Shelley Moore Capito
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Shelley Moore Capito | |
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| Image:Shelley Moore Capito.gif | |
| Born | Glen Dale, West Virginia}}} |
| Term | 2001-Present |
Shelley Moore Capito (born November 26 1953) is an American politician. She has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 2001, representing the Second Congressional District of West Virginia (map). The district, the largest geographical district east of the Mississippi River, is based in the state capital, Charleston, and stretches from the Ohio border to the borders with Virginia and Maryland. She is the only Republican in the West Virginia Congressional delegation.
A resident of Charleston, Capito is the daughter of Arch A. Moore, Jr., who twice served as that state's Governor (1969-1977; 1985-1989). She was educated at Duke University and at the University of Virginia and served two terms in the West Virginia House of Delegates.
When 2nd District Congressman Bob Wise decided to make what turned out to be a successful run for governor in 2000, Capito won the Republican nomination largely because of her father's legacy. She narrowly defeated multi-millionaire trial lawyer Jim Humphreys largely by running ads in the Washington, DC media market, which takes in eight of West Virginia's counties, all of which are in the 2nd District. She was the first Republican to represent West Virginia in Congress since 1983, as well as the first woman elected to Congress from West Virginia in her own right. She was reelected in 2002 against Humphreys and 2004 against former newscaster Erik Wells by surprisingly large margins, becoming the first West Virginia Republican to win reelection to Congress since her father, who represented the First District in the state's northern region from 1957 to 1969.
In the House, she is Chairwoman of the Congressional Woman's Caucus. Like her father, her voting record has been very moderate, at least by Southern Republican standards. She is a member of both the Republican Main Street Partnership (which supports stem-cell research) and The Wish List (Women In the Senate and House), a group of pro-choice Republican women. Surprisingly, she is the only pro-choice member of West Virginia's House delegation, despite the fact that the West Virginia Republican Party is strongly pro-life and that West Virginia's other two congressmen are Democrats. She also has strong ties to organized labor, a rarity among congressional Republicans.
She was frequently mentioned as a challenger to Senator Robert Byrd in 2006, but instead chose to seek re-election to her seat in the House of Representatives [1]. Ironically, Capito's district includes much of the territory Byrd represented in the House from 1953 to 1959 before he moved to the Senate. West Virginia hasn't elected a Republican to the Senate since 1958, and no Republican has been elected to a full term from that state since 1942.
On November 8, 2005, former West Virginia Democratic Party Chairman Mike Callaghan announced that he will run against Capito in 2006 [2]. South Charleston Mayor Richard Robb filed for the Democratic nomination as well. His filling comes just months after he switched his party affilition from Republican to Democrat. Delegate Mark Hunt of Kanawha County also filed with the Secretary of States office to run in the May primary.