Pete Sessions

Pete Sessions
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's 5th & 32nd district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 1997
Preceded by	John Bryant
Personal details
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Juanita Sessions

Peter Anderson "Pete" Sessions (born March 22, 1955) is a politician from the state of Texas. He is a Republican, and currently represents the 32nd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Personal

Sessions was born in Waco, Texas, where he grew up. His father is William Sessions, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He graduated from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas in 1978. Sessions then worked for Southwestern Bell for 16 years. He rose to the rank of district manager for marketing in Dallas, supervising 435 employees and managing a $16 million budget. He also worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey.

He is an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America, as well as a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. As a Congressman, Sessions has sponsored legislation to raise money for the Boy Scouts. At the 2007 National Convention, Sessions was presented with the Pi Kappa Alpha Distinguished Alumni Award.

Sessions and his wife Juanita have two sons.

U.S. House of Representatives

Campaigns

In his 1991 election bid, Sessions finished third in a special election for the House of Representatives.

In 1993, Sessions left his job with Southwestern Bell to again run for Congress, against 5th District incumbent Democrat John Bryant. Sessions made a tour of the district with a livestock trailer full of horse manure, claiming that the Clinton administration's health care plan stunk more than the manure. Sessions lost by 2,400 votes. He subsequently became Vice President for Public Policy at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a Dallas-based conservative public policy research institute.

In 1996, when Bryant decided to seek a Senate seat, Sessions was elected to succeed him in the 5th District, defeating Democrat John Pouland with 47 percent of the vote. Sessions was re-elected in 1998, defeating school teacher Victor Morales with 56 percent of the vote. He was re-elected in 2000 with 54 percent of the vote.

When redistricting after the 2000 Census made the 5th slightly more Democratic, Sessions moved to the new 32nd District (map) for the 2002 election. He won that with 68 percent of the vote over Pauline Dixon.

In 2004, Sessions defeated fellow Congressman Martin Frost, a 13-term Democrat, who had moved to the 32nd after the Republican-engineered redistricting in 2003 eliminated Frost's former district. Sessions won 54-44%, in what was considered the most expensive U.S. House race in the nation. According to the Associated Press, "The race also was one of the nastiest, with Frost unearthing a decades-old streaking incident by Sessions in his college days and questioning Sessions' commitment to security with an ad featuring the World Trade Center towers in flames. Sessions criticized Frost for booking Peter Yarrow of the '60s group Peter, Paul and Mary for a fundraiser. Yarrow had faced an indecency with a child charge years earlier."

Committees and caucuses

Sessions currently serves as a Member of the House Committee on Rules and also chairs the Results Caucus. He also formed the Malaysia Trade, Security and Economic Cooperation Caucus.

Political positions

Sessions calls himself as a conservative. He is a backer of free trade, and a member of a Republican cybersecurity task force created by Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Sessions failed to pass the "Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005" (HR2726), which would have prohibited state and local governments from offering internet access services. However, questions have been raised about Sessions's partiality toward the telecom industry: According to Sessions' House financial disclosure forms from 2003, he has between $500,000 and $1 million in AT&T stock options, and his wife works for Cingular, which is jointly owned by AT&T.

Controversies

In September 2006, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released its second annual report on the most corrupt members of Congress, titled "Beyond DeLay: The 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and five to watch)". Sessions was one of the 20. The organization said "His ethics issues stem from his ties to Jack Abramoff and his links to defense contracting company." [1]

Connections to Abramoff

In late 2001 and early 2002, Sessions cosigned letters to two Cabinet members asking them to shut down casinos operated by several Native American tribes. Within 18 months of sending the letters, Sessions received a total of $20,500 from tribes associated with Abramoff raising suspicion that Sessions had written the letters to curry favor with Abramoff as he represented a number of competing tribes. In response, the Sessions office said he wrote the letters because of his view that gambling is a local issue, falling under his long held support for federalism .

On January 11, 2002, Sessions traveled to Malaysia with two of Abramoff's co-workers from the law firm Greenberg Traurig. The trip allegedly was sponsored by the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) and a Malaysian think tank with ties to that country’s government. Various news reports, however, suggest that a Malaysian client secretly paid Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, an Abramoff associate, through a sham think tank that Scanlon created, the American International Center. His office said that Sessions went on the trip to strengthen ties with a Muslim ally.

2006 re-election campaign

Sessions faced Democrat Will Pryor, an attorney and former district judge, in the November general election. Other candidates were N. Ruben Florez (Libertarian) and Philip Scheps (Independent). Sessions won re-election easily.

2008 election

Before his exit from the campaign, Sessions announced his support for former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani's bid for the Republican Nomination for President.

External links

• Congressman Pete Sessions official U.S. House site
• Pete Sessions for U.S. Congress official campaign site

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Profile at Vote Smart
• Profile at SourceWatch Congresspedia
• Beyond DeLay — Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) criticism from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
• Sessions Watch anti-Sessions website