Current Position: U.S. Representative (since January 1999)
Credit: Chet Rhodes/WPNI
Why He Matters
After years of brutally close elections, Hill turned a corner in 2008. In his fourth matchup with former Rep. Mike Sodrel (R-Ind.), Hill won by 42,000 votes, by far his largest margin of victory. Hill has now beaten Sodrel in three of four races for the 9th Congressional District of Indiana, which includes most of the southern part of the state and Bloomington. The lone exception was 2004, when Sodrel won by less than 1,500 votes.
After the 2008 election, Hill was elected co-chair for policy for the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, a group of more than 50 conservative Democratic congressmen who are particularly concerned with the national debt.
The Blue Dog Coalition expanded again in 2008 after significant growth in 2004 and 2006, and has become one of the biggest voting blocks in the Democratic Party. As co-chair for policy, Hill will have a direct impact in shaping the group’s message.
Hill is a fiscal conservative who voted against the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street in the fall of 2008, but he also supports universal health care and green energy funding, both areas of policy President Barack Obama has singled out as priorities.
At a Glance
Current Position: Co-Chair for policy of the Blue Dog Coalition (since Jan. 2009)
Career History: Member of the U.S. House (Jan. 2007 to present); Member of the U.S. House (1999 to 2005); Member of the Indiana House (1982 to 1990)
Birthday: June 23, 1953
Hometown: Seymour, Ind.
Alma Mater: Furman University, B.A. (history), 1975
Spouse: Betty
Religion: Methodist
DC Office: 223 Cannon House Office Building, 202-225-5315
District Offices: Jefferson, 812-288-3999; Bloomington, 812-336-3000; Toll free number: 1-866-440-1321
Email N/A
Web site
Path to Power
Hill grew up in a working-class family in southern Indiana. His parents were both shoemakers, and when their factory closed, both were left without jobs and without pensions.
Hill broke local track records and was a basketball superstar at Seymour High School. He was eventually inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame alongside NBA legend Larry Bird. His basketball prowess also earned him a scholarship to Furman University, which, Hill says, was the only way he could have gone to college. “When I was growing up in Seymour, all I could think of was basketball and girls,” Hill said. “Politics was the furthest thing from my mind.”
Hill studied history at Furman and returned to Seymour to run a local insurance and real estate company. After seven years, he ran successfully for the Indiana State House. He stayed in the state legislature from 1982 to 1990. That year, he made a long-shot bid against Sen. Daniel Coats (R-Ind.), who had been appointed two years earlier to fill Vice President Dan Quayle’s vacated seat. During that race, Hill received press attention when he walked from the Ohio River to Lake Michigan — and then jumped into the 60-degree water. The stunt didn’t win him the election, but he did capture 46 percent of the vote, an impressive showing for the state representative from southern Indiana.
Hill said he lost interest in politics around the same time Democrats lost control of the Indiana General Assembly and U.S. House in 1994. He left government for a job at Merrill Lynch. But when Rep. Lee Hamilton told Hill in 1998 that he was retiring from Congress after 34 years, Hill rejoined the hordes of Washington hopefuls. Indiana is a basketball-crazed state, and Hill benefited from his hoops fame and the publicity from his earlier Senate run. He outspent his opponent, state Sen. Jean Leising (R), $1 million to $650,000 and won by just three points.
Hill has been aggressively targeted by the GOP, once successfully. Although his district elected Democrat Hamilton for 34 years, it voted overwhelmingly for President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. In 2002, Hill beat Republican Indiana businessman Mike Sodrel by five points in a race where the candidates raised a combined $2.3 million. In 2004, the Republican National Committee poured more than $1 million into the race.Sodrel added funds of his own and received campaign visits from such high profile politicians as Vice President Richard Cheney, then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and then-House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-Texas). Sodrel, doubtless assisted by President Bush’s coattails, won by fewer than 1,500 votes. After a month-long recount, Hill conceded. He was the only incumbent Democrat outside of Texas to lose in that election cycle.
Hill once again predicted that this was the end of his political career. “I had it in my mind that once you are a loser, you are tagged as a loser,” Hill said. But Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), who lost in 1994 only to return in 1996, helped Hill realize he could run again and be successful. He rode the Democratic tide of 2006 to beat Sodrel in a race that was the most expensive in the state. Of course, no one thought Hill’s seat was safe two years later. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee began fundraising for Hill early in the 2008 election cycle, and Democratic leaders gave him a seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, with the hope that his ties to business would help him raise money. The result was a dominating performance in 2008 that left people doubting Sodrel would stage Hill-Sodrel V in 2010.
Hill, who has always been a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of fiscally conservative Democrats in the U.S. House, was elected the group’s Co-Chair for Policy in 2008.
The Issues
The 9th Congressional District is conservative, and Hill is a conservative Democrat. He has been a member of the Blue Dog Coalition since joining the House, and he was selected to be the coalition’s co-chair for policy after the 2008 election. In fact, Hill earned the endorsement of the National Rifle Association and the Veterans of Foreign Wars over Sodrel during the 2004 election and was endorsed by the NRA in other years, as well.
He doesn't think the Supreme Court should overturn Roe v. Wage, but he supports parental consent requirements for minors who wish to get an abortion. He votred with th Democratic Party 86.8 percent of the time in the 110th Congress.
A member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Hill says his legislative priorities include energy independence and affordable health care for all U.S. citizens. After voting against the State Children’s Health Insurance Program twice, Hill voted for the bill and to override the president’s veto in 2007. The fiscal conservative has made Medicare a priority and has voted against funding cuts that would affect Medicare and funding to rural hospitals. He supports a comprehensive energy reform policy that could include large financial investment in wind, solar, biodiesel and other new energy alternatives. “We have to create a different alternative for fuel,” he said. “The technology is there, and we need to invest in it.”
$700 billion bailout
Hill voted against the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street in the fall of 2008, saying that he did not want to increase the national debt. Not all Blue Dogs took this position, but Hill said he was concerned about giving the president the authority to use $700 billion of taxpayer money. “If this plan is to be enacted, it must protect the taxpayers,” Hill said. “I will not give the Administration free rein over $700 billion in taxpayer money.”
Iraq
Part of the reason Hill was so worried about giving the administration authority to use taxpayer money to save the financial system is because he felt he was duped by President George W. Bush in 2002, when he voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. “I get testy when I talk about this,” Hill said while campaigning in 2006. “I now know I was lied to.” He said he was skeptical about the ability of Saddam Hussein to harm the United States until Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld showed him pictures of planes and nuclear centrifuges. Although he now thinks the war should not have been started, Hill says he is “not there yet on an immediate withdrawal.” He says we have to think about what is best for Iraq now.
The Network
In what was seen as a politically risky move at the time, Hill endorsed President
Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary despite the fact that Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton was more popular in southern Indiana. Though Obama lost Hill’s district in the general election, Hill had no problem cruising to victory. He will work with Blue Dog co-chairs
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and
Charlie Melancon during the 111th Congress.
