Gerry Studds is a former prep-school teacher best known as a vehement anti-war critic and defender of his district's rich fishing grounds off the coast of Massachussetts.
Studds, found by a House ethics committee probe Thursday to have had sex with a male page, comes from a conservative district that includes the old whaling port of New Bedford and the resort islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
In 1972, the district's voters broke years of Republican tradition and elected Studds, a Democrat and the son of a Long Island architect.
He first ran for the House in 1970 and nearly beat the Republican incumbent. During the next two years, he learned Portuguese to communicate better with New Bedford's immigrant fishing community and study their problems.
Studds, 46 and single, has fought federal leasing for oil drilling in Georges Bank near Cape Cod, considered the richest fishing area in the world. Consumer activist Ralph Nader called him the most consistent pro-consumer member of the House.
Besides championing fishing interests, Studds is a constant critic of U.S. military aid and arms sales abroad.
He led House opposition to the sale of AWACS surveillance planes to Iran in 1977 and attacked President Carter's administration for blaming regional turmoil in the Middle East on Soviet expansionism. Repeatedly he has warned colleagues in Congress the United States cannot shore up shaky regimes by sending them arms.
Motivated by opposition to the Vietnam War, he enlisted in Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign in 1967 and became a coordinator of McCarthy's New Hampshire effort.
At the time Studds was a teacher at an exclusive New Hampshire boarding school. He also worked as a legislative assistant to Sen. Harrison Williams, D-N.J., in the administration of the Peace Corps and in the foreign service for two years.
Studds is distantly related to Elbridge Gerry, vice president under James Madison and the man who gave his name to gerrymandering - electoral redistricting schemes tilted to favor one party.
