Donald L. Ritter - House of Representatives

House of Representatives

After winning a 5-way primary election, Ritter was elected as a Republican to the 96th United States Congress in 1979, defeating 16-year incumbent Democrat Fred B. Rooney. He was reelected to six succeeding Congresses. He held the seat for seven terms, or 14 years, until losing it to challenger Paul F. McHale, Jr. in the 1992 election.

Ritter represented the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania, including the cities of (Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton). As a senior member of the United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce and United States House Committee on Science and Technology, Ritter sought to bring a greater degree of science to the legislative process, particularly to environmental and energy regulation, and was often referred to by peers as a "scientist-congressman." He is one of the few Sc.D.-level scientists to ever serve in the U.S. Congress.

Ritter's Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania district had a substantial industrial (corporate and labor union) and university constituency. Ritter was a supporter of free market, small government policies, though he also cast trade votes in favor of his district's steel and apparel industries. At the same time, Ritter supported the North American Free Trade Agreement when it was debated and passed in the House.

Ritter was the leading advocate in the Congress for the use of Risk assessment to put hazards, particularly energy and environmental ones, in more rational perspective that he believed better prioritized and reduced risks that were most dangerous to people's health and the environment. In that regard, Ritter often clashed heavily with Washington, D.C. environmental lobbying groups.

Ritter was a Congressional champion for the Total Quality Movement in the United States, building bridges into the U.S. Congress for world TQM founders and leaders such as W. Edwards Deming, Joseph M. Juran and Armand V. Feigenbaum. He also started Quality Valley USA in his district to further total quality management and the economic advantage to be derived from it by its citizens and workers.

In his district, Ritter promoted the Lehigh River as a "linear environmental center-of-gravity" to serve the leisure, recreation and creative economic development needs of his constituents. Later, Ritter authored, along with neighboring Pennsylvania Congressman Peter H. Kostmayer, legislation that created the Lehigh-Delaware National Heritage Corridor, which has since become a primary environmental and recreational focus in the Lehigh Valley.

Ritter also championed human rights. Having lived in the former Soviet Union and speaking fluent Russian, he opposed what he saw as Soviet expansionist activity in Afghanistan, Cuba, Central America, Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, Ukraine and elsewhere. In addition to his service on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Ritter was the founding chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Baltic States and Ukraine whose co-chairman was U.S. Senator Don Riegle (D-MI). In addition to being one of the few Sc.D.-level scientists in the history of the Congress, he also was one of the few to ever speak Russian fluently.

With respect to Ritter's 14-year voting record in the U.S. Congress, he enjoyed consistently high rankings from conservative interest groups and correspondingly low rankings from liberal ones. However, he represented a district that, while ancestrally Democratic, had a considerable tinge of social conservatism. Also, substantial numbers of Hungarian, Polish, Slovak and Ukrainian-Americans resided in his Lehigh Valley district and supported Ritter's strong anti-Communism.