Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)

U.S. Representative (since January 2003)

(Melina Mara/TWP)

Why He Matters

A talented campaigner and fundraiser, Van Hollen scrambled up the Democratic leadership ladder just four years after being elected to Congress. He took over the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in late 2006 and was charged with maintaining and expanding the House Democratic majority for both the 2008 and 2010 election cycles.

But following a Democratic "shellacking," in the words of President Obama, in the 2010 elections when they lost 63 House seats and their majority, Van Hollen announced plans to step down as head of the DCCC. He became the ranking member on the House Budget Committee instead.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (2006-2010); Member of the Maryland State Senate (1995 to 2002)
Birthday: Jan. 10, 1959
Hometown: Born in Pakistan and resides in Kensington, Md.
Alma Mater: Swarthmore College, B.A., (philosophy), 1983; Harvard University, M.P.P., 1985; Georgetown University, J.D., 1990
Spouse: Katherine
Religion: Episcopalian
Religion: Ranking member, House Budget Committee (since January 2011)

DC Office: 1707 Longworth, 202-225-5341
District Offices: Rockville, 301-424-3501; Hyattsville, 301-891-6982
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Path to Power

The son of a Foreign Service officer, Van Hollen was born in Pakistan and grew up in Turkey, Sri Lanka and India. Those experiences shaped his world view and his understanding of government. "I developed an early interest in foreign affairs," Van Hollen said. "In Sri Lanka, I went to a village and went into a hut, and there was a picture of John F. Kennedy on the wall - it was somebody whose life had been touched by the Peace Corps. That became one of my passions - how the U.S. can interact with the rest of the world and be a leader."

After getting a degree in public policy and national security studies and finishing law school, he got a job working on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He helped write a report in the late 1980s detailing Iraq's use of chemical weapons and traveled to the Iraq-Turkey border to interview Kurds about Saddam Hussein.

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Van Hollen was first elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1990 out of a field of nine candidates. He became a Maryland state Senator in 1994. He quickly became a key player in the Maryland Senate and helped shepherd a gun-control bill into law.

2002 House Race

He worked there until 2002 when the first election after redistricting in Maryland added a sliver of heavily Democratic Prince George's County to Maryland's 8th Congressional district. That made incumbent Rep. Connie Morella (R-Md.) a popular target for Democrats, and a handful of strong candidates entered the Democratic primary to oppose her, including Mark Shriver, a nephew of President John F. Kennedy.

Though Morella was a very liberal Republican, Van Hollen painted her as an enabler of Republican ideas. He won despite a Morella endorsement in The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun. Van Hollen's race was also one of the most expensive Congressional races in 2002, but he was up to the challenge. He raised fantastic sums of money for a challenger and recruited a large number of volunteers to help him. In his three elections since, he has continued to rake in big bucks and has been easily re-elected.

When he got to Congress, Van Hollen didn't get the Appropriations Committee assignment he wanted, but he made an impact in his first year in the House. Shortly after arriving in Washington, he surprised Republicans by slipping an amendment into a spending bill that would have made it more difficult for the government to transfer jobs to private contractors. And he got national recognition for his criticism of the war in Iraq just two months into his tenure.

DCCC Chairman

In 2006, he thought about running for Senate when then-Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) retired, but he was convinced to sit out the race to allow Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) to go into the general election without much of a fight. The decision paid off when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appointed Van Hollen to the House Ways and Means Committee and made him DCCC chairman after Democrats regained the majority in 2006, tasking him with the job of fundraising and recruiting for House Democratic incumbents and challengers.

Van Hollen was a natural successor to Emanuel because he served as a top lieutenant during the watershed 2006 elections. "I sought his advice and counsel in every critical decision I had to make," Emanuel said, adding that Van Hollen's recruitment of House candidates played a large role in the Democrats' success.

He is less "in your face" than Emanuel was as DCCC Chair in 2006, but he spent months traveling to districts all over the country to identify and mentor candidates, using his experience beating Morella in 2002 as an example of how a longtime incumbent can be defeated. He used the Internet to help candidates and the DCCC raise large amount of money in 2008.

Democrats were largely successful in Congressional races in 2008, picking up 21 seats in the House. Van Hollen thought briefly of challenging Rep. John B. Larson (D-Conn.) for Democratic Caucus chair after then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) left to for a job as President Barack Obama's chief of staff. But in the end, he decided to continue as DCCC Chair. He was also given the title of Assistant to the Speaker for policy and incumbent retention.

2010 Races

Following the passage of historic health-reform legislation, Democrats had their work cut out for them defending their House majority. They didn't succeed, ultimately losing more than 60 House seats in the 2010 elections.

"Who am I to give my Republican colleagues advice, but if they want to run on, 'Repeal the bill,' we say: Make my day," Van Hollen told Politico the day the health-care bill was signed. "They will be clearly siding with the insurance industry that's spent millions of dollars trying to defeat this. They will be siding with the industry to try to prevent kids from getting coverage."

"There will, of course, be some offense," Van Hollen said. "But there will be a whole lot of defense. How we do in the next election will depend on how we govern between now and then."

The Issues

Van Hollen is traditionally liberal on most major social issues, and he voted with the Democratic party 98.7 percent of the time in the 110th Congress.

He is probably most well-known for his rabid opposition to the Iraq war as a House freshman in 2003, but he has also focused on trying to secure funding for education and attempting to lower health-care costs. In 2007, he introduced legislation to make prescription drugs more affordable for low-income families by allowing states to negotiate the same rates they get for people on Medicaid.

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As a party leader, Van Hollen worked closely with Speaker Pelosi to get her "100 hours" legislation through the House. In particular, he was a sponsor of stricter bundling rules that were a large part of Congress' ethics reform. The provision required lawmakers to report lobbyist-bundled contributions totaling more than $15,000 every six months.

Not surprisingly, Van Hollen has also been a strong advocate for federal workers, since his district, just outside of Washington D.C., is filled with such employees. Since his first term in office, he has worked with other local representatives, such as then-Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), to raise pay for civilian federal workers and military personnel. Van Hollen "always puts the region first and has never let partisan politics get in the way of legislating," Davis said.

Iraq

Van Hollen is a longtime critic of the Iraq war, and he gained national recognition in his freshman term for his opposition. In March of 2003, he gave a speech where he said, "It is just as easy to imagine a scenario where difficulties in Iraq and the American action there fuel resentment toward occupying American troops and inflame the region against us, strengthening the hands of radical Islamic fundamentalists."

That speech made him a go-to guy for reporters looking for credible voices on both sides of the Iraq war debate, and he did dozens of interviews in the next few weeks. Van Hollen's time spent researching chemical weapons in Iraq as a staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the late 1980s made him particularly credible. He has continued to speak out against the way the war has been managed, but he has not voted to cut off funding.

Education

Education is one of Van Hollen's top issues, and he has pushed for more funding on all levels. Every session, Van Hollen introduces bills that would fully fund No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Act. "We are now woefully short in terms of what had been promised to our schools and teachers," he said. He has introduced separate legislation to ensure geography classes are guaranteed funding under No Child Left Behind. The initial legislation guaranteed funding for most other core classes such as math and English and suggested funding for geography but did not guarantee it.

The Economy

Van Hollen voted for the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street both times in fall 2008. As part of the House Democratic leadership, Van Hollen was charged with trying to round up votes for the controversial bill, and he helped add some provisions that attracted Blue Dog Democrats such as a fee that would be imposed if the government didn't recoup all of its money.

The Network

Van Hollen worked closely with Emanuel at the DCCC in 2006, and Emanuel has always had high praise for his colleague. He avoided making a lot of enemies in the Maryland delegation when he decided not to run against now-Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin.

Van Hollen's chief of staff, Karen Robb, was a deputy assistant to President Bill Clinton (D) and chief of staff to ex-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Democratic staff director for the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.).

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