Ted Poe

Lloyd Theodore “Ted” Poe (born September 10, 1948) is an American politician and former jurist who served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Texas from January 3, 2005, to January 3, 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Texas’s 2nd congressional district and was the first Republican ever to hold that seat. His seven consecutive terms in Congress spanned a significant period in early 21st‑century American history, during which he participated in the federal legislative process and represented the interests of his Houston‑area constituents.

After completing his education and legal training, Poe embarked on a career in public service in Harris County, Texas, which includes the city of Houston. He served as a chief felony prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s Office for eight years, gaining extensive experience in criminal law. In 1981, he was appointed a felony court judge in Harris County, becoming one of the youngest judges in Texas at the time. As a state district judge, Poe became nationally known for his highly publicized and often unconventional sentencing practices, which were intended to shame offenders and emphasize accountability to victims and the community.

Poe’s “creative sentencing” on the bench drew both attention and controversy throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He ordered certain offenders to perform conspicuous acts of restitution, such as requiring thieves to carry signs in front of the stores from which they had stolen and directing some offenders to shovel manure as part of their punishment, a practice that contributed to his nickname “The King of Shame.” In one notable instance, he ordered a drunk driver who had killed two people to stand outside a bar wearing a sign stating, “I killed two people while driving drunk.” Critics questioned aspects of his judicial conduct, and in at least one case he amended a sentence after it was imposed without notifying the victim’s family. In November 2002, Poe further attracted scrutiny when, as a state judge, he ruled that the PBS documentary program Frontline could videotape jury deliberations in a capital murder case. Harris County prosecutors appealed, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, reversed his decision and prohibited the videotaping.

In November 2004, Poe ran for the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas’s 2nd congressional district. The district had previously been numbered the 9th and represented by four‑term Democrat Nick Lampson, but a controversial mid‑decade redistricting had substantially altered its political composition. The reconfigured 2nd District lost Galveston and the area around the Johnson Space Center while gaining heavily Republican areas north of Houston, including Poe’s home in Humble, Texas. In the general election, Poe defeated Lampson with 55 percent of the vote to Lampson’s 43 percent, winning decisively in the Harris County portion of the district while Lampson prevailed in Beaumont and Port Arthur. Poe’s service in Congress began on January 3, 2005, marking the start of seven terms in which he contributed to the legislative process and participated in the democratic governance of the United States.

Once in Congress, Poe made border security and immigration enforcement central themes of his political agenda, calling for “more [National] Guardsmen on the border front” and advocating stronger action against illegal immigration and increased security along the Mexico–United States border. He voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and against the DREAM Act when it was introduced in 2010, and he opposed the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, describing it as an “imperial decree” that violated immigration law. In 2011, he co‑sponsored with Representative Steve King the “Deport Foreign Convicted Criminals Act” (H.R. 3256), which would have required the United States to deny certain visas to citizens of nations that refused to accept convicted foreign nationals the U.S. sought to deport, a proposal criticized by the American Immigration Lawyers Association and by Representative Jerrold Nadler as overly broad and potentially damaging to tourism and relations with allies. Poe’s district was made significantly more compact in the 2010s redistricting cycle, becoming an exclusively Harris County‑based seat stretching from Humble through northern and western Houston toward downtown; though slightly less Republican than before, he continued to win re‑election comfortably, often with more than 60 percent of the vote, and in 2008 and 2010 faced only Libertarian opposition in the general election.

Poe’s committee work and caucus leadership reflected a focus on foreign affairs, national security, crime, and victims’ rights. He served on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, including the Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia, the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade (which he chaired), and the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (where he was vice chair). On the House Committee on the Judiciary, he sat on the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet; the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security; and the Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement. He founded and co‑chaired the Congressional Victims’ Rights Caucus and, beginning in 2012, headed the Congressional Serbian Caucus. He was also a member of the Republican Study Committee, the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, the Tea Party Caucus, the House Baltic Caucus, and the International Conservation Caucus. In the realm of human trafficking policy, Poe introduced the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2013 and again in 2015; the 2015 bill passed the House by a vote of 420–3, cleared the Senate 99–0 after a delay, and was signed into law by President Barack Obama in May 2015.

Ideologically, Poe aligned with fiscal and social conservatism. He signed Americans for Tax Reform’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge and received favorable ratings from anti‑tax organizations, including a B+ from the National Taxpayers Union in 2008 and a 90 rating from Americans for Tax Reform in 2007. He voted against the 2009 Economic Stimulus Package (H.R. 1) and the 2010 Concurrent Budget Resolution (S. Con. Res. 13), and the Club for Growth PAC gave him a power ranking of 85.85 percent. On abortion, he received a 0 rating from the abortion‑rights group NARAL in 2007 and a 100 rating from the National Right to Life Committee in 2007–2008, and he voted for the Prohibiting Federal Funding of Abortion Services amendment on November 7, 2009. In health policy, he favored repealing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), opposed what he termed “government‑run health care,” and advocated reforms such as allowing insurance purchases across state lines, establishing health savings accounts, and providing a safety net for catastrophic illness. He voted “nay” on the House health care and insurance law amendments on November 7, 2009, supported the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (H.R. 6331) in 2008, backed the American Health Care Act (AHCA) as a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, and on May 4, 2017, voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and pass the AHCA. He resigned from the House Freedom Caucus in March 2017 after the caucus’s opposition contributed to Speaker Paul Ryan’s decision to withdraw an earlier version of the AHCA, a bill Poe supported.

Poe’s congressional career also included episodes of controversy. On June 7, 2009, he became a co‑sponsor of H.R. 1503, legislation introduced in response to conspiracy theories alleging that President Barack Obama was not a natural‑born U.S. citizen. On July 23, 2009, he appeared on CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” and incorrectly asserted that Certifications of Live Birth issued by the Hawaii Department of Health could not be used to obtain a U.S. passport, a claim later criticized and rebutted, and his support for H.R. 1503 prompted a negative editorial in the Houston Chronicle. In August 2011, the news outlet AlterNet reported that Poe, along with Representatives John Culberson and Michael McCaul, was pressing to require Christian prayers at military funerals regardless of the deceased’s or the family’s wishes, a characterization the Department of Veterans Affairs rejected as “blatantly false,” stating that it respected families’ rights to pray as they chose at national cemeteries. In 2017, a bill he sponsored to have Congress monitor religious reform and interpretation in Saudi Arabia drew international concern that the United States was attempting to influence or was behind internal societal changes in that country.

On November 7, 2017, Poe announced that he would retire from Congress and not seek re‑election in 2018, bringing to a close fourteen years of service in the U.S. House of Representatives. His term ended on January 3, 2019, and he was succeeded by fellow Republican Dan Crenshaw as the representative for Texas’s 2nd congressional district. Throughout his tenure, Poe’s work in Congress, combined with his earlier career as a prosecutor and judge in Harris County, positioned him as a prominent figure in Texas Republican politics, known for his advocacy on border security, victims’ rights, conservative fiscal and social policies, and his often controversial approach to issues of crime, punishment, and national identity.