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Meet the New Members of the U.S. House of Representatives

Here’s a look at the 53 new Members of Congress in the U.S. House of Representatives.

ARIZONA

Tom O’Halleran, D-AZ (1ST District) – The former Chicago homicide detective and ex-member of the Chicago Board of Trade’s board of directors spent two years in the Arizona Senate and six years in the House as a Republican. He calls himself a natural to work on natural resources issues and has an interest in education policy. O’Halleran supports a higher minimum wage and a comprehensive approach to immigration policy changes such as the bipartisan deal the Senate passed in 2013.

Andy Biggs, R-AZ (5th District) – Biggs is a retired lawyer and one-time Publisher’s Clearing House lottery winner, netting the $10 million jackpot in 1993. He was first elected to the state legislature in 2002, and began serving as Arizona Senate president in 2013. Asked about his legislative priorities in Congress, Biggs mentions the federal budget. He says government is bloated and handicapped by its own largesse. Biggs also lists immigration and healthcare among his top concerns. He offered six legislative objectives during his campaign that he hopes to accomplish as a new member of the House.

CALIFORNIA

Ro Khanna, D-CA (17th District) – Khanna, the fourth Indian-American to be elected to Congress. His top priority is to keep America competitive and lead the globe in job creation. He sees education as essential. He has outlined a slew of policy positions — many of them conventionally liberal — and he emphasizes the promotion of advanced manufacturing through federal programs and tax code incentives to support the demand for professionals in science, technology, engineering and math.

Jimmy Panetta, D-CA (20th District) – Son of Leon Panetta, Jimmy Panetta is a career prosecutor. He says his experience in the courtroom will help him forge bipartisanship. One of those issues is comprehensive immigration overhaul, which he hopes to work with California Republicans to advance. He took a break from his career to serve in Afghanistan as a Navy Reserve intelligence officer with the Joint Special Operations Command, saying it was a lifelong aspiration to serve. He says he hopes to serve on the Agriculture or Armed Services committees, given both the multibillion-dollar produce industry and the military installations in the district.

Salud Carbajal, D-CA (24th District) – ​Carbajal immigrated to the United States from Mexico with his family when he was 5 years old, and he’s been in public service since his university days, serving in the Marine Corps Reserve and becoming the first in his family to earn a college degree. He wants to emphasize the importance of diplomacy, cooperation with allies and careful deliberation. One other national issue he wants to tackle is for Congress to ensure sustainable funding for Social Security.

Nanette Barragan, D-CA (44th District) – Barragán demonstrated her political mettle as a member of the Hermosa Beach City Council and later as the city’s mayor. She wants to focus on education in Congress, noting her own experience and also that 60 percent of students in her district graduate from high school and only 10 percent get a college degree. Barragán says Congress should recognize that community colleges, trade schools and universities give students opportunities that would otherwise remain closed.

Lou Correa, D-CA (46th District) – Correa will bring two decades of experience in state and local government to his new job and portrays himself as a pragmatic problem solver. Correa emphasizes his ability to work with other members from California. His service in the state legislature overlapped for a couple of years with current House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Correa says the federal government shouldn’t enforce federal laws against marijuana use in states that have legalized its use.

DELAWARE

Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del. (At Large) – Slated to be the first woman and first African-American to represent Delaware in Congress, Blunt Rochester will come to Washington with a wide variety of state government experience on health and labor issues. As Delaware’s deputy secretary of health and social services, she was legislative liaison to the statehouse and worked on a bill that brought together the Diocese of Wilmington, Planned Parenthood and a bipartisan group of legislators to support collection of abortion data, which made Delaware eligible for teen pregnancy-prevention funding.

FLORIDA

Matt Gaetz, R-FL (1st District) – As a Florida House member since 2010, Gaetz represented southern Okaloosa County, an area that is part of his congressional district. Gaetz, a lawyer, was chairman of the Florida House Finance and Tax Committee, a post that suggests where he wants to go in the U.S. House. “I would love the opportunity over time to be able to serve on the Ways and Means Committee in the Congress and take some of these lessons that we’ve learned in Florida and apply them to the country,” he says. Among his aims would be to avoid “tax policies that would inhibit growth” and to advocate for a flat tax.

Neal Dunn, R-FL (2nd District) – A surgeon, Dunn has decades of health care experience and hopes to parlay that into a Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce committee assignment. But with both assignments unlikely for a freshman, he may be more likely to land at Armed Services. He served in the Army as a surgeon and he’ll represent a northern Florida district that is home to Tyndall Air Force Base and many veterans. Dunn says his focus on national security starts with securing the border and getting rid of sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants.

John Rutherford, R-FL (4th District) – ​Rutherford will come to the House after a 41-year career in law enforcement. He began as a patrolman in the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in 1974 and was elected sheriff in 2003, 2007 and 2011. Rutherford’s experience has led to his interest in mental health treatment. Rutherford is deeply skeptical of legalizing marijuana and shortening prison sentences for people with nonviolent drug offenses. He opposed a 2014 ballot measure in Florida  that would have legalized medicinal use of marijuana.

Al Lawson, D-FL (5th District) – Lawson would like a spot on the tax-writing Ways and Means panel, an assignment that could be a stretch for a freshman. He’s no novice to climbing the political ladder, having risen to minority leader of the Florida Senate from 2008 to 2010. Lawson plans to push for more oversight of federal public housing, new rules for companies that promise to repair people’s credit scores and an overhaul of student lending practices. Another priority for the longtime state lawmaker is economic development and job creation — which he says are a vehicle to reduce crime.

Stephanie Murphy, D-FL (7th District) – Murphy was 6 months old when her parents fled with her and her brother from communist Vietnam to a refugee camp in Malaysia and then moved on to settle in the United States. Murphy’s résumé includes an executive position at Sungate Capital, an investment firm. She teaches business and social entrepreneurship at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. A fiscal conservative with plans to join the Blue Dog Coalition, Murphy supports proposals including withholding lawmakers’ salaries if they don’t pass a budget on time and adding a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.

Darren Soto, D-FL (9th District) – ​As Florida’s first member of Congress of Puerto Rican heritage, Soto says he will protect the economic and cultural ties between central Florida and the island. A self-described environmentalist, Soto is aiming for a spot on the Natural Resources Committee. He says he will offer legislation that would ban fracking on public lands, though such a measure would face an uphill battle in a GOP-run House. A lawyer who specializes in commercial and civil rights law, Soto also has his eye on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees.

Val Demings, D-FL (10th District) – Demings will come to Washington with a perspective on policing and criminal justice that reflects her being African-American and a former Orlando police chief. A proponent of community-oriented policing, her contacts with local and county government run deep. She wants to make sure police officers understand the communities they work in, saying the lack of such familiarity is a cause of recent community-police tension. One goal in Congress is to increase infrastructure spending, especially for Interstate 4 and to make further federal money available for Brightline, a privately run passenger rail line between Miami and Orlando.

Charlie Crist, D-FL (13th District) – Crist has emerged as a centrist Democratic voice and an advocate for pragmatic deals like those he embraced in Florida as a Republican governor, attorney general and legislator over two decades. As governor, Crist embraced President Barack Obama in February 2009 to celebrate economic stimulus funding. The gesture sparked a backlash, culminating in Crist’s exit from the GOP during an unsuccessful 2010 Senate campaign. With a background in criminal justice, he eyes a seat on the Judiciary Committee and has shown interest in committees on environmental, transportation and veterans issues.

Brian Mast, R-FL (18th District) – A wounded combat veteran of Afghanistan, Mast says he wants to serve in Congress as he and his fellow soldiers did, without regard for personal gain or sacrifice. Mast seeks to serve on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Corps of Engineers’ water resources programs. Mast served in Afghanistan as a bomb disposal expert. In 2010, the last improvised explosive device that he found exploded, causing the loss of both of his legs. Mast’s experience has convinced him that many of those now collecting Social Security Disability Insurance benefits could — and should — work.

Francis Rooney, D-FL (19th District) – Rooney is a construction industry magnate and a Republican mega-donor who was born in Oklahoma, spent much of his career in Texas, and moved to Naples, Fla., in 2002. Rooney’s major focus will be trying to get federal funds to stop the contamination of the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers, which has been caused in part by the Army Corps of Engineers releasing water from Lake Okeechobee.

GEORGIA

Drew Ferguson, D-GA (3rd District) – Ferguson is a small-government conservative who wants to see Washington promote free-market policies and leave state and local issues to those governments. Banking is another priority for Ferguson. He hopes to sit on the Financial Services Committee, where he says he’ll promote policies that make it easier for community banks to operate and provide loans in rural areas.  Ferguson is against the 2010 health care law. He wants to see a market-driven health care system that reduces costs for patients and employers through more free-market competition.

HAWAII

Colleen Hanabusa, D-HI (1st District) – Hanabusa returns to the House after an unsuccessful 2014 Senate run with new experience as a mass transit troubleshooter and a focus on the strategic mission of military forces in Hawaii. Since losing the Senate primary to Brian Schatz, the labor lawyer has served on the board of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation. She was tapped to help expedite a troubled $6.7 billion elevated train project for Oahu. Hanabusa eyes a return to the Armed Services and Natural Resources committees.

ILLINOIS

Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-IL (8th District) – Krishnamoorthi’s victory in a district in the Chicago suburbs makes him the only Asian-American between New York and California with a seat in the House. His Indian origins are also still a rarity in Congress. Krishnamoorthi is likely to be a mainstream Democrat who may reach across the aisle. He favors raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, or less than some liberals would like, and to allow variations between rural and urban areas, where the minimum would need to be higher.

Brad Schneider, D-IL (10th District) – A single-term House member who failed to win re-election in 2014, he will return for the 115th Congress much the same as when he left: a fiscal conservative, deeply pro-Israel and a supporter of gun safety legislation and immigration reform. He joined the 113th Congress (2013-14) after a diverse business career. He spent many years in consulting, insurance and marketing — lucrative positions that helped him build a net worth in excess of $10 million. His positions on economic policy have generally been business-friendly. As a past member of the Small Business Committee, Schneider, who has an MBA and previously belonged to the New Democrat Coalition, advocated for fewer regulations and more “targeted tax incentives” for small businesses.

INDIANA

Jim Banks, R-IN (3rd District) – Banks is a laconic, no-nonsense conservative with a military bearing. He hopes to become a member of the Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs committees. Banks is a commercial real estate broker and a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve. He took a leave of absence from the state Senate in 2014 and 2015 after being ordered to deploy to Afghanistan. His wife was elected to temporarily take his seat in the legislature. Banks says his top priority will be to “work toward rebuilding our military which I believe has been crippled and decimated over the past seven and a half years.”

Trey Hollingsworth, R-IN (9th District) – Hollingsworth outmaneuvered several high-profile Republicans to win the party primary and then beat a Democrat in the most expensive congressional race in Indiana this year.  Hollingsworth financed the lion’s share of his own campaign, thanks to wealth put at more than $58 million by his financial disclosure statement. Hollingsworth’s business career may make him suited for business-minded committees such as Energy and Commerce or Financial Services. The importance of farming to the district and the presence of Indiana University may steer him toward the Agriculture or Education and the Workforce committees.

KANSAS

Roger Marshall, R-KS (1st District) – Marshall has positioned himself as a Washington outsider, but an outsider willing to play nice with leadership to make sure his Kansas constituents’ voices are heard. Marshall is an obstetrician and gynecologist in Great Bend and is staunchly anti-abortion. But he won’t let his district’s farming interests be forgotten. Agriculture is one of his two major legislative interests in Congress. Health care is the other. Marshall made a campaign promise to put a Kansan back on the House Agriculture Committee

KENTUCKY

James Comer, R-KY (1st District) – A stalwart conservative, Comer has worked as a public servant for most of his adult life and says his record shows he reaches across the aisle. From 2001 to 2012, he was a GOP representative in a statehouse dominated by the other party. Since college, Comer has run Comer Family Farms, a beef cattle, timber and hay operation that is one of the biggest agricultural enterprises in the state. He has also dabbled in insurance and restaurant franchises and served as a bank director.

MARYLAND

Anthony Brown, D-MD (4th District) – With his victory in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District, Brown bounced back from his surprising defeat in the 2014 gubernatorial election at the hands of Republican Larry Hogan. Brown was familiar to most voters after two terms as lieutenant governor under Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley. He says the Maryland Health Benefits Exchange, which got off to a rocky start, eventually became a well-run system that is expanding access to health care in the state.

Jamie Raskin, D-MD (8th District) – ​Raskin is a law professor and a Maryland state senator who led successful efforts to abolish the death penalty, decriminalize marijuana use and grant legal recognition to marriages between same-sex couples. One of Raskin’s priorities in his first term will be to pass legislation to prohibit certain types of firearms he describes as “military-style assault weapons,” as a Democrat-controlled Congress did in 1994. Raskin says he has a personal stake in the safety of the beleaguered Washington Metro system that has seen frequent service breakdowns and a 2015 smoke incident in which one passenger was killed.

MICHIGAN

Jack Bergman, R-Mich. (1st District) – ​Bergman was commander of the Marine Corps Forces Reserve, retiring as a three-star general in 2009. His career included work as a pilot for Northwest Airlines and for a company that made hospital operating room equipment. He also started a firm that sold surgical microscopes and imaging equipment. Bergman is familiar with Congress from appearances as a witness before House and Senate committees from 2003 to 2009, when he headed the Reserve. Bergman says the Veterans Affairs Committee would be a natural fit for him. He also mentions an interest in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Paul Mitchell, R-Mich. (10th District) – Mitchell’s campaign was largely self-funded, with  more than $3 million in campaign receipts from his own contributions or loans from January 2015 to mid-July 2016. Mitchell spent over 35 years in the private sector and wants to see more voices from business in Washington. Mitchell was working on a master’s degree when he took a job at Chrysler. He transferred to Ross Education, a professional health care training network, in 1985. He was a manager  and then CEO for six years until retiring in 2011.

MINNESOTA

Jason Lewis, R-Minn. (2nd District) – Lewis built a career as right-wing talk radio host in the Twin Cities and Charlotte, N.C., before winning his House race. For more than 20 years, Lewis made a living from his provocative radio gibes, such as one he made during a discussion about the 2010 health care law’s requirement that employers pay for employees’ contraception as part of their health insurance coverage. He also has a libertarian streak.

NEBRASKA

Don Bacon, R-NE (2nd District) – ​Bacon is a first-time candidate and a retired Air Force brigadier general who once commanded Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha. Bacon wants to be on the Armed Services Committee. His years in the Air Force enable him to discuss weapons systems, strategy and Pentagon organization with an easy familiarity. Bacon supports a gradual increase in the age at which people can begin to collect Social Security and Medicare benefits. Bacon supports eliminating most income tax deductions, apart from the mortgage interest deduction and the charitable deduction. But at the same time he’d seek lower income tax rates.

NEVADA

Jacky Rosen, D-NV (3rd District) – Rosen has lived for more than 35 years in southern Nevada, where she was a systems analyst and software developer for companies including Citibank, the now defunct Summa Corp., and regional public utility Southwest Gas. She supports an increase in the national minimum wage. She backs an immigration overhaul. She champions equal reproductive rights. She defends the 2010 health care law because it gives the working class more financial freedom.  But she also has noted that union-affiliated colleagues are concerned about the law’s  “Cadillac tax” on high-cost, employer-sponsored health coverage.

Ruben Kihuen, D-NV (4th District) – As a young man, Kihuen worked to get Nevada Democrats elected, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Now he’s coming to Washington promising to push the same causes as Reid, including fighting a proposal to build a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Kihuen’s campaign priorities included supporting free college education, overhauling the criminal justice system, protecting the 2010 health care law and raising the federal minimum wage.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Carol Shea-Porter, D-NH (1st District) – Shea-Porter has run six times since 2006 in one of the nation’s premier swing districts, where three-quarters of the voters are independents or Republicans. She has won four of those races. In her new stint in the House, Shea-Porter says she’ll focus her legislative efforts on economic issues: promoting U.S. manufacturing, reducing college students’ debt load and spending more on mass transit and other infrastructure.

NEW JERSEY

Josh Gottheimer, D-NJ (5th District) – Educated at elite schools — the University of Pennsylvania, Oxford University and Harvard Law School — Gottheimer has made a career of working for powerful people and companies: intern for former House Speaker Thomas S. Foley, speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, strategic communications director for Ford Motor Co. and a corporate strategy manager for Microsoft. His priorities will be an overhaul of the tax system and an increase in infrastructure spending.

NEW YORK

Tom Suozzi, D-NY (3rd District) – An attorney and certified public accountant, Suozzi earned high marks for overhauling Nassau County’s government, refinancing its debt, improving its bond ratings and helping rescue it from the brink of insolvency, partly by pushing for tax increases. In the House, Suozzi says, he’ll concentrate on getting federal funding for infrastructure, including water systems, roads, bridges and airports.

Adriano Epaillat, D-NY (13th District) – ​Espaillat established himself in his district first as an advocate of community causes and subsequently as a member of New York’s State Legislature. He’s the top Democrat on the state Senate Housing, Construction and Community Development Committee. That and his record advocating for tenants’ rights, investment in neighborhoods and affordable housing suggests what his agenda might be when he arrives in Congress.  Espaillat was the first Dominican-American to serve in a state legislature. He became chairman of the state Senate Puerto Rican/Latino Caucus.

John Faso, R-NY (19th District) – Faso is a polished politician with lots of legislative and lobbying experience in Albany, New York’s state capital. Faso says he hopes to get a spot on the Ways and Means Committee.  He’s also interested in the Veterans Affairs’ Committee — his district has more than 43,000 veterans — and the Agriculture Committee — his district has more than 5,000 farms

Claudia Tenney, R-NY (22nd District) – ​Tenney combines decidedly conservative views with a zest for polemical combat, referring, for example, to “this imaginary beast called climate change.” She’s wary of international tribunals having jurisdiction over American companies in trade disputes. enney opposed a law signed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2013 called the SAFE Act, restricting gun and ammunition purchases. She said many of the immigrants living illegally in the United States must be deported.

NORTH CAROLINA

Ted Budd, R-NC (13th District) – Gun range owner Budd supports the right to bear arms and opposes abortion. The first-time-elected Republican stresses the need for change and getting the government out of the way of businesses, which he says are trying to create jobs. Scaling back “overregulation” is one way to accomplish this, he says. He says constituent service will be a high priority, as well as making sure the W.G. “Bill” Hefner VA Medical Center in Salisbury receives the resources it needs.

PENNSYLVANIA

Dwight Evans, D-PA (2nd District) – Evans was Democratic chairman of the Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee for 20 years, and helped establish the state’s children’s health insurance program and a financing program to attract supermarkets to neighborhoods lacking a source of fresh food. He has long-standing relationships with many in the Pennsylvania congressional delegation, and says his time as a state appropriator proves he can work across the aisle. Evans says jobs are the major issue for the 2nd District, split between urban Philadelphia and wealthy Montgomery County. He describes the many colleges in the district as crucial to the region’s economy.

Lloyd Smucker, R-PA (16th District) – Smucker fits the familiar profile of the small business owner who got involved in local politics and then went on to the state legislature before winning a seat in the House of Representatives. He introduced a bill to provide that Pennsylvania residents who were illegally living in the United States would be eligible for the lower, in-state tuition rate at public institutions of higher education. The bill has yet to emerge from a state Senate committee. He points out that other states already had laws that allowed students illegally living in the United States to pay the in-state tuition rate at state colleges and universities.

TENNESSEE

David Kustoff, R-TN (8th District) – Once the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, Kustoff lists among his accomplishments the conviction of several state legislators and other local officials for bribery in a sting known as Operation Tennessee Waltz.  His background might make the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees potential assignments. But his district’s large agricultural sector may also raise his prospects for the Agriculture Committee.

TEXAS

Vicente Gonzalez, D-TX (15th District) – Once a high school dropout, Gonzalez subsequently returned to school, finished college and eventually prospered as a plaintiffs’ attorney in insurance cases. He says expanding public education was critical to his district, one of the country’s poorest. He hopes to advance legislation that would see the federal government pay for the first two years of Americans’ post-secondary education, he says, adding that the greater earnings potential would allow students in such a program to repay the government in taxes within five years.

VIRGINIA

Scott Taylor, R-VA (2nd District) – Taylor is a former Navy SEAL, Virginia legislator, and security consultant with extensive overseas experience both during his Navy service and afterwards. In 2015, Taylor published a book, “Trust Betrayed: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Selling Out of America’s National Security,” in which he made the case for an activist American foreign policy.

McEachin, D-VA (4th District) – Born in Germany while his father was deployed with the Army, McEachin says he was inspired to seek office after seeing the direct impacts of politics on military families. He went into practice as a personal injury lawyer after earning a law degree from the University of Virginia. He was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1995 and to the Virginia Senate in 2007, where he chaired its Democratic caucus in recent years. McEachin also takes an interest in defense spending and military personnel issues. He hopes to work with the Defense Department to improve military leave practices. 

Tom Garrett, R-VA (5th District) – Garrett is a staunch conservative with a small-government philosophy, and he heads to Washington ready to promote pro-business policies. He says his main goal in Congress will be to “help people across the Potomac” in his rural Virginia district. He says his main focus in Washington will be targeting federal regulations that he believes have driven jobs out of small towns across the country. Student loans are another issue that concerns Garrett.

WASHINGTON

Pramila Jayapal. D-WA (7th District) – Jayapal is an outspoken progressive who sees herself as a catalyst for making Congress more accountable to those disenchanted with politics and government. Jayapal is the first woman of South Asian ancestry elected to the House. She has an interest in the Education and the Workforce Committee and the Judiciary Committee due to concern about an immigration overhaul and criminal sentencing reform.  She wants to raise the federal minimum wage (Seattle’s minimum will be $15 an hour by 2017) and to increase Social Security and Medicare benefits.

WISCONSIN

Mike Gallagher, R-WI (8th District) – Gallagher is a Marine Corps veteran who speaks Arabic and served in Iraq. He earned a doctorate in international relations from Georgetown University and worked on counterterrorism matters on the GOP staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He favors stationing U.S. forces in Iraq as special operations troops embedded with Iraqi units, as intelligence officers and in air support roles. Gallagher would like to see an increase in global trade but doesn’t support the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

WYOMING

Liz Cheney R-WY (At Large) – A former Fox News commentator and a State Department official in the administration of President George W. Bush, Cheney succeeds four-term Republican Rep. Cynthia M Lummis, who retired. In the 115th Congress, as Wyoming’s sole House member, Cheney will have the same job that her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, had from 1979 to 1989. She promised to be an aggressive defender of Wyoming’s coal, oil and natural gas producers.