Rep. Christopher Cox

s chairman of the House Select Homeland Security Committee, Christopher Cox has quickly emerged as the most active and influential congressional policy maker on the issue. Bolstered by lengthy Washington experience plus nine years as chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, Cox has brought gravitas and leadership connections to the challenging task of carving an independent niche on homeland issues.

Despite conservative credentials, he has proved his ability to cultivate bipartisanship. An early priority was reforming federal grants to first responders so that dollars were disbursed to areas most in need. "Funding must be based on threat analysis, not political formulas," he said. Although that view brought him into conflict with congressional appropriators and some administration officials, Cox reached a compromise with committee ranking Democrat Jim Turner of Texas, on a plan in which a task force of first-responder groups would set funding criteria. "Until you have [national] standards, no matter how much money you put out, it will not be spent wisely," said former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., in praising Cox's determination. In addition, Cox worked closely with both Democrats and Secretary Tom Ridge to win unanimous House passage last June of a "technical corrections" bill for the homeland-security program. "We've got to keep our eye on the ball, rather than lurch from crisis to crisis, or from threat level to threat level," he told National Journal. His sternest challenge to entrenched interests may lie ahead: making a reality of Speaker Dennis Hastert's pledge that the House committee will gain permanency next year.

Cox, 51, learned the ropes in Washington by serving two years on the counsel's staff in the Reagan White House, before leaving in 1988 to win an open House seat in a heavily Republican section of Orange County, Calif. A native of St. Paul, Minn., he graduated from the University of Southern California and got his law and business degrees from Harvard.