People in the news

Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.)

U.S. Representative (since January 2007)

Background

At a Glance

Career History: Arizona Senate (2002 to 2005); Arizona House of Representatives (2000 to 2002); CEO, El Campo Tire (1997 to 2000)
Birthday: June 8, 1970
Hometown: Tucson, Ariz.
Alma Mater: Scripps College, B.A., 1993; Cornell University, MS, 1996
Spouse: Mark E. Kelly
Religion: Jewish
DC Office: 1728 Longworth House Office Building; 202-225-2542
District Office: Tucson, 520-881-3588; Cochise, 520-459-3115

Path to Power

Giffords liked to talk about the accoutrements of Western life: her gun, her truck and her love of motorcycling (she was co-chair of the Congressional Motorcycle Caucus, after all). One of her first actions in Congress was to sponsor a resolution in support of a National Day of the Cowboy. As well as that played politically in Arizona, she had the biography to back it up.

Born and raised in Tucson, Giffords grew up working summers at the tire business that her grandfather founded in 1949. She didn't plan on taking over the family trade-instead, she studied Latin American history and sociology at Scripps College in California, and spent the next year in Chihuahua, Mexico, on a Fulbright scholarship.

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After getting a master's degree in regional planning at Cornell, she worked for a year in capital management at Price Waterhouse in New York before duty called her home. Her father was ill. "I packed up my F-150, put on my hat, and drove cross-country back to Arizona,'' Giffords says. So, at the age of 26, Giffords took the reins at El Campo Tire, managing its 100 employees and $10 million in annual revenue.

Giffords never had much in the way of political ambitions throughout her youth, and spent most of her twenties as a registered Republican.

As she tells it, this changed as she read more about Arizona's abysmal rankings in education and health care, which prompted her to realize her values were more in line with the Democratic Party.

Political Career

In 2000, she sold the family business to Goodyear and ran for the state House, served one term, and was elected in 2002 to the state Senate.

When 11-term Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) announced his retirement in 2005, Giffords decided to run for the open House seat in the right-leaning 8th district, which covers 9,000 acres in Arizona's southeast.

She faced the staunchly anti-immigrant Randy Graf (R), whom the moderate Kolbe declined to endorse. With the support of liberal powerhouses like the League of Conservation Voters and EMILY's List (which remained her largest career donor), she won handily, defeating Graf 54 to 42 percent. In 2008, Giffords parlayed her record into reelection by a similar margin over the more moderate state Senate President Tim Bee (R), whom she had known since childhood.

In 2007, Giffords married astronaut Commander Mark E. Kelly. The couple, with two children from Kelly's previous marriage, tried to see each other every other week.

In the 111th Congress, Giffords served on three committees: Foreign Affairs, Armed Services and Science and Technology, within which she also chairs the Space and Aeronautics subcommittee.

2010 House Race

Unlike other House Blue Dogs, Giffords defeated a tough challenge from tea-partier Jesse Kelly (R) in 2010 by a margin of just over 4,000 votes.

The Issues

In Congress, Giffords avoided the route of a partisan infighter. During the 111th Congress, Giffords has voted with a majority of her Democratic colleagues 89.6 percent of the time.

She declined to take shots at one of her own delegation members and the 2008 GOP presidential nominee -Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whom she called "an independent thinking person, with a record of service that is second to none in regards to the military and public service."

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As a superdelegate, she also didn't take sides in the race for the 2008 Democratic nomination, casting her vote for Obama only after Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded. But Giffords has been making her mark on some signature issues.

Health-Care Reform

Giffords supported the March 2010 passage of President Obama's health-care legislation, despite intense political pressure and the breaking of a door at her Tucson office in the vote's aftermath.

"I have decided to vote for health insurance reform because it fundamentally is the right thing to do," Giffords explained. "As a member of the fiscally responsible Blue Dog coalition, I am very pleased that this legislation is fully paid for and will reduce our budget deficit by $138 billion over the next decade."

The Economy

When the first financial-bailout package came before Congress in fall 2008, Giffords received more than 4,000 phone calls from constituents. The opinions were split 50-50, she said-between 'no' and 'hell no.' She voted against it, helping to sink the bill.

After the stock market took a dive, however, her district seemed more open to the idea of federal help, and with additional safeguards for transparency and accountability, Giffords voted for the final version-the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-which pumped $4.2 billion into Arizona, currently suffering from a $1.6 billion budget shortfall.

Giffords also worked hard to sell solar-energy development and green jobs as an economic-stimulus measure, saying that the state's more than 300 sunny days annually are a "God-given opportunity" to turn Arizona into the nation's solar-energy capital.

To that end, Giffords sponsored legislation for research-and-development of solar technology that passed in the omnibus energy bill of late 2007, and introduced legislation that would extend tax credits to manufacturers of solar technology.

Military and Space

With two military bases in it, the armed forces are an important issue in the Arizona 8th - defense contractor Raytheon is the district's biggest employer. Giffords was awarded a plum seat on the House Armed Services Committee, and helped to craft the GI bill passed in May 2008 that provided education, health and tax benefits for returning veterans and their families.

She also introduced a bill that would help provide incentives for service members to learn strategic languages, which she calls "fighting terrorism in the classroom."

Perhaps the issue closest to Giffords' heart, however, is space exploration; her husband Mark has piloted numerous space-shuttle trips, including one to deposit a Japanese experiment module on the International Space Station.

In January 2009, Giffords was appointed to head the Science and Technology Committee's subcommittee on Space and Aeronatics, making her a key player in NASA's crucial decision on whether to retire the space-shuttle fleet by October 2010 or to authorize more shuttle flights.

Immigration

In a state that sees a large influx of immigration, Giffords campaigned for the House on immigration reform, criticizing the federal government for saddling border communities with the burden of the arrivals. But with a half- brother born and raised in Mexico and having spent time in Latin America, Giffords doesn't toe the hardline of many lawmakers representing border states.

Arguing that there are deficiencies in E-Verify, the voluntary system for determining the citizenship status of employees, Giffords proposed the creation of a national, mandatory employee registration that would authenticate worker identities.

She also led the fight for full funding of the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which provides federal dollars to offset the costs of border control in states - and may be on the chopping block in President Obama's push to trim the budget.

The Network

Giffords counts former Labor Secretary Robert Reich as a mentor (he also officiated at her wedding).

She has worked with Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) on immigration legislation, and frequently teams up with fellow Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva (D), head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who nearly lost his seat in the 2010 elections because he pushed a boycott of his own state as a result of Gov. Jan Brewer's (R) controversial immigration law.

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