PAPER: 

Write an 8 page paper comparing and contrasting two member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the same state. You may choose any state except a state which only has one representative (yes there are a few of these). Although Maryland will be the easiest from which to  get information, last semester I had a lot of students from New York and New Jersey, and, quite frankly, I found reading about representatives from states other than Maryland to be very enjoyable. (Hint!Hint!)  You may pick members from different political parties or the same party and analyze the following:

–background and demographics of member;
                      –issues they are concerned with;
                      –district demographics and geography;
                      –committee assignments and leadership responsibilities;
                      –2002 election campaign and strategy;
                      --2004 strategy if they have developed one;
                      –anything else you think is relevant. 

All members of the U.S. House of Representatives are up for reelection ever two years in November.  All members of the House will be up for election in November 2004. Some depending on how long they have been in office, may have already started campaigning. We had an election November of 2002  which used the newly drawn district lines. How did your representative do when his/her district lines were redrawn so that each of the 435 congressional districts have approximately the same number of citizens.

Your paper should help you  understanding the election process in the U.S. as well as how Congress operates.  Your analysis MUST (not should, MUST) include some discussion of the theories found in our text. Of course, daily reading of the Washington Post will also give you many ideas as well as feature stories on some of the members. 

All Papers: 

Papers must be typed, double spaced with margins of no more than one inch margins [top, left, right, and bottom]. All pages must be numbered. Use standard fonts (i.e., no stretching text with extra large or extra wide fonts).  

All papers must be properly cited using APA format. There are many electronic sources to help you put your citations in this form. See http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html. Or, our very own Cook Library has a great source, see: http://cooklibrary.towson.edu/infotutor/citing/citing1.cfm. Also Cook Library has some hard copy handouts of citation forms. Please see me if, after examining the above citations, you do not understand how to cite sources using APA format.