Tillie Fowler

WASHINGTON -- Tillie Fowler, a Florida Republican who represented Jacksonville in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2001 and became one of the top-ranking women in her party, died of a brain hemorrhage Wednesday at a hospital in Jacksonville. She was 62.Fowler, a champion of increased defense budgets during her years in Congress, had served since her retirement on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, which aids the Defense Secretary on strategy and policy matters. She was appointed its chairwoman in summer 2003, succeeding Richard Perle, who stepped down amid allegations of conflicts of interest.Throughout her career, Fowler was sometimes called the "Steel Magnolia" and described as a hybrid of a "Southern belle and a Marine drill sergeant."She took these as compliments and saw her longtime friend Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., as an inspiration and role model.During her House career, Fowler became the vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, the fifth-ranking GOP leader, and served for six years as a deputy majority whip.Fowler was called on in recent years to work on panels investigating allegations of sexual misconduct at the U.S. Air Force Academy as well as prisoner abuse in Iraq.In the House, Fowler served on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Armed Services Committee, the second a natural choice considering that the area around her district supports several naval installations.In the late 1990s, she tried to limit American involvement in the warring Balkan region, saying she "could never look into the eyes of a mother or father or spouse or child of a soldier killed in Bosnia and say that American interests in Bosnia were worth their sacrifice."Her conservative line on defense issues extended to education, immigration, environmental and gun legislation. But a moderate side to her voting was detected on minimum wage and abortion, once saying about the latter: "As the mother of two daughters, it is horrifying to me to think of anyone's daughter having to suffer the consequences of rape or incest without recourse."Tillie Kidd Fowler was born in Milledgeville, Ga., on Dec. 23, 1942. She was the daughter of Georgia State Sen. Culver Kidd, a longtime state legislator who encouraged his daughter to go to law school because he considered her naturally argumentative.After graduating from Emory University and its law school in the mid-1960s, Fowler spent three years as a legislative assistant to Rep. Robert G. Stephens Jr., D-Fla., because no Atlanta firm would hire a female litigator, she said.She served in the White House as general counsel in the Office of Consumer Affairs from 1970 to 1971.Afterward, Fowler moved to Jacksonville with her husband Buck Fowler and their children and grew active as a community volunteer, making connections that would later help in her campaigns. She also switched party affiliations because of the Republican's stated belief in "small government."She was a member of the Jacksonville city council from 1985 to 1992. In 1989, she became the first woman and first Republican to serve as council president. That same year she ordered the arrest of three black council members who walked out of a council hearing when they were denied better funding for projects affecting their constituents.With several other council members absent, Rep. Fowler called in the police to enforce a quorum to continue work on passing the budget. In the aftermath, she spent significant time repairing the public relations damage and denying her actions were racially motivated.She sought national office when Rep. Charles E. Bennett, DFla., announced his retirement in 1992. She pledged to serve only four terms, a pledge she only briefly reconsidered after a surge of negative television ads began calling her "Slick Tillie," a variation on a slur for President Bill Clinton. In recent years, she was a Washington-based partner at the law firm of Holland & Knight and did lobbying work on behalf of the city of Jacksonville.