Congressman Revels in His Ultra-Liberal Rating

Well, actually, no regrets about that last one. His only mistake, Stark says, was that he got the number wrong. Former Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma had two children out of wedlock. "If I just said it as a way to ding him, to get him mad," Starks says, before trailing off. The comment came during a debate over welfare policy and marriage.

"Politics you're not supposed to personalize," Stark says, picking his way through a Dungeness crab salad. But, he went on, "I can't not, in extreme cases, personalize people who I think are harming other people."

Stark began his political life as a nominal Republican, the party of his parents growing up in Milwaukee. (Fortney, a name he never uses, was the work of Grandma Elsa, a product of German stock, who thought it sounded classier than Hans, Herman or Gottfried.)

When Stark moved to the Bay Area in 1957, the Air Force veteran and MIT graduate became a banker and registered with the GOP because he "wanted to be a successful businessperson, and that's what a successful businessperson did."

But the Vietnam War, which he vehemently opposed, as he does the Iraq conflict, led Stark to switch parties. He also concocted a novel protest that helped launch his political career. He put peace symbols on the checks of his Security National Bank, and a giant peace sign on the roof of its Walnut Creek headquarters. The stunt won national attention, boosted his bank's deposits and drew the kind of annoyed attention that Stark seems to relish.

He admits a certain calculation. "It's awfully hard to differentiate a bank," he says, and "a pain in the butt" to switch checking accounts, which many people did as a result. But there is no mistaking his pleasure all these years later as he recalls evading local zoning laws -- and the frowning city fathers of Walnut Creek -- by declaring his peace sign an exempted "work of art."

Stark was elected to Congress in 1972, running as an antiwar environmentalist. He beat an 81-year-old incumbent in the Democratic primary and survived the McGovern undertow in November to win a House seat he has never relinquished. (Stark sold his bank after being elected; the proceeds made him a millionaire.)

His district has shifted over the years, reflecting population changes, but Stark's political base has always been the industrial cities of Alameda County, a Democratic stronghold. The area he represents today is diverse -- no one group constitutes a majority -- and has one of the largest Indian American and Afghan American populations in the country. Only 20% of the registered voters are Republican. Stark won his last two elections with more than 70% support.