Rep. Capps of Santa Barbara Collapses, Dies

Rep. Walter Capps, a freshman Democrat who narrowly won election last year in a Central California coastal district, died Tuesday after collapsing at a Washington-area airport, a spokeswoman said.

Capps was stricken by an apparent heart attack at Dulles International Airport in suburban Washington, colleagues said.

Capps, 63, of Santa Barbara, was en route to Washington from his district as the House prepared to vote on a defense authorization bill and other issues Tuesday afternoon.

Capps’ death was confirmed by press secretary Lisa Finkle in Washington.

“I can’t offer any other details right now,” Finkle said.

Capps, who nearly died in a May, 1996, car crash that kept him from campaigning for most of the summer, did not fight fire with fire in his race against incumbent Republican Andrea Seastrand.

Still, Capps, a UC Santa Barbara religion professor who never held office, garnered 102,915 votes to Seastrand’s 90,374 in the 22nd Congressional District.

It was a much different result than in 1994, when Capps lost to Seastrand by less than 1% of the vote in a contest that contained far less mudslinging.

Seastrand lost points with many voters with relentless negative television ads.

The most controversial depicted Capps, who opposed the death penalty, next to Richard Allen Davis, the convicted killer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas.

Only two people were disappointed by Allen’s recent death sentence, the ad said: “Richard Allen Davis, the murderer. And Walter Capps.”