Trent Franks

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Trent Franks

United States Representative from Arizona's 2nd district
In office 2003 - Present
Preceded by	Ed Pastor
Succeeded by	Incumbent

Born	June 19, 1957 Uravan, Colorado
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Josephine Franks
Religion	Baptist

Trent Franks (born June 19, 1957), American politician, has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 2003, representing the 2nd District of Arizona (map). The district takes in the entire northwestern corner of the state, including Kingman and Lake Havasu City, but most of its vote is cast in the Phoenix suburbs. Franks has been married to Josephine since 1980. They are members of the Baptist Church.

He was born in Uravan, Colorado, a company town and now a Superfund site. Trent is a former member of the Arizona House of Representatives. While in the House, he served as Vice-Chairman of the House Commerce Committee and Chairman of the House Sub-Committee on Child Protection and Family Preservation.

In January of 1987, Trent was appointed by the Governor to head the Arizona Governor's Office for Children, which is a Cabinet level division of the Governor's office responsible for overseeing and coordinating state policy and programs for Arizona's children.

Trent served four and a half years as the Executive Director of the Arizona Family Research Institute, a non-profit organization associated with Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family for the purpose of advocating public policy to protect children and families in Arizona.

He was an assistant to Governor Evan Mecham. As executive director of the Arizona Family Research Institute, a right-wing think tank, he authored a bill to give a state income tax credit to help pay for private school tuition. He was also president of Liberty Petroleum Corporation, a small oil exploration company.

When 3rd District Congressman Bob Stump decided to retire after 13 terms, Franks entered the race to succeed him. The district had been renumbered the 2nd after redistricting gave Arizona two additional seats. He defeated Stump's chief of staff, Lisa Atkins, whom Stump had endorsed as his successor. In 2004, he faced unusually strong primary competition from the more moderate Rick Murphy, but defeated him winning over 20% of the primary vote, setting him on track for reelection. Ironically, one of his colleagues in Congress is John Shadegg, who defeated Franks in the primary for the 4th District in 1994.

In 2006, he fought against extending the Voting Rights Act for minorities.^[1]

Trent Franks is currently Chairman of the Children's Hope Scholarship Foundation and a Republican Member of The United States Congress. He serves on the Budget Committee, the Small Business Committee, the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee. Franks is also a member of the Republican Study Committee, House Working Group on Judicial Accountability, House Working Group on Waste, Fraud and Abuse, the Congressional Hispanic Conference, the Liberty Caucus, the DUI Caucus, the Human Rights Caucus, the India Caucus, the Refugee Caucus, and the Education Freedom Caucus. Franks has also been active with Operation Smile.