A former state assemblywoman and GOP party member,
Andrea Seastrand won election to Congress by riding the
momentum of the Republican “Contract with America”
in 1994. During her brief tenure, Representative Seastrand
participated in the enactment of that agenda before losing
re-election in a campaign that became a referendum on the
Republican-controlled Congress.
Andrea Seastrand was born in Chicago, Illinois, on
August 5, 1941. She graduated from DePaul University
with a bachelor’s degree in education in 1963. After college
she moved to Salinas, California, and became an elementary
school teacher. In 1965, she married Eric Seastrand, a
stockbroker, and they raised two children: Kurt and Heidi.
She left her teaching career to raise the children at home.
Her husband, meanwhile, entered Republican politics and
lost a 1978 bid for a U.S. House seat that encompassed
portions of Los Angeles County and the cities of Burbank
and Pasadena. In 1982 he was elected to the California
assembly. During her husband’s political career, Andrea
Seastrand joined the California Federation of Republican
Women and eventually served as its president. She also
worked on the presidential campaigns of Barry Morris
Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. When Eric Seastrand died after a prolonged bout with cancer, Andrea Seastrand won
election to the California assembly with 65 percent of the
vote. As a member of the state legislature from 1990 to
1994, she served on the education committee and pushed
for the creation of a commercial space port authority in
California. Seastrand also served as one of three assistant
Republican leaders, holding an organizational and
managerial position with oversight of policy development.
In 1994, when California Republican Michael
Huffington decided to forgo re-election to the House
in order to run against incumbent U.S. Senator Dianne
Feinstein, Seastrand entered the Republican primary to
f ill the vacant seat. The district, newly apportioned in
the early 1990s, encompassed the cities of Santa Barbara,
Santa Maria, and San Luis Obispo north of Los Angeles.
In the GOP primary, Seastrand defeated Santa Barbara
Supervisor Mike Stoker, 59 to 36 percent, running on the
GOP “Contract with America.” During the campaign,
Seastrand declared, “I oppose higher taxes, period. Our
national budget problems do not exist because we taxpayers
send too little money to Washington, D.C. The problem
is that politicians and special interest groups never run out
of ways to spend our money.”1 As an advocate for smaller government and welfare reform, she maintained, “I believe
our problems are generated in the federal government; it’s a
full-grown monster and we keep feeding it.”2 In the general
election, Seastrand faced Walter Holden Capps, a theology
professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara
and a political newcomer. Seastrand ran on a platform that
opposed abortion, gun control, the provision of government
aid and services to undocumented immigrants, and
extending certain rights and benefits, enjoyed by married
couples, to gay men and women and domestic partners. In
contrast, Capps supported these initiatives and opposed the
state’s controversial Proposition 187 initiative, which would
have banned education and welfare benefits to California’s
large undocumented-immigrant community.3 Seastrand
carried the evenly divided district to defeat Capps, with a
narrow 1,563-vote margin, 49.2 percent to 48.5 percent.
When Seastrand took her seat in the 104th Congress
(1995–1997), she received assignments on the Science
and the Transportation and Infrastructure committees.
One of her first actions in Congress was to cosponsor the
Senior Citizens’ Equity Act, an outgrowth of the “Contract
with America,” which proposed raising the Social Security
earnings limit to $30,000, repealing a 1993 tax increase on
retirees, and offering tax breaks to promote the purchase of
private long-term care insurance. She described Democratic
charges that GOP policies were detrimental to seniors as
“absurd scare tactics.”4 During her term, Seastrand voted
with the Republican majority on legislation to balance the
budget, cut taxes, and dismantle the welfare system. In a
symbolic move, Seastrand and other House freshmen ended
the perk of daily free ice delivery to Members’ offices, a
cost-cutting measure which she portrayed as indicative
of the GOP’s commitment to shrink the size of the
federal government.5
In her 1996 rematch against Capps, Seastrand embraced
the notion that the campaign was a referendum on the
accomplishments of the GOP Congress and the “Contract
with America.” Constituents were being asked to determine
whether they were “to continue the philosophies of the
104th Congress, a new attitude of tightening the belt of
Congress . . . or if we’re going to go back to the 40 years
of looking to the federal government as the source of all
solutions.”6 Capps countered that “Seastrand got tricked.
She went to Washington and listened to [Speaker Newt]
Gingrich. She can’t think independently. She does what he
tells her to do . . . I think she’s a tragic figure.” Seastrand bristled in reply, “to think that some ‘man’ in Washington
was going to control my vote, that somehow I need a ‘man’
to give me marching orders” was insulting.7 Capps benefited
from discontent with the GOP agenda and incumbent
President William J. (Bill) Clinton’s long coattails in the
general election; Clinton carried California by 51 to 38
percent. Capps defeated Seastrand with a 10,000-vote
margin, 48 percent to 44 percent.8 When Capps died
unexpectedly later that year, Seastrand ruled out running as
the GOP candidate in the special election.
After Congress, Seastrand returned to California. In
1997 she became the founder and executive director of
the California Space and Technology Alliance (CSTA).
In April 2001, the CSTA became the California Space
Authority, a group again headed by Seastrand that
promoted the state’s participation in commercial, civil,
and national security space ventures.9 Seastrand resides in
Grover Beach, California.
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