Terry Everett

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Terry Everett

United States Representative from Alabama's 2nd district
In office 1993 - Present
Preceded by	Bill Dickinson
Succeeded by	Incumbent

Born	February 15, 1937 Dothan, Alabama
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Barbara Pitts Everett
Religion	Baptist

Robert Terry Everett (born February 15, 1937), American politician, has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 1993, representing the 2nd Congressional District of Alabama. The district includes the entire southeastern portion of the state, including Dothan, Enterprise and part of Montgomery.

1 Life & Political Career
2 House Record
3 Committees and Subcommittees
4 Electoral history
5 Group Ratings (2004)
6 Sources
7 References

[edit] Life & Political Career

Everett was born in Dothan as the oldest son of a sharecropper and railroad worker. Both died at an early age, and Everett had to work two jobs to help his two brothers and sister. After graduating high school, he served four years in the Air Force as an intelligence specialist in Europe, where he learned Russian, and then worked a sports and police beat reporter for the Dothan Eagle. He eventually became owner of a chain of newspapers in the Southeast, as well as a large farm and a real estate development. He sold all but one of his holdings in 1988.

The 2nd District had been one of five Alabama districts to fall into Republican hands as Barry Goldwater carried the state in the 1964 presidential election, when Bill Dickinson won the seat. He retired in 1992, and it was widely expected that the race to succeed him would be between Democratic state treasurer George Wallace, Jr. (son of the former governor) and Republican state senator Larry Dixon, who represents part of Montgomery. However, Everett scored two major upsets to take the seat. First, he upset Dixon in the Republican primary, winning by 15 points largely by dominating the area of the district outside Montgomery. Then he defeated Wallace by just over a point in November, likely because most of Montgomery's blacks had been drawn into the 7th District. (Wallace, Jr. later became a Republican and currently serves on the state Public Service Commission.) Everett was reelected with 73 percent of the vote in the 1994 Republican wave and has not faced serious opposition since then.

Everett and his wife, the former Barbara Pitts, makes their home in Enterprise, Alabama. They are members of the Baptist Church.

[edit] House Record

Terry Everett's political orientation based on voting record

Everett is one of the most conservative members of the House. He has the highest lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union of any member of the Alabama delegation. He has shown a concern about local issues and demonstrates a real impact on some issues that are vital to his constituency. In 1995, he formed a Peanut Caucus and on the Agriculture Committee held out against the Freedom to Farm Act until he got the peanut program continued (though with a 10% cut in the support price). On the 2002 Farm bill, Everett chaired the Speciality Crops and Foreign Agriculture Programs Subcommittee, which placed him in a strong position to advocate the interests of peanut farmers. When the 30% peanut subsidy finally lost congressional support, he managed to secure passage of a $3.5 billion program for a fallback government purchase option for peanut farmers.

Everett has also worked on military and veterans' issues. As a Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee chairmant in 1999, he took credit for a $1.7 billion increase for veterans' health care spending and the opening of four new national cemeteries. Everett sought to shift funding priorities "from longer-term efforts to those that will provide more immediate benefit to the war fighter in Iraq", including space-based capabilities.

In 2006, he fought against extending the Voting Rights Act for minorities.^{[citation needed]}

In a Oct. 2006 New York Times Op-ed piece, Congressional Quarterly journalist Jeff Stein revealed that despite Everett's being vice-chairperson of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence, Everett did not know the ideological and religious differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Stein wrote that he posed a question to Everett: “'Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?'... Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: 'One’s in one location, another’s in another location. No, to be honest with you, I don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something.'" After Stein explained some of those differences to the congressman, Everett responded, "“Now that you’ve explained it to me, what occurs to me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area.”^[1]

[edit] Committees and Subcommittees

House Committee on Agriculture (4th of 25)
- Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities & Risk Management
- Subcommittee on Specialty Crops & Foreign Agriculture Programs (Vice Chairman)
House Committee on Armed Services (6th of 34)
- Subcommittee on Strategic Forces (Chairman)
- Subcommittee on Tactical Air & Land Forces
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (4th of 12)
- Subcommittee on Oversight
- Subcommittee on Technical & Tactical Intelligence
House Committee on Veteran's Affairs (3rd of 16)
- Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations