Political Profile Paper on Dan Lungren

Dan Lungren

Dan Lungren is a Republican member of the House of Representatives of the United States on behalf of the 3rd District of California located in the suburb southeast of Sacramento. Lungren was previously representative of Long Beach from 1979 to 1989 and Attorney General of California from 1991 to 1999.

Lungren was born on 22 September 1946 in Long Beach and passed a degree in English at the University of Notre Dame. On the occasion of the presidential campaign of 1968, he assumed the Presidency of Youth for Nixon in California He then began studying law at the University of Southern California before the finding of Georgetown University. During his stay in Georgetown he worked for Senators George Murphy and Bill Brock. He then returned to Long Beach where he worked in a law firm before appearing for the first time in Congress unsuccessfully in 1976 (Benson, pp.96-105).

Member of Congress 1979 - 1989

Lungren was elected member of the House of Representatives in 1979 in the district of Long Beach. There was, until 1989, a relative of Newt Gingrich and was noted for its work advocating the punishment of employers using illegal immigrants as labor. As such, it was one of the major players in the immigration reform of 1986.

California Attorney General

Lungren gave up his post in the House of Representatives following the election of George Deukmejian to the post of Governor of California. The latter appointed him treasurer of the state, but this decision was not confirmed by the Congress of California. Lungren took his revenge in 1990 when he was elected attorney general of California, a position he held from 1991 to 1999. He pushed through the Megan's Law, legislation allowing Californians to know if a sex offender lives near where they live (Eisenstadt, pp.255-276). Finally, he was the Republican candidate for the position of Governor of California in 1998 against Gray Davis. The latter won with 57.9% of the vote after he had criticized, in the exercise of his duties as Attorney General, not to have strengthened laws restricting the use of firearms and to have waited until the last time to participate in lawsuits against the tobacco industry.

After retiring for a few years of political life, Lungren made himself re-elected to the House of Representatives in 2005. He then explained his desire that his will be again a member of this institution in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Lungren was one of the main players in the adoption in 2006 of a law organizing the enhancement of port security following the scandal caused by the takeover of several U.S. ports by DP World Company based in Dubai. In 2008 he ran unsuccessfully against John Boehner for the position of the Republican minority leader (Feinberg, pp. 155-165).

“It is all very well for the President of the United States to suggest to Congress a forward-looking legislative program. That is one of the duties of the President. It is a horse of another color ...