the Congressman, winning the race by almost ten points. He was sworn into office on January 3, 1991.

In the next two elections, Moran was challenged by Republican lawyer Kyle McSlarrow. During the 1992 campaign, McSlarrow accused Moran of "lying to the public". Moran responded by portraying McSlarrow as a drug abuser, referring to the candidate's admitted use of cocaine and marijuana while at the University of Virginia. Moran compared McSlarrow to Parris, saying that Parris had "[t]en times more integrity than McSlarrow. He didn't create lies."

Two years later in 1994, Moran's daughter Dorothy was suffering from an inoperable brain tumor. (She is still alive as of 2011.) During the campaign, neither Moran or McSlarrow would utilize the same negative tactics used two years before. On how he would handle his campaign strategy that election, McSlarrow stated that "It would not be a community service to shut down this campaign, but I probably will not talk much about Moran."

Moran was challenged for reelection in 1998 and in 2000 by Republican and flat tax advocate Demaris H. Miller. During the 1998 campaign Miller accused Moran of flip-flopping in his support of President Bill Clinton, after Moran, who had been a vocal supporter of the Clinton White House, voted in favor of opening an impeachment inquiry into the President following the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Moran was challenged in the 2008 elections by Independent Green candidate Ron Fisher and Republican candidate Mark Ellmore. Moran beat a primary challenger with 86% of the vote. In the November 4 General Election, Moran beat Ellmore 68 percent to 30 percent. He received 222,986 votes, while Ellmore and Fisher received 97,425 and 6,829 votes, respectively.

2010

Main article: Virginia's 8th congressional district election, 2010

In November 2009 Mark Ellmore announced his intention to challenge Moran once more but announced in March 2010 that he had dropped out of the Republican primary. The field was eventually reduced to attorney Matthew Berry and retired U.S. Army Colonel J. Patrick Murray. Murray won the Republican primary.

Moran was criticized by military advocacy groups and conservatives for remarks he made at a local Democratic committee meeting where he said his Republican opponent in the November 2010 election, 24-year U.S. Army veteran Colonel Patrick Murray, hadn't "served or performed any kind of public service". Moran responded to the controversy by commending Murray's military service, while indicating that he used the phrase in relation to Murray not having engaged in "local civic engagement" and not having served in local office.

Murray narrowly defeated Berry in the June 8, 2010 Republican primary. Independent Green candidate in 2008 Ron Fisher was also on the ballot.

Moran was re-elected to an eleventh term on November 2, 2010 in the general election with 61% of the vote.

Personal life

Moran has been married three times. His second wife, Mary Howard Moran, filed for divorce in 1999 after an argument at the couple's Alexandria home which resulted in a visit by the police. The Congressman provided his own divorce papers a few months later, and in 2003 the couple officially separated. He remarried in 2004 to real estate developer LuAnn Bennett. On December 23, 2010, Moran and Bennett announced they plan to divorce.

Moran is the father of four children, including Mary Moran, who works at the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), and Dorothy, who was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor during her father's campaign for reelection against Kyle McSlarrow in 1994. It was said at the time that she had only a twenty percent chance of living to age five, but after almost two years of chemotherapy and herbal therapies she was designated cancer free.

His brother, Brian Moran, is a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates, and currently the head of the Virginia Democratic Party. He was an unsuccessful primary candidate for Governor of Virginia in the 2009 election.

Moran, who was a stockbroker before running for public office, made more than 537 options trades, which had a potential value of more than $3 million, between 1995 and 2003; according to The Washington Post. In 1999 Moran lost approximately $120,000 from options investments. During divorce proceedings, the attorneys for his second wife described the trading as "stock market gambling" in court papers. Since his remarriage to LuAnn Bennett in 2004, Moran's disclosure statements have shown him to have one of the most actively traded portfolios in Congress. Moran's Chief of Staff, Austin Durrer, has stated that Moran has not made any trades personally for five years as of 2010.

External links

• Representative James Moran official U.S. House site
• Jim Moran for Congress official campaign site
• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Profile at Vote Smart
• Jim Moran as featured in the film Finding Our Voices