Jim Jontz

Jim Jontz was an American politician who represented the Indiana’s 5th congressional district, comprising rural north central Indiana, centering on Kokomo and Logansport. A progressive Democrat, he served in the United States House of Representatives from 1987 to 1993. He was previously a member of the Indiana General Assembly. As of 2020, he was the last Democrat to represent his district in Congress.

His political career began in 1974, sparked by his opposition to a dam-building project in Central Indiana. Running for a seat in the Indiana House of Representatives against the dam’s sponsor, House Majority Leader John Guy. He was elected at age 22 by a margin of only 2 votes. He was reelected five more times in a heavily Republican district, even after the Republican-controlled legislature made it even more Republican on paper after the 1980 census. He was elected to the Indiana Senate in 1984, where he served for only two years before being elected to the U.S. House.

After his political career, Jim moved to Portland, Oregon, where he began working as Executive Director for the Western Ancient Forest Campaign. While with WAFC, he built an extremely effective grassroots organizing campaign, which pushed aggressively to protect forests, remove federal subsidies that financed clearcutting, and preserve millions of acres of previously unprotected roadless areas in National Forests. During his tenure with WAFC, he travelled extensively around the country forming relationships with state and local forest protection groups. As a result, Jim was revered by forest activists throughout North America. In the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., he participated in acts of civil disobedience — including blocking a logging road in the Siskiyou National Forest in Oregon — to raise awareness about the plight of ancient forests. Those courageous acts were hailed by forest advocates as further proof that Jim was one of the greatest leaders of the modern environmental movement. In 1998, he was elected president of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). He was most recently the ADA president emeritus and served as a project coordinator for ADA’s Working Families Win project.

Jim died in April of 2007.