Dina Titus

Alice Costandina "Dina" Titus is a political scientist specializing in nuclear politics, and a first-term Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing the 3rd Congressional District of Nevada. Her district is centered on the city of Las Vegas.

Prior to the House, she taught political science at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas for 30 years, and was in the State Legislature and Senate for 15, rising to Minority Leader.

She faces a close re-election battle, which has been made a priority of both national parties. Her likely opponent is Dr. Joe Heck, a Republican emergency physician associated with the Tea Party Movement, and a Nevada State Senator between 2004 and 2008

Committee assignments

• House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
• House Education and Labor Committee
• House Homeland Security Committee

Congressional caucuses

• Regional Democratic Whip, working with James Clyburn

Issues

Health care

She voted for both the November 2009 and final March 2010 Democratic-sponsored House health care bills, and was seen as a key vote in the latter. After the November legislation, she was targeted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Regarding the final, her concerns were

I want to see it do what I have said all along: Bring down the cost of health care; provide more accessibility; preserve Medicare. Those are the things I am looking for in the bill, not whether it gets me re-elected.

If the Senate bill is not fixed, that is not a flip-flop," she said. "I see that as standing by your convictions.

I think the general public in my district thinks something needs to be done, and until they can see a final bill and can understand what is in there, there is a lot of uncertainty," she said.

In addition, she is a cosponsor of the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act.

Economy

Rather than attending the White House signing of the health care bill, she met with constituents and Jewish groups, and then presided over the House of Representatives as it started work on the Democratic "jobs agenda." The National Republican Congressional Committee accused her of "ducking" the signing, but she said she had new priorities.

We are not going to dwell on it. I am going to meet with anybody who has questions, and we are going to keep the information coming. But we are going to start talking about jobs again, and we have housing foreclosures we need to deal with."

Voting ratings

Organization	Rating	Date
AFL-CIO
American Civil Liberties Union
American Conservative Union
Americans for Democratic Action
Cato Institute
Christian Coalition
Human Rights Campaign
League of Conservation Voters
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NARAL
National Rifle Association
National Right to Life Committee
National Taxpayers Union
U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Sources: Links to the voting ratings guides of the above organizations together with brief descriptive information on the organizations themselves, may be found at: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Interest_group/Catalogs

2008 Election

She was the first Democrat to win the district since it was created in 2002.

Candidate	Party	Vote total	Percentage
Dina Titus	Democrat	165,912	47.43%
Jon R. Porter	Republican	147,940	42.29%
Jeffrey C. Reeves	Independent	14,922	4.27%
Joseph P. Silvestri	Libertarian	10,164	2.91%
Floyd Fitzgibbons	IAP	6,937	1.98%
Bob Giaquinta	Green	3,937	1.13%

Source: Federal Election Results - final official tally

2010 Elections

Citing David Wassermann of the Cook Political Report, the Las Vegas Sun said that her reelection is by no means a given. He mentioned an overall "difficult climate for Democrats, but also Titus’ own shortcomings, noting that she won her first term in 2008 with 47 percent of the vote in a year that was a wave for Democrats. 'Titus has serious negatives of her own,' Wasserman writes. 'Titus's reputation as a partisan, going back to her days as a state legislative leader, is a serious liability right now.'"

She is supported by Emily's List, a Democratic progressive organization encouraging women to run for office. It says she faces a tough reelection fight in a district that swings between Republican and Democratic winners, and considers her to have a "strong moral compass -- strengthening schools, preserving the environment, and protecting the welfare of Nevada's citizens." and to be an "outspoken defender of reproductive rights."

Politico reported that in January 2010, she rose in a meeting with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and said of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, (D-Nevada),

“Reid is done; he’s going to lose” in November, according to three people who were in the room.

Titus denied... she had singled out Reid, but she acknowledged that she said Democrats would be “f—-ed” if they failed to heed the lessons of Massachusetts, where Republican Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat last week.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has described the Service Employees International Union advertising, thanking her for voting on the health care bill, as a liability. David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, said, of her not attending the signing of the bill but meeting with voters and then presiding over House discussion of a jobs stimulus, "They are counting on the furor to die down and that it will be hard for the opposition to sustain momentum and this amount of venom for eight months [until Election Day]. They would like to shift the focus to some things that will be much more electorally valuable."

Education

• Undergraduate, College of William and Mary
• Master’s degree in political science, University of Georgia
• Doctorate in political science, Florida State University