Lloyd Smucker

Lloyd Smucker
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Pennsylvania's 16th district
Assumed office
January 3, 2017
Preceded by Joe Pitts
Member of the Pennsylvania Senate
from the 13th district
In office
January 6, 2009 – November 30, 2016
Preceded by Gib Armstrong
Succeeded by Scott Martin
Personal details
Born (1964-01-23) January 23, 1964
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Political party Republican
Children 3
Residence West Lampeter Township, Pennsylvania
Education Lebanon Valley College
Franklin and Marshall College
Occupation Construction company owner
Signature
Website House website

Lloyd K. Smucker (born January 23, 1964) is a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Pennsylvania's 16th congressional district. Previously, he was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate, representing the 13th District from 2009 to 2016.

Biography

Smucker was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to Daniel and Arie Smucker.[1] He was born into an Amish family. After graduating from Lancaster Mennonite High School in 1981, he attended Lebanon Valley College and Franklin & Marshall College.[2] For twenty-five years, he served as president of the Smucker Company, a family-owned commercial construction firm in Smoketown.[3]

Smucker was a member of the West Lampeter Township Planning Commission for four years before serving two terms as a township supervisor.[3] In 2008, after 23-year incumbent Gib Armstrong decided to retire, Smucker entered the four-way Republican primary to succeed him, receiving 47% of the vote.[4] In the general election, he defeated his Democratic opponent, Lancaster City Council member José E. Urdaneta, by a margin of 57%-43%.[5]

In the Senate, Smucker served as chair of the Intergovernmental Operations Committee, vice-chair of the Labor & Industry Committee, and a member of the Appropriations, Education, Local Government, and Urban Affairs & Housing Committees.[1]

On September 24, 2014, Smucker voted against Pennsylvania senate bill SB1182 which would legalize medical cannabis in Pennsylvania.[6]

Smucker is a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership.[7]

He is a member of the Republican Study Committee.[8]

U.S. Congress

On November 8, 2016, Smucker defeated Christina Hartman with 53 percent of the vote in the race to replace the retiring Joe Pitts in Congress.[9] He was sworn in to represent Pennsylvania's 16th Congressional District on January 3, 2017.[10]

A new congressional map imposed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court renumbered Smucker's district as the 11th District. It picked up the sliver of Lancaster County that had previously been in the 7th District, while losing its shares of Chester and Berks counties. To make up for the loss in population, it was shifted to the west, absorbing much of eastern York County.[11] The old 16th had historically been one of the most Republican districts in Pennsylvania, but the Democratic trend in the areas of the district closer to Philadelphia had resulted in close races at the presidential level. John McCain only carried the old 16th with 51 percent of the vote in 2008,[12] while Mitt Romney won it with 52 percent in 2012[13] and Donald Trump won it with 51 percent in 2016.[14] According to Nate Cohn of The New York Times, these trends theoretically left Smucker vulnerable in a Democratic wave.[11]

In contrast, the new 11th is significantly more rural and Republican than its predecessor. Had it existed in 2016, Trump would have won it with over 60 percent of the vote.[15] According to Cohn, the Republican-controlled state legislature had placed the more Democratic areas of Chester and Berks counties into the 16th in order to protect Republican incumbents in neighboring districts. As Cohn put it, the loss of those areas and the addition of part of York County had the effect of making what was already a "naturally Republican" district even more so.[16]

Political positions

As of January 2018, Smucker had voted with his party in 95.4% of votes in the 115th United States Congress and voted in line with President Trump's position in 98.3% of votes.[17][18] Smucker supported the American Health Care Act, the GOP's replacement plan for Obamacare.[19]

Vote Smart Political Courage Test

Vote Smart, a non-profit, non-partisan research organization that collects and distributes information on candidates for public office in the United States, "researched presidential and congressional candidates' public records to determine candidates' likely responses on certain key issues." According to Vote Smart's 2016 analysis, Smucker generally supports anti-choice legislation, opposes an income tax increase, opposes federal spending and supports lowering taxes as a means of promoting economic growth, opposes requiring states to adopt federal education standards, opposes the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, opposes gun-control legislation, supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, supports requiring immigrants who are unlawfully present to return to their country of origin before they are eligible for citizenship, opposes same-sex marriage, supports increased American intervention in Iraq and Syria beyond air support, and supports allowing individuals to divert a portion of their Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts.[20]

References

  1. 1 2 "Lloyd K. Smucker". Pennsylvania State Senate.
  2. ↑ "Senator Lloyd K. Smucker". Project Vote Smart.
  3. 1 2 "Lloyd K. Smucker". State Senator Lloyd Smucker.
  4. ↑ "2008 Generalĺ Primary". Pennsylvania Department of State. Archived from the original on 2008-05-14.
  5. ↑ "2008 General Election". Pennsylvania Department of State. Archived from the original on 2012-02-06.
  6. ↑ Murphy, Jan. "Medical marijuana: How our southcentral Pa. senators voted". www.pennlive.com. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
  7. ↑ "Members". Republican Mains Street Partnership. Retrieved 4 October 2017.
  8. ↑ "Member List". Republican Study Committee. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
  9. ↑ Stuhldreher, Tim. "Lloyd Smucker beats Christina Hartman, Shawn House in 16th Congressional District race". LancasterOnline. Retrieved November 11, 2016.
  10. ↑ "Smucker announces committee assignments for 115th Congress" (Press release). Washington D.C.: Congressman Lloyd Smucker. January 13, 2017.
  11. 1 2 Cohn, Nate; Bloch, Matthew; Quealy, Kevin (February 19, 2018). "The New Pennsylvania House Districts Are In. We Review the Mapmakers' Choices". The Upshot. The New York Times. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
  12. ↑ Database of 2008 presidential election results from Swing State Project
  13. ↑ Database of presidential election results under 2012 lines from Daily Kos
  14. ↑ [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VfkHtzBTP5gf4jAu8tcVQgsBJ1IDvXEHjuMqYlOgYbA/edit#gid=0 Database of 2016 presidential election results from Daily Kos
  15. ↑ Daily Kos Elections presents presidential election results for Pennsylvania's new congressional map
  16. ↑
  17. ↑ Bycoffe, Aaron (2017-01-30). "Tracking Lloyd Smucker In The Age Of Trump". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
  18. ↑ Willis, Derek. "Represent". ProPublica. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
  19. ↑ The New York Times (2017-03-20). "How House Republicans Planned to Vote on the Obamacare Replacement". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
  20. ↑ "Lloyd Smucker's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)". Vote Smart. Retrieved 10 January 2018.
Current U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial)
Preceded by
John Rutherford
R-Florida		 United States Representatives by seniority
414th		 Succeeded by
Darren Soto
D-Florida
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