Sam Farr is a Democratic
Member of Congress who represents the 17th District of
California. Born on July 4, 1941 in San Francisco, he grew up in a
political home; his father served for many years as a California
state senator.
Farr earned a degree
in biology from Willamette University in Oregon in 1963, then
studied Spanish at the Monterey Institute of International Studies,
and did Peace
Corps work in Colombia from 1964-66. After returning to
California, he worked as a staffer in the lower house of the
California
state legislature from 1965-75. In 1975 Farr was elected to the
Monterey County board
of supervisors and served there for five years. From 1980-93 he
was a California
state assembly member.
In 1993, when veteran Democratic
congressman Leon
Panetta resigned in order to take a position as head of
President Bill
Clinton's Office of Management and Budget, Farr won Panetta’s
vacated seat in a special election. He has been re-elected by a wide margin in every
congressional race since then.
In February 2002 Farr was part of a
delegation
of California congressional Democrats -- among whom were such notables as Bob
Filner and Diane
Watson -- who, along with entertainer Carole
King, paid a friendly visit to Havana in an effort to soften American
policy toward Fidel
Castro's Cuba. In 2003 Farr co-sponsored a
bill to ease restrictions against U.S. trade with Cuba.
Farr was one of 27
Members of Congress to co-sponsor H.
Res. 333, which Rep. Dennis
Kucinich introduced on April 24, 2007. This bill set forth
articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney, for
having “purposely manipulated the intelligence process” to
“deceive” American citizens and Congress alike “about a threat of
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and about an alleged relationship
between Iraq and al Qaeda, to justify the use of the U.S. Armed
Forces against Iraq in a manner damaging to U.S. national security
interests.”
On
January 27, 2010, Farr was one of 54
Members of Congress who
signed a letter
addressed
to Barack
Obama,
calling on the President to use diplomatic pressure to end Israel's
blockade of Gaza – a blockade which had been imposed in order to
prevent the importation of weaponry from Iran and Syria.
