In the 1980s and 1990s, Congressman Jim Cooper represented the conservative, rural 4th Congressional District in Tennessee. During his first stint in Congress, he did more than any other Democrat to help kill President Clinton’s health care reform proposals.
After losing a campaign in 1994, Jim Cooper moved to Tennessee’s strongly Democratic 5th Congressional District, which includes Nashville, and ran for Congress again in 2002. That year, he won a split Democratic primary with less than 50% of the vote, and has been re-elected in this very Democratic district ever since.
For the last eight years, Jim Cooper has represented a strongly Democratic district – where voters gave President Obama 56% of the vote in 2008. But while he may have moved, his positions on the issues have not:
- Fifteen years after playing a leading role in defeating President Clinton’s health care legislation, he is still working against the interests of his constituents on health care.
- He defends the for-profit insurance companies who have bankrolled his campaigns.
- He voted against providing a college education to our brave troops returning from Iraq, all while supporting blank checks for the war in Iraq under President George W. Bush.
- He repeatedly endorsed the core, radical Bush/Cheney Surveillance and War State policies - including votes for the Protect America Act, for telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping, and for full renewal of the Patriot Act.
- And he even voted against President Obama’s economic recovery bill and has bragged about his power to work with Republicans against Democrats in Congress.
As a leader of the conservative Blue Dog coalition, Jim Cooper still acts as if he represents conservative voters in his old district in rural Tennessee and not his current constituents in Nashville and its suburbs.
Nashville deserves a Democrat in Congress accountable to our district!