First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992,
Deborah Pryce rose through party leadership to become
Republican Conference Chair a decade later, making her at
the time the highest-ranking Republican woman in House
history. As a member of the Financial Services Committee
and as a Deputy Whip, Pryce drew on her background as a
former judge and prosecutor to build consensus in the House.
Her legislative interests ranged from consumer financial
protection to housing to pediatric cancer and adoption law.1
“I think it made me a better Member to be on the inside,”
Pryce noted of her approach to governing. “Information is
the key to everything that’s done legislatively no matter where
you are, and the sooner you know it, the stronger you are,
and if you are discerning enough to know when to share it,
the stronger you are. And I think it blended well with the
person I am, maybe curious and maybe nibby, but I liked to
be on the inside of the people part of the process.”2
Deborah Denine Pryce was born in Warren, Ohio, on
July 29, 1951, to Richard and Ellen Pryce, both of whom
were pharmacists. The eldest of five children, Pryce recalled
the time she and her siblings spent alongside her parents
at work. “We all grew up in the pharmacy, working and
learning about our community and that business. It was a great work ethic, and I’m very glad that they instilled that
into me because it was a wonderful way to grow up and
gave me a sense of what America is all about.”3
Pryce graduated from Ohio State University in 1973
and received her law degree from Capital University Law
School three years later. From 1976 to 1978, Pryce served as
an administrative law judge for the Ohio state department
of insurance. She worked as a prosecutor and municipal
attorney for the city attorney’s office of Columbus from
1978 to 1985. Pryce served two terms as the presiding judge
in the municipal court of Franklin County from 1985 to
1992. The resistance she faced when considering a run for
presiding judge fueled her desire to win the campaign. “I
was on the bench as a judge, and I wanted to run for that
seat. Some of the men in the party had different ideas about
who the candidate was going to be, and so they said, ‘No,
you won’t, he will.’ And that got my blood boiling.”4
In 1980 Pryce married Randy Walker; they divorced in
2001. In 1990 the couple adopted a daughter, Caroline,
who died from cancer in 1999. In Caroline’s memory
Walker and Pryce founded Hope Street Kids, a nonprofit
organization devoted to curing childhood cancer. In 2001
Pryce adopted a daughter, Mia.5
In 1992, when 13-term Republican Representative
Chalmers Pangburn Wylie retired from the House, Pryce
ran unopposed in the GOP primary to fill the seat. In
a hard-fought, three-way general election in the district
covering western Columbus and its outlying suburbs, Pryce
prevailed with 44 percent of the vote. “It was a long road,
and it was hard for me to campaign even though I had to
run for office as a judge,” she admitted.6 Pryce was re-elected
with comfortable margins to the six succeeding Congresses.
In the 2006 elections, however, when Republicans lost their
majority status for the first time in 12 years, Pryce had her
closest race—defeating Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy by a 50.2 to
49.7 margin.7
From the start of her House career, Pryce held positions
in party leadership. Her colleagues—led by a group of
moderates representing northeastern districts—elected
Pryce Republican freshman-class president in 1993. The
Ohio Congresswoman jokingly recalled thinking, “I
don’t even know my way across the street; I can’t be the
class president.”8 Pryce also was named to the Republican
transition team in the following Congress, when
Republicans gained control of the House for the first time
in 40 years. She described the first 100 days of the 104th
Congress (1995–1997) as “excruciating” for Members—
especially mothers with children—because of the hectic
schedule and heavy workload.9
Pryce became a Deputy Majority Whip for the
Republican Party in 1996. Serving in the Whip operation
allowed her to build important relationships with other
Members that proved influential in her climb up the
party leadership ladder. “I knew them, I knew about their
families, I knew about their districts, I could talk to them
about things other than just my personal ambitions,”
she recalled.10 In 1998 GOP colleagues elected Pryce
Secretary of the House Republican Conference, which is
made up of every Republican in the House and oversees
the organization and direction of the party. Pryce ran
unopposed for the Republican Conference vice chair in
2000. In the race for Conference Chair for the 108th
Congress (2003–2005) she defeated two opponents to
become the highest-ranking woman in the Republican
Party. “It was pretty close, but it was very hard fought,” she
explained. “It was a very high honor to have been elected
by my peers to chair the [Republican] Conference. It was
the first time a woman had ever held that seat, and I was
very grateful for all the support I got from the conference.”11 Pryce was re-elected GOP Conference Chair for the 109th
Congress (2005–2007).12
Already at the forefront as an influential woman in
her party, Pryce also stressed the importance of having a
moderate Republican on the leadership team.13 During her
two terms as conference chair, Pryce worked to keep her
Republican colleagues united and on message. She likened
her role to the leader of a large family. “But what I enjoyed
the most was just once a week standing in front of that
crew and … I felt like the mother hen really, honestly, to
just kind of try to keep everybody calm and focused. It
was great.”14
When Pryce first took her seat in the 103rd Congress
(1993–1995), she received assignments on two committees:
Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs; and Government
Operations. As a lawyer and a judge, Pryce initially
requested a spot on the Judiciary Committee believing
it would fit well with her academic and professional
background. But she supported abortion rights and the
chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Henry John Hyde
of Illinois, opposed abortion to such an extent that there
was no room for a Member like Pryce on his committee. “I
had no clue that abortion was one of the major issues and
one of his very most important issues,” she later said.15 In
the 104th Congress, Pryce left her initial assignments when
she received a seat on the prestigious Rules Committee,
which controls the flow of legislation in the House and sets
the terms of debate. Aside from a brief stint on the Select
Committee on Homeland Security in the 107th Congress
(2001–2003), Pryce’s committee focus was on Rules.
“The Rules Committee was fascinating because you don’t
hear from any witnesses except for the Members,” Pryce
observed. “The Members of Congress bring their legislation
to the Rules Committee, explain what amendments they
would like or not, and how much time they needed to
debate them… . So it’s another opportunity for me to
get to know the Members even better, and that served
me very well when it came time for my election to the
conference chairmanship.”16
In the 107th and 108th Congresses, she chaired the
Legislative and Budget Process Subcommittee of the Rules
Committee. In the 109th Congress, while Republicans still
controlled the House, Pryce left the Rules Committee to
accept a seat on the Financial Services Committee where she
was the fourth-ranking Member. The move gave Pryce the
opportunity to work on policy that directly affected major interests in her district, especially the prevalent banking
and insurance industries. She chaired the Financial Services
Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary
Policy, Trade, and Technology.17
Pryce focused her legislative efforts on issues that
concerned children and health care. She authored the Child
Abuse Prevention and Enforcement Act in 1999, a law that
boosted federal funding to investigate and prevent child
abuse. Pryce tirelessly whipped support for the bill and
urged her colleagues to help children without the means
to defend themselves. “Abused children do not have a
powerful voting block,” she said. “They do not have high-paid
lobbyists in Washington to champion their cause. That
is why we must take this initiative and work it together in
a bipartisan fashion to continue the fight to protect our
Nation’s children.” The bill became law in March of 2000.18
As the mother of two adopted children, she worked to ease
transitional adoption practices for foster parents. Pryce
also drafted the Afghan Women and Children Relief Act
of 2001, which authorized the President to provide health
and education assistance to women and children living in
Afghanistan through nongovernmental organizations. A
partner bill submitted by Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas in
the Senate became law in December 2001.19
In addition to the creation of her own pediatric cancer
research foundation, Pryce was a leading advocate of
increasing federal money for cancer research and expanding
access to clinical trials for cancer patients. She worked on
the Patient Navigator, Outreach, and Chronic Disease
Prevention Act of 2005, to help individuals in underserved
communities overcome cultural, linguistic, and financial
barriers to access the health system.20 After the death of
her daughter, Pryce worked to pass the Caroline Pryce
Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act, which encouraged
pediatric cancer research through public health initiatives
and grants. It was signed into law in 2008.21 “It definitely
sprang from her death,” Pryce said, “but it also was a
testament to how caring and how loving my colleagues were
on both sides of the aisle. They came together to help me
with this small piece of legislation but a piece that would
never have passed without them.”22
From both the Rules and Financial Services Committees,
Pryce authored key provisions to modernize the nation’s
financial services industry and sponsored legislation to
protect consumers’ personal and financial information. As
chair of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Dome and International Monetary Policy, Trade, and Technology,
Pryce led efforts to overhaul the process by which foreign
investments in the U.S. were reviewed by the federal
government.23 A handful of Pryce’s bills which went through
the Financial Services Committee passed the House and
became law. In 2006, for instance, she led the push for a
five-year reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, which
offers financial assistance to U.S. companies so they can
ship and market their goods around the world. Pryce’s bill
passed the House, but the Senate’s version of the legislation
later became law.24
Pryce also worked on housing issues from her powerful
seat on Financial Services. In September 2006 her Mark-to-Market Extension Act passed the House almost
unanimously. The bill, which reauthorized a longstanding
program, helped lower rental costs for people on
governmental assistance while also providing ways to lessen
mortgage burdens for property owners.25 Pryce also opened
access to affordable housing and education for low-income
Americans with disabilities. In the 109th Congress, she
introduced H.R. 5117 which became law in July 2006.
The act amended the Section 8 housing program, which
provides families with vouchers to help lower the cost of
rent. Existing law prevented college students from accessing
Section 8 housing benefits, but Pryce’s legislation allowed
Americans with disabilities to use the federal vouchers to
help cover the cost of housing while in school. The bill
was so popular that the Financial Services Committee
held no hearings on Pryce’s proposal, and it passed
the House by voice vote. The Senate later cleared it by
unanimous consent.26
In August 2007, citing the difficulty of keeping up her
hectic congressional schedule while being a single parent to
her five-year-old daughter, Pryce announced her decision
not to run for re-election in the fall of 2008.27 Pryce
openly shared her disdain for the 2006 campaign where
she spent more than $4.5 million in a competitive and
often unpleasant race.28 “The hardest thing for me to have
lived through was not the pain of the negative ads or the
hard work of the campaign or the money I had to raise,”
she conceded. “It was realizing how those millions were
being spent. It was being spent the only way it could be to
make me win and that was on negative ads. And when it
was all said and done, I knew I would never, could never
do that again.”29 Her House career ended at the conclusion
of the 110th Congress (2007–2009) on January 3, 2009. In 2011 Ohio Governor John Richard Kasich appointed
Pryce to a 12-year term as chair of the Ohio liquor control
commission. She also serves as a principal for an Ohio
law firm.30
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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