Lloyd Smucker

Lloyd Kenneth Smucker[1] (born January 23, 1964) is an American politician from Pennsylvania currently serving as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Pennsylvania's 11th congressional district since 2017. The district, numbered as the 16th District from 2017 to 2018, is based on Lancaster and includes much of Pennsylvania Dutch Country. He previously served as a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate for the 13th District from 2009 to 2016.

Lloyd Smucker
Member of the
U.S. House of Representatives
from Pennsylvania
Assumed office
January 3, 2017
Preceded byJoe Pitts
Constituency16th district (2017–2019)
11th district (2019–present)
Member of the Pennsylvania Senate
from the 13th district
In office
January 6, 2009 – November 30, 2016
Preceded byGib Armstrong
Succeeded byScott Martin
Personal details
Born
Lloyd Kenneth Smucker

(1964-01-23) January 23, 1964
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Political partyRepublican
Children3
EducationLebanon Valley College
Franklin and Marshall College
Signature
WebsiteHouse website

Biography

Smucker was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Daniel and Arie Smucker.[2] 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.[3] For twenty-five years, he served as president of the Smucker Company, a family-owned commercial construction firm in Smoketown.[4]

Political career

Smucker was a member of the West Lampeter Township Planning Commission for four years before serving two terms as a township supervisor.[4] 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.[5] In the general election, he defeated his Democratic opponent, Lancaster City Council member José E. Urdaneta, by a margin of 57%-43%.[6]

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.[7] He was sworn in to represent Pennsylvania's 16th Congressional District on January 3, 2017.[8]

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 most of the more rural eastern portion of York County.[9] 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,[10] while Mitt Romney won it with 52 percent in 2012[11] and Donald Trump won it with 51 percent in 2016.[12] According to Nate Cohn of The New York Times, these trends theoretically left Smucker vulnerable in a Democratic wave.[9]

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, which would have been his fifth-best showing in the state.[13] 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.[9]

As expected, Smucker won a second term handily, defeating Democratic challenger Jess King with 59 percent of the vote.[14]

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.[15][16] Smucker supported the American Health Care Act, the GOP's legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).[17]

On September 24, 2014, Smucker voted against Pennsylvania senate bill SB1182 which would legalize medical cannabis in Pennsylvania.[18] Smucker voted to repeal provisions in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.[19] He has voted for increases in military spending.[19] He supported legislation to punish sanctuary cities.[19] In 2017, Smucker voted for a budget that proposed cutting Medicare by $537 billion, and giving seniors the opportunity to enroll in private plans in competition with Medicare.[20]

Smucker is a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership[21] and the Republican Study Committee.[22]

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 pro-life 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.[23]

gollark: Here it is! This is a sphere being plotted.
gollark: I made a 3D graph plotter with them, it was quite cool. There might be pictures somewhere.
gollark: You could probably do it with ComputerCraft and some command computers but it would be a somewhat accursed workaround.
gollark: Could you use a mod of some sort to do it in an actual Minecraft world?
gollark: https://i.redd.it/emd0o4odmc951.png

References
  1. Member Post-Travel Disclosure Form, Committee on Ethics
  2. "Pennsylvania State Senate - Lloyd K Smucker Biography". www.legis.state.pa.us. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  3. "Senator Lloyd K. Smucker". Project Vote Smart.
  4. "Lloyd K. Smucker". State Senator Lloyd Smucker. Archived from the original on 2012-12-05. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
  5. "2008 Generalĺ Primary". Pennsylvania Department of State. Archived from the original on May 14, 2008.
  6. "2008 General Election". Pennsylvania Department of State. Archived from the original on February 6, 2012.
  7. Stuhldreher, Tim. "Lloyd Smucker beats Christina Hartman, Shawn House in 16th Congressional District race". LancasterOnline. Retrieved November 11, 2016.
  8. "Smucker announces committee assignments for 115th Congress" (Press release). Washington D.C.: Congressman Lloyd Smucker. January 13, 2017.
  9. 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.
  10. Database of 2008 presidential election results from Swing State Project
  11. Database of presidential election results under 2012 lines from Daily Kos
  12. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VfkHtzBTP5gf4jAu8tcVQgsBJ1IDvXEHjuMqYlOgYbA/edit#gid=0 Database of 2016 presidential election results from Daily Kos
  13. Daily Kos Elections presents presidential election results for Pennsylvania's new congressional map
  14. Pennsylvania House results from CNN
  15. Bycoffe, Aaron (January 30, 2017). "Tracking Lloyd Smucker In The Age Of Trump". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved April 4, 2017.
  16. Willis, Derek. "Represent". ProPublica. Retrieved April 4, 2017.
  17. The New York Times (March 20, 2017). "How House Republicans Planned to Vote on the Obamacare Replacement". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 4, 2017.
  18. Murphy, Jan. "Medical marijuana: How our southcentral Pa. senators voted". www.pennlive.com. Retrieved September 25, 2014.
  19. Writer, SAM JANESCH | Staff. "Breaking down US Rep. Lloyd Smucker's record after 8 months in Congress". LancasterOnline. Retrieved October 31, 2018.
  20. Writer, SAM JANESCH | Staff. "Fact-checking the U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, Jess King debate". LancasterOnline. Retrieved October 31, 2018.
  21. "Members". Republican Mains Street Partnership. Archived from the original on August 26, 2018. Retrieved October 4, 2017.
  22. "Member List". Republican Study Committee. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
  23. "Lloyd Smucker's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)". Vote Smart. Retrieved January 10, 2018.
Pennsylvania State Senate
Preceded by
Gib Armstrong		 Member of the Pennsylvania Senate, 13th district
2009-2016		 Succeeded by
Scott Martin
U.S. House of Representatives
Preceded by
Joe Pitts		 Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Pennsylvania's 16th congressional district
2017–2019		 Succeeded by
Mike Kelly
Preceded by
Lou Barletta		 Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Pennsylvania's 11th congressional district
2019–present		 Incumbent
U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial)
Preceded by
John Rutherford		 United States Representatives by seniority
325th		 Succeeded by
Darren Soto
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