Ronnie Steine’s convulsive fall from political grace has left many Nashville Democrats scrambling for a new horse in the 5th District congressional race. As the Scene reported last week, some knowledgeable observers believe that a good deal of Steine’s support could shift to Jim Cooper, the former congressman from Tennessee’s rural 4th District. In truth, Steine’s views would seem to share more common ground with candidates Gayle Ray, John Arriola and Carlton Cornett, but Cooper is thought to be well-positioned to connect with and raise money from Steine’s affluent, educated constituency.

But before that happens, Steine’s supporters might want to learn more about Jim Cooper, who projects himself as a classic Southern Democrat of moderate ideology. Having served six terms in the House of Representatives until he was shellacked by Fred Thompson in a 1994 race for Al Gore’s old Senate seat, Cooper left behind significant political detritus—recorded votes and speeches spanning his 12-year run in Congress. Admittedly, summing up the record of someone who serves that long is a tenuous business, given the huge number and variety of issues that came and went. But a careful if selective look at some key, high-profile issues—with an emphasis on votes for passage, not procedural maneuvers—reveals Cooper to be remarkably conservative, and on some issues deserving of the “right wing” tag.

For starters, Cooper was one of only three House Democrats back in 1990 to vote against the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which extended discrimination protections to the disabled in employment and public accommodations. The House vote for ADA was 403-20; even Republicans approved the bill by a more than nine-to-one margin.

A key workplace issue that figured prominently in Cooper’s congressional tenure was the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which mandates employers to provide unpaid leaves for workers who are new parents or caring for a sick relative. In 1990, Cooper voted against FMLA both initially and again two months later on an (unsuccessful) vote to override President George Bush’s veto. He voted against FMLA again in 1991, even as more than 80 percent of House Democrats supported it, although he did cast a vote in favor in 1993, when it finally was enacted into law as the first major piece of legislation of the Clinton administration.

On another workplace rights issue, Cooper sided with most Republicans in 1991 in voting against a bill that would amend labor law to bar discrimination based on a person’s participation in labor disputes. He was one of only 33 Democrats voting against it (230 were in favor).

Cooper’s history on crime, guns and civil liberties related to criminal justice might look mainstream in the rural 4th District he previously represented, but in an urban district his vote might warrant more scrutiny. Cooper voted on two occasions (in 1991 and 1994) against proposals to ban various forms of assault weapons. The 1991 vote backed an amendment deleting language that would have made it illegal to own or sell 13 categories of assault weapons, forced firearms dealers to report multiple gun purchases made by the same person, and required dealers to certify they are complying with state and local gun licensing laws before receiving a federal license.

Cooper favored the death penalty as a member of Congress, voting in 1991 to add several new offenses to a list of crimes subject to capital punishment. There were provisions making it easier for the death penalty to be applied in federal criminal trials, and harder for criminal defendants to pursue habeas corpus appeals. More than three-fourths of House Democrats rejected these measures, while Republicans voted in favor by a 15-to-1 margin. Cooper voted with the Republicans.

Cooper’s record raises other red flags for left-leaning Democrats. On the contentious issue of gays in the military, which was prominent on the political radar screen back in the fall of 1993, Cooper joined colleagues on both sides of the aisle in voting for Bill Clinton’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy. But that may have been a vote of resignation for Cooper, who about a half an hour earlier that late September afternoon voted for a proposal to require the military, as part of its armed forces induction and enlistment process, to ascertain whether a candidate “engages in homosexual acts or intends to engage in, or has a propensity to engage in, homosexual acts.” Cooper was one of only 30 House Democrats to side with this draconian proposal, which failed to pass by a more than two-to-one margin.

Cooper was also hostile to civil liberties—and free expression in particular—on the issue of flag desecration. He was principal sponsor of a bill in 1990 seeking to overcome Supreme Court objections to laws banning flag burning. In remarks on the House floor in June 1990, he said “we revere the flag, and we want to see it protected against protestors” and drew attention to the fact that his bill was “strongly endorsed by the solicitor general of the Reagan administration.”

And then there is health care. Cooper made a name for himself in the pitched battle over Bill and Hillary Clinton’s health care reform effort in 1993 and 1994 by proposing his own “managed competition” bill that came to be widely known as “Clinton Lite.” Entering the 5th District race last month, Cooper said that in his prior stint in Congress he “wrote the only major bipartisan approach to solving our nation’s health care problems” and promised “to finish the job I started out to do.”

But according to a 1994 Congressional Budget Office report, Cooper’s health care plan would have left tens of millions of Americans without health insurance and ballooned the federal deficit by perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars. The biggest fans of his approach were private health care operators: As the Center for Public Integrity documented in a 1994 report, Cooper collected less than $10,000 in campaign donations from health care industry sources in the election cycle before he introduced his proposal (1991-1992), but more than $460,000 in the following cycle (1993-1994). As Michelle Cottle wrote in a 1996 analysis in Washington Monthly, Cooper’s health care plan “earned him the moniker Mr. Managed Care, and the insurance industry contributions to his campaign marked him as the puppet of special interests.”

There are other issues that make Cooper harder to classify. From a progressive standpoint, he was good on reproductive choice and generally supportive of Democratic Party initiatives on the environment. Cooper’s record on education seems sufficiently mainstream, although he did vote against expanding Head Start in 1990—a measure that House Democrats overwhelmingly supported and Republicans overwhelmingly opposed.

At the end of the day, erstwhile Ronnie Steine supporters will have to ask themselves if Cooper’s austere conservatism on issues ranging from guns to workplace rights to discrimination protection, not to mention his free market belief in the arena of health care, compromises his appeal to centrist and left-of-center Democrats. Some may assume that Cooper’s rightward tilts are what passes for electability in Middle Tennessee—the sort of thing that has kept the 5th District in the Democratic column. But it turns out that on many of the aforementioned issues and measures, Bob Clement voted the other way. Indeed, Jim Cooper’s most remarkable accomplishment may be his ability to make Bob Clement look like a liberal.