Capps, Lois

Lois Ragnhild Grimsrud Capps (born January 10, 1938) is an American nurse, professor, and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as the U.S. Representative for three California congressional districts from 1998 to 2017.

Born Lois Raghnild Grimsrud in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, she moved to Kalispell, Montana as a child, graduating from Flathead County High School in 1955. She earned a bachelor of science in nursing from Pacific Lutheran University in 1959, a master’s in religion from Yale University in 1964, and a master’s in education from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1990. She married Walter Capps, a theology professor, in 1960. From 1960 to 1964, Lois Capps worked as a nursing instructor and head nurse at the Yale New Haven Hospital and as a staff nurse in Hamden, Connecticut. When the family moved to California, Capps worked as an elementary school nurse in Santa Barbara County, California, from 1968 to 1970 and again from 1977 to 1996. She also taught part-time at the Santa Barbara City College from 1983 to 1995.

In 1996, Walter Capps was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives; less than a year into his service, he died suddenly. The next month, Lois Capps announced her candidacy to fill the seat. She won the then-22nd District seat by defeating Republican Tom Bordonaro in a special election on March 10, 1998. She was sworn into the 105th Congress on March 17. Lois Capps successfully defended her seat against Bordonaro in a general election later that year, and commenced her first full term in office. Over the course of her nearly 20-year House career, Capps generally won re-election with comfortable margins, often with 59 percent of the vote or more. Capps' district was renumbered as the 23rd after the 2000 census and made somewhat safer, and she was reelected without serious opposition in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010. Her district was renumbered as the 24th District after the 2010 census.

A bridgebuilder, Capps frequently cosponsored legislation with Republicans. Her experience as a nurse “colored everything” she did in Congress. Capps supported the Obama administration's economic stimulus and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. She sought to use new technology to help eliminate health care disparities between rural and urban, and rich and poor Americans and tackled domestic violence as a public health menace.

Capps announced in April 2015 that she would not seek reelection in 2016.