From the high school wrestling mats of Iowa to the halls of the United States Congress, Jim Leach always has been a leader, and a winner. He was a member of his high school wrestling and football teams in Davenport and won the state wrestling title as a senior in 1960.

He was elected as a Republican member of the U. S. House of Representatives in 1976, and is serving his 10th consecutive term. Leach chairs the powerful Committee on Banking and Financial Services and is a senior member of the Committee on International Relations. He gained attention for his work on cleaning up the savings and loan scandal and for his refusal to accept political action committee donations to run his election campaigns.

Leach earned his Bachelor's degree from Princeton and his Master's in Soviet politics from Johns Hopkins. Before his election to Congress, he ran a family business in Bettendorf, Iowa.

From 1970 to '73 he was a foreign service officer for the State Department, with assignments to the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the United Nations General Assembly. He served as a special assistant to Congressman Donald Rumsfeld, another Outstanding American in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, was director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board for the Midwest and a member of the U. S. Advisory Committee on International Education and Cultural Affairs.

Leach is a member of the Republican Mainstream Committee, of which he is the founder and chairman, the Congressional Arts Caucus, the Twentieth Century Fund, the Iowa Wesleyan College board of trustees, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Parliamentarians for Global Action, and the Speaker's Task Force on Video Teleconferencing. He has a strong background and widespread interests in education, economics and political science.