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10 Things You Didn't Know About Duncan Hunter

By Jill Konieczko

Posted 1/29/07

Compiled by the U.S. News library staff

1. Duncan Hunter was born on May 31,1948, in Riverside, Calif., where his father was a real estate developer. He and his wife, Lynne, have two sons–one a former Marine who served two tours in Iraq–and several grandchildren.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (Calif.)

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2. He dropped out of college to serve in the military, where he was an Army Ranger paratrooper in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971. He received a Bronze Star for his service in 24 helicopter combat assaults.

3. While attending night school to earn his law degree from Western State University through the GI Bill, he supplemented his income by working in farming and construction. Upon graduation, he worked as an attorney, setting up a private practice in the Barrio Logan neighborhood of San Diego and providing free legal assistance to many in the area's Hispanic community.

4. He was elected to Congress in 1980 as a part of the Reagan revolution. As a congressman, he is known for his hawkish views and promilitary stance, serving on the Armed Services Committee, and, more recently, the Select Committee on Homeland Security.

5. The American Conservative Union routinely gives Hunter's voting records high scores for voting for conservative policies and agendas, including a perfect score of 100 in multiple years; conversely, the liberal Americans for Democratic Action has on multiple occasions given Hunter's voting record a zero score.

6. In 1988, he used a sledgehammer to make a point–smashing a Toshiba radio to protest the company's sale of submarine technology products to countries in the Soviet bloc–and advocated barring Toshiba from ever doing business in the United States.

7. In 1992, he was troubled by 399 House Bank overdrafts totaling $129,000, and for three days set up a card table in front of the El Cajon courthouse with copies of his checks, ready to explain each one to any voter.

8. In 2001, he lobbied for a $32 billion increase in current spending, and said the Clinton administration was trying to "conduct an aggressive Ronald Reagan foreign policy with a Jimmy Carter defense budget."

9. Throughout his career, Duncan Hunter has lobbied for more controlled measures along the U.S.-Mexico border, including the installation of fences and border crackdowns; ironically, his younger brother John launched the Water Station project, in which volunteers lug thousands of gallons of water throughout the border's desert to prevent undocumented immigrants from dying in the desert as they attempt to cross into the U.S.

10. He lost his home in the cedar wildfires that raged throughout Southern California in 2003.

Sources:

Associated Press

Los Angeles Times

San Diego Union-Tribune