October 25, 2004
U.S. Rep. Chris John says he has the experience to fill the void left by retiring Sen. John Breaux
BATON ROUGE — Chris John, while a member of the Louisiana House Appropriations Committee, saw the pretty young woman walk into the hearing room during one of the committee’s lengthy
meetings.
He leaned over to his colleague, state Rep. John Smith of Leesville. “Who is that?” he asked.
“That’s my daughter — and you turn your head,” Smith responded.
Payton Smith John remembers thinking John was “a handsome young man up there, a good bit younger than the others.”
But, because there was a seven-year age difference and there was someone else in her life at the time, she refused his calls to a date. She remembers her
Chi Omega sorority sisters at LSU telling her “that old man who’s a friend of your father’s” was calling.
Finally, they went on a movie date — accompanied by Rep. John Smith, who said he has a special relationship with his son-in-law: They are close friends.
“It has turned out well,” Smith said.
During the campaign, Smith has spent a lot of time babysitting Chris and Payton’s twin sons, Hays and Harrison, 6.
John’s political life was rooted in Crowley, which has given the state a stream of politicians, including retiring U.S. Sen. John Breaux, who has endorsed John as his chosen successor. Others are retired Judge Edmond Reggie, a prominent player in national Democratic politics who brought John F. Kennedy to the Crowley Rice Festival in 1960, the year of John’s birth; and former Gov. Edwin Edwards.
“It’s in the rice we eat,” joked John, when asked how is it that such a small town has grown very big politicians. John was born into politics. When he was 12, his father, John N. John, the second generation to run the family’s trucking firm, was elected to the Louisiana House.
“I got very interested in his work. I tagged along to ribbon-cuttings. Every summer, I worked in the House, starting out in the mail room, then as a page and a sergeant-at-arms.”
In 1982, soon after Chris John graduated from LSU business school and moved home to work with his three brothers in the trucking firm, his father, coming back from a duck hunt, was severely injured in an accident with a utility pole truck. He never regained consciousness and died on May 11, 1983.
“It really brought our family even closer together,” John said, recalling those five long months his father was in a coma. The memories of hours in a duck blind with his father helped him through.
His father’s influence not only made him an avid hunter, fisherman and outdoorsman, but led him into politics: at the age of 23, when he won a seat on the Crowley City Council in the 1983 elections.
Just four years later, when his father’s successor came up for re-election, John won his father’s seat in the Legislature. At 28, his affable personality helped him win an election among House members to a seat on the powerful appropriations committee. In 1996, he won election to the 7th congressional district seat previously held by Rep. Jimmy Hays of Lafayette.
Like Hays, John is a conservative Democrat, with middle-of-the-road voting record on economic issues, voting 53 percent on the liberal side of issues and 47 percent on the conservative side in the 1999-2000 Congress, the most recent year for ratings by the National Journal, which publishes the Almanac of American politics.
A Catholic opposed to abortion and gay marriage, John voted the conservative position on social issues 74 percent of the time in the 2000 session and 63 percent in the 1999 session. On foreign affairs issues, he has voted the liberal position about 60 percent of the time, according to the National Journal.
He voted for the patient bill of rights, to accelerate the minimum wage increases, to ban the RU-486 “morning after” abortion pill, to allow the display of the Ten Commandments and for permanent trade with China. He voted against requiring background checks for purchasers of weapons at gun shows and to ban partial-birth abortion.
John’s conservative voting record has caused some critics to call him a Republican in Democratic cloth, but John said that’s an unfair characterization.
“I will always be a Democrat,” he said. “The national Democratic Party is not always right for Louisiana and certainly the Republican Party is not. I am rooted in the Democratic values of hope and opportunity.”
With a $5.5 million campaign budget, John is the leading Democratic spender in the race.
“You can't raise that kind of money unless people think you are the right man for the job,” he said.
With the retirement of Breaux and U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin of Lafourche Parish, Louisiana is losing a combined 50 years of seniority.
“With that big of a hole in seniority, I think experience is important…I will be able to hit the ground running,” John said.
©The Lafayette Daily Advertiser
October 25, 2004
Chris John with his Chi Omega wife, Payton, and their twin sons
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