Jim Cooper

Cooper during the 108th Congress

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—so the 1982 race had much of the feel of a statewide race. Owing to the district's demographics, many felt that whoever won the election would almost instantly become a statewide figure with potential for election to statewide office. Cooper defeated Cissy Baker, an editor in Washington for CNN and the daughter of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker,[11] with 66% of the vote.

Cooper was reelected five more times with little substantive opposition, running unopposed in 1986 and 1988. This was somewhat surprising given the district's volatile demographics: it was split between areas with strong Democratic and Republican voting histories. Before Cooper's election, much of the eastern portion of the 4th had not been represented by a Democrat since the Civil War. On paper, the 4th was not safe for either party, but in practice, its size made it very difficult to unseat an incumbent.

In 1992, Cooper was co-author of a bipartisan health-care reform plan that did not include employer mandates compelling universal coverage. This initiative was strongly opposed by Hillary Clinton.[12]

In 1990, Cooper was one of only three House Democrats who voted against the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.[13]

During Cooper's first period in Congress, he served on the United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce.[14][15][16]

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.[17] Cooper won the primary with 47% of the vote and went on to win the general election easily.[18] 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.

Cooper was reelected in 2004 against a Republican who disavowed his party's national ticket.

In the 2006 election, Cooper faced Republican nominee Tom Kovach, the state public relations coordinator for the Constitution Party, who ran as a Republican since the Constitution Party did not have ballot access in Tennessee at the time. No one opposed Kovach for the Republican nomination. Cooper defeated him by 41 points.

In 2008, Cooper defeated Republican nominee John Gerard Donovan, 68%–31%.[19]

Cooper defeated Republican nominee David Hall, 57%–42%. This was his smallest margin of victory during his time representing the 5th district.[20]

The 2010 midterm elections saw Republicans gain 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 the summer of 2011 Cooper and Nashville Mayor Karl Dean told The Tennessean that they had heard rumors that Nashville would be split between three Republican districts. Despite its large 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.[21] 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 in the 7th.

Cooper defeated Republican nominee B. Staats, 65%–33%.[22]

Cooper is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition[1] and the New Democrat Coalition[23] and has a generally moderate voting record. He is the only Tennessean on the Armed Services Committee. He also serves on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Despite the different policy affiliation, he became one of Barack Obama's earliest Congressional endorsers.[24] Cooper opposed an $819 billion economic stimulus plan that passed the House in 2009,[25] but ended up voting for the revised $787 billion final package.[26] He is one of only a few Blue Dog members not to seek earmarks.[27][28] Cooper voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March 2010.[29] In 2009, ThinkProgress reported that a Daily Kos poll "found that 60 percent of his constituents disapprove of his handling of the health care issue."[30]

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.'"[31] 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."[32]

In 2011, Cooper was one of five Democrats to vote for the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act,[33] and co-sponsored the Stop Online Piracy Act.[34]

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.[35][36][37]

In January 2013, Cooper was the only Democrat in the House to vote against an emergency bill to provide disaster and recovery funds in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.[38]

In recent cycles, Cooper has consistently voted for someone other than Nancy Pelosi for speaker. He cast his vote for Heath Shuler in 2011,[39] Colin Powell in 2013,[40] January 2015[41] and October 2015,[42] and for Tim Ryan in 2017.[43] He voted present in 2019. In 2021, Cooper broke his streak and voted for Pelosi.[44]

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.[45] Two years later, a bill with very similar language was signed into law, creating the United States Space Force.[46]

On December 18, 2019, Cooper voted for both articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump.[47]

Criticism of Congress

Cooper spoke with Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig about reforming Congress.[48] 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.[48] According to Lessig, Cooper called Congress a "Farm League for K Street".[48][49]

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."[50] 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."[51]

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).[52]

• United States House Committee on Armed Services
  • Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats & Capabilities
  • Subcommittee on Seapower & Projection Forces
  • Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Chairman
• United States House Committee on Oversight and Reform
  • Subcommittee on National Security
• United States House Committee on the Budget

Source: [53]

• Blue Dog Coalition
• New Democrat Coalition
• Congressional Scouting Caucus, Co-Chair
• Congressional Skin Cancer Caucus, Co-Chair

• Congressional Wire Products Caucus, Co-Chair
• Fix Congress Now Caucus, Co-Chair
• 21st Century Healthcare Caucus

• Bipartisan Disabilities Caucus/Disabilities Advisory Caucus
• Congressional Arts Caucus
• Congressional HBCU Caucus
• Kurdish American Caucus
• National Guard and Reserve Components Caucus
• Servicewomen and Women Veterans Congressional Caucus

• Bipartisan Task Force Combating Anti-Semitism
• Gun Violence Prevention Task Force