Diana DeGette

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Diana DeGette

United States Representative from Colorado's 1st district
In office 1997 - present
Preceded by	Pat Schroeder
Succeeded by	Incumbent

Born	July 29, 1957 Tachikawa, Japan
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Lino Lipinsky
Religion	Presbyterian

Diana DeGette, at podium, denounces a proposed amendment to the Constitution to ban gay marriage.

Diana Louise DeGette (born July 29, 1957), is a politician from the U.S. state of Colorado. She has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 1997, representing the state's 1st Congressional District (map). The district is based in Denver.

A fourth-generation Coloradoan, DeGette was born in Tachikawa, Japan while her father served in the armed forces. She graduated with honors from Colorado College in 1979 and earned a Juris Doctor degree from New York University in 1982. She then returned to Denver and began a successful law practice focusing on civil rights and employment litigation.

Long active in Denver politics, she was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 1992. She was reelected in 1994 and chosen as assistant minority leader. She authored a law that guarantees Colorado women unobstructed access to abortion clinics and other medical care facilities, popularly known as the "Bubble Bill". The United States Supreme Court found DeGette's "Bubble Bill" constitutional in Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000). She also authored the state Voluntary Cleanup and Redevelopment Act, a model for similar cleanup programs.

1st District Congresswoman Pat Schroeder didn't run for a 13th term in 1996. DeGette's principal opponent in the 1996 primary was former City Council member Tim Sandos, whom Denver Mayor Wellington Webb endorsed shortly before the primary. DeGette won the primary with 55 percent of the vote, which all but assured her of election in the heavily Democratic district (the 1st District has been in Democratic hands for all but six years since 1933). Schroeder, who stayed neutral during the primary, endorsed DeGette once DeGette became the Democratic nominee. DeGette won in November 1996 with 57 percent and has been reelected four times against token Republican opposition. She won a fifth term in 2004 with a district-record 76 percent, and did not face major-party opposition in 2006.

In Congress, she serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee, where she is the only Coloradoan. She also serves as the co-chair of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus and the Pro-Choice caucus. She has risen through the ranks of the Democratic leadership and now serves as a chief deputy whip. With the Democrats' victory in the 2006 midterm elections, DeGette briefly considered running for House Majority Whip, but bowed out in favor of Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. Still, her membership on the Energy and Commerce Committee--one of the "exclusive" committees of the House--will make her the most powerful Coloradoan in the 110th Congress.

DeGette received national attention in 2005, when the House of Representatives passed her legislation to lift President Bush's limits on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. DeGette, who had had been working on the measure since 2001, enlisted the support of Representative Michael N. Castle (Republican from Delaware), who became DeGette's principal Republican co-sponsor of the legislation. The DeGette-Castle bill passed the Senate on July 18, 2006. President Bush vetoed the bill the next day -- his first veto.

DeGette is of Irish and Eastern European descent. She is married to Lino Lipinsky, a partner in the law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge, and has two daughters.

She is a cosponsor of legislation to provide the District of Columbia voting representation.^[1]