Due to Cooper's rare split tenure in Congress in two entirely different districts, his career was divided in two fields: regulatory and health care legislation in the rural 4th district and military affairs in the urban 5th.
Cooper built seniority and respect on two different sets of committees, becoming what The New York Times op-ed writer Joe Nocera called "the conscience of the House, a lonely voice for civility in this ugly era."[2]
Cooper announced that he would not seek reelection in 2022 after accusing Tennessee's Republican-led state legislature of partisan gerrymandering in the redistricting cycle.[3] The new congressional map, which split Davidson County into 3 separate districts, turned TN-5 from a Democratic-leaning seat into a Republican one. Cooper was succeeded by Republican Andy Ogles.
In 1982, Cooper won the Democratic primary for the 4th district, which had been created when Tennessee gained a district after the 1980 census. The new 4th ran diagonally across the state, from heavily Republican areas near the Tri-Cities, Knoxville and Chattanooga to the fringes of the Nashville suburbs. The district stretched across five media markets – the Tri-Cities (Kingsport, Johnson City, and Bristol), Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville and Huntsville, Alabama. The district touched four states – Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi – and nearly touched North Carolina and Georgia.
Cooper defeated Cissy Baker, an editor in Washington for CNN and the daughter of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker,[13] with 66% of the vote, becoming the youngest member of Congress at age 28.
Cooper was reelected five more times with little substantive opposition, running unopposed in 1986 and 1988. Before Cooper's election, much of the eastern portion of the 4th had not been represented by a Democrat since the Civil War.
Tenure
In 1992, Cooper co-authored a bipartisan health-care reform plan that did not include employer mandates compelling universal coverage. Called "Clinton-Lite", this initiative was strongly opposed by Hillary Clinton despite its strong backing from both parties.[14]
With Representative Fred Grandy and Senator John Breaux, Cooper coauthored the Cooper-Breaux bipartisan health reform plan, which dramatically increased health insurance coverage with the support of the business community.[19]
Cooper became the leading expert on rural electrical cooperatives, later authoring "Electric Co-operatives: From New Deal to Bad Deal?" in the Harvard Journal on Legislation.[20]
In 1994, Cooper ran for the Senate seat vacated by Al Gore's election to the Vice Presidency in 1992, but lost to Republican attorney and actor Fred Thompson. Cooper received just under 40% of the vote. It was a bad year overall for Democrats in Tennessee, as Republican Bill Frist won Tennessee's other Senate seat held by Jim Sasser and Don Sundquist was elected governor. The 4th district seat was also won by a Republican, Van Hilleary, as the GOP gained a majority of the state's congressional delegation for only the second time since Reconstruction.[citation needed]
When Thompson opted not to run for reelection to the Senate in 2002, 5th district Congressman Bob Clement (with whom Cooper had served from 1988 to 1995) ran for Thompson's seat. Cooper entered the 5th district Democratic primary along with several other candidates, including Davidson County Sheriff Gayle Ray, Tennessee's first female sheriff, and state legislator John Arriola.[22] Cooper won the primary with 47% of the vote. He won the general election against Republican nominee Robert Duvall (not the actor Robert Duvall), 64%-33%.[23]
The 5th, based in heavily Democratic Nashville, has long been one of the South's most Democratic districts. It and its predecessors have been in Democratic hands without interruption since 1875, and no Republican had made a serious bid for it since 1972. Upon his return to Congress, the Democrats gave him back his seniority.
Republicans gained complete control of state government for the first time since Reconstruction. This led to speculation that the legislature might try to draw the 5th out from under Cooper in an effort to gain another Republican district. In the summer of 2011, Cooper and Nashville MayorKarl Dean told The Tennessean that they had heard rumors that Nashville would be split among three Republican districts. Despite its size, Nashville has been entirely or mostly in a single district since Reconstruction. Cooper said he had seen a map that would have put his Nashville home in the heavily Republican 6th district. The 5th would have been reconfigured into a strongly Republican district stretching from Murfreesboro to the Alabama border, while the rest of Nashville would have been placed in the heavily Republican 7th district. Had it been implemented, the map would have left Cooper with only two realistic places to run—an incumbent-versus-incumbent challenge in the 6th against freshman Republican Diane Black, or the reconfigured 5th, which had reportedly been drawn for State Senator and Murfreesboro resident Bill Ketron, chairman of the redistricting committee.[25] But the final map was far less ambitious, and made the 5th slightly more Democratic than its predecessor. Notably, Cooper picked up all of Nashville; previously, a sliver of southwestern Nashville had been in the 7th.
Cooper defeated Republican nominee B. Staats, 65%–33%.[26]
Cooper was challenged in the Democratic primary by public defender Keeda Haynes, Justin Jones, and former Republican Joshua Rawlings,[27] though Jones withdrew before the primary. Haynes was endorsed by state senator Brenda Gilmore[28] and 2020 Democratic presidential candidateMarianne Williamson,[29] among others. Cooper defeated Haynes and Rawlings with 57% of the vote to Haynes's 40% and Rawlings's 3%.[30]
In the general election, Cooper did not face a Republican nominee. He received 99.99% of the vote, with 14 votes going to write-in candidates.
The Golden Goose Award
In 2012, Cooper created the Golden Goose Award to recognize the human and economic benefits of federally funded research.[31] Each year, the award is given to scientists to highlight examples of seemingly obscure studies that have led to major breakthroughs and resulted in significant societal impact. Cooper's inspiration for the award came from his desire to reverse the legacy of former Senator William Proxmire's "Golden Fleece Award", which attacked federal spending he saw as wasteful, often federally funded scientific research. Cooper, known as "Father Goose", was honored at the 2022 Golden Goose Award Ceremony.[32]
On January 25, 2022, Cooper announced he would not run for reelection and would retire from Congress.[33] Cooper made the decision due to the state legislature's controversial move to split Davidson County into three congressional districts in an attempt to gerrymander another Republican district.[34]
The final map pushed the 5th into portions of heavily Republican counties to the east and south. Joe Biden easily won the old 5th with 60% of the vote, but Donald Trump would have carried the new 5th with 55%. At the same time, parts of Nashville were drawn into the heavily Republican 6th and 7th districts. Cooper's only options would have been running in the new 5th, which would have been almost two-thirds new to him, or challenging Republican incumbents John Rose in the 6th or Mark Green in the 7th. Believing he had no realistic chance of staying in Congress, Cooper opted to retire.
Tenure
Cooper speaks at conference outside the U.S. Capitol
In 2006, Cooper persuaded Nelson Current publishers to issue The Financial Report of the United States: The Official Report the White House Does Not Want You to Read, for which he wrote the introduction.
In 2009 the Wall Street Journal wrote of Cooper's concerns about the national deficit, "It's even worse than most people think, he says, because of dodgy accounting used by the federal government. ... 'The U.S. government uses cash accounting,' he says. 'That is illegal for any enterprise of any size in America except for the U.S. government.'"[42] He made similar remarks on PBS, saying, "The real deficit in America is at least twice as large as any politician will tell you. And it may be ten times larger."[43]
In 2012, Cooper authored the No Budget, No Pay Act, which specified that members of Congress would not be paid unless they passed a budget by October 1, 2012.[46][47][48] It became law in modified form in 2015. Also in 2012, Cooper and Representative Steve LaTourette[49] forced the only congressional vote on the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction package.
Cooper created the Golden Goose Award to honor the benefits of government-funded scientific research with an annual award ceremony at the Library of Congress.[50] The award is intended to boost the morale of researchers who are often ridiculed by politicians for their work.
In January 2013, Cooper was the only Democrat in the House to vote against an emergency bill to provide additional disaster and recovery funds in the wake of Hurricane Sandy after supporting the initial $30 billion in relief.[51]
In recent cycles, Cooper has consistently voted for someone other than Nancy Pelosi for speaker. He cast his vote for Heath Shuler in 2011,[52]Colin Powell in 2013,[53] January 2015[54] and October 2015,[55] and for Tim Ryan in 2017.[56] He voted present in 2019. In 2021, Cooper broke his streak and voted for Pelosi.[57][58]
In 2017, Cooper worked with Republican Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama on a proposal to establish a Space Corps under the Department of the Air Force. This proposal passed in the House and then failed in the Senate.[59] Two years later, a bill with very similar language was signed into law, creating the United States Space Force.[60]
In January 2022, when the board of trustees of McMinn County Schools in Tennessee, in a 10-0 decision, removed the Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel Maus from its curriculum for 8th grade English classes, overriding a State curriculum decision, Cooper was critical of the decision. He called the ban "outrageous" and "really shameful".[63]
Cooper served on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee and was one of the top Democrats in charge of both nuclear weapons and military satellites for many years. Although most of the work was classified, he wrote an article for War on the Rocks titled "Updating Space Doctrine: How to Avoid World War III", which advocated for the weaponization of space as a deterrence.[64] Cooper was one of few Democrats who supported the Space Development Agency, to build space-based deterrence.[65] He and his Republican counterpart, Doug Lamborn, also wrote "Let's Correct a Misperception about Nuclear Modernization" for Defense One.[66]
Criticism of Congress
In 2009, Cooper and his aide Russell Rumbaugh authored an article titled "Real Acquisition Reform", which was printed in Joint Forces Quarterly.[67]
Cooper spoke with Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig about reforming Congress.[68] According to Lessig, Cooper said that members of Congress are so preoccupied with the question of what they will do after leaving Congress–the most obvious career path being lobbying–that they fall into the habit of thinking about how to serve special interests rather than how to serve the public.[68] According to Lessig, Cooper called Congress a "Farm League for K Street".[68][69]The Boston Review reprinted Cooper's Harvard lecture on "Fixing Congress."[70]
In 2011, Cooper said, "Working in this Congress is deeply frustrating; in fact, it's enraging. My colleagues are misbehaving. They're posturing for voters back home. They're taking the cheap political hit instead of studying the problem that's before us."[71] The same year, he "called the partisan posturing over the debt ceiling 'an extremely dangerous game of chicken,' and said he'd 'never seen politicians act more irresponsibly than they have been recently,' over the nation's debt."[72]
Cooper was ranked the 20th most bipartisan member of the House during the 114th United States Congress (and the most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee) in the Lugar Center and McCourt School of Public Policy's Bipartisan Index, which ranks members of Congress by bipartisanship (by measuring how often each member's bills attract co-sponsors from the opposite party and each member's co-sponsorship of bills by members of the opposite party).[73]
In 2022, Cooper was one of 16 Democrats to vote against the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act of 2022, an antitrust package that would crack down on corporations for anti-competitive behavior.[74][75]
^ abcLawrence Lessig (February 8, 2010). "How to Get Our Democracy Back". CBS News, The Nation. Retrieved December 14, 2011. Part of the economy of influence that corrupts our government today is that Capitol Hill has become, as Representative Jim Cooper put it, a "farm league for K Street."
