Jim McCrery - Congressional Career

Congressional Career

After Roemer resigned from Congress to become governor, McCrery ran for his former boss' seat as a Republican.

McCrery emerged from the special election in a runoff with Democratic State Senator Foster L. Campbell, Jr., of Elm Grove in Bossier Parish. A third contender, Shreveport journalist and then public relations representative Stanley R. Tiner, a Democrat, was eliminated in the first round of voting. McCrery became only the sixth Republican to represent Louisiana in the House since the end of Reconstruction. In his bid for a full term in 1988, he handily defeated Adeline McDade Roemer (born 1923), the Democratic mother of his former benefactor Buddy Roemer.

In 1992, Louisiana lost a district as a result of sluggish population growth during the 1980s. Also, the state was ordered to draw a second black-majority district by the Justice Department. The legislature responded by shifting most of Shreveport and Bossier City's black voters into a new 4th District. Most of McCrery's former territory was merged with the 5th District, represented by 16-year incumbent Democrat Jerry Huckaby. On paper, McCrery was in serious danger, since Huckaby retained nearly all of his former territory. However, the old 4th was considerably more urbanized than the old 5th due to the presence of Shreveport, and 60 percent of the new 5th's voters had been represented by McCrery. Also, the new 5th was only 5 percent African American (compared with a 30 percent black population in the old 5th). McCrery was thus such a heavy favorite that national Democratic leaders wrote off the seat as a loss and urged Huckaby to retire. Huckaby chose to stay in the race and was heavily defeated, carrying only one parish in the district. McCrery thus became the first Louisiana Republican to unseat a Democratic incumbent at the federal level.

McCrery was reelected seven more times with no substantive opposition, and was completely unopposed in 1996, 1998 and 2004. His district was renumbered as the 4th again in 1997, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the majority-black, Shreveport-to-Baton Rouge 4th was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

In the mid-term election of 2006, McCrery defeated Democratic challengers Patti Cox and Artis Cash and Republican Chester T. "Catfish" Kelley, a Shreveport businessman who advertises his catfish restaurant on the Rush Limbaugh radio program and who has been interviewed on the statewide Moon Griffon radio talk show.

From 2007–2009, McCrery was the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee.