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Rep. Virginia Foxx has gotten the kind of national television attention over the past year that most politicians can’t buy and that many would return to sender if they had a choice.

In November alone, a trio of MSNBC commentators took aim at Foxx: Chris Matthews likened the Republican from Banner Elk to a “replicant from 'Blade Runner,’ ” and “The Rachel Maddow Show” featured her in an unflattering profile. Keith Olbermann has featured her no fewer than three times in 2009 during his “Worst Person in the World” segment.

“You can tell when she’s about to say something that will shame her district and her state,” Olbermann said in a September broadcast. “Her lips are moving.”

Of course, all those broadcasters skew to the political left, and Foxx defines the term “conservative stalwart.” She has won praise — if not a lot of  attention from cable talkers — from groups like the National Taxpayers Union, which has lauded her stances on controlling government spending.

What seems like a torrent of unfriendly attention over the past year doesn’t seem to faze Foxx much.

“First of all, I wouldn’t know Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow if they walked into this room right now,” Foxx said in a recent interview. “It’s obvious that I have a very conservative philosophy, and it’s my understanding that’s opposite their philosophy.” 

Now in her third term, Foxx represents North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District, a swath that encompasses all or part of 12 counties in the state’s northwest corner. It’s anchored in Winston-Salem and reaches through Boone and Ashe County to the Tennessee border.

It is a reliably Republican district that voted for the GOP ticket in 2008 even as North Carolina as a whole backed a Democratic president for the first time in a generation. 

Foxx, 66, was born in New York City but grew up in Avery County in a house that had no electricity until she was 14. It still had no running water when she left home.

She worked her way through UNC-Chapel Hill and has a doctorate in curriculum and teaching from UNCG. Her husband, Tom, has a similar back story.

“Our life experiences have made us very conservative because both of us figure if you can come out of the environment we came out of and become moderately successful, then anybody can do it,” Foxx said. “I believe in government, but I believe in limited government. ... We don’t need the government to take care of us.”

Foxx won her congressional seat in 2004 after serving 10 years as a state senator. The hardest-fought battles of the campaign occurred in the eight-way Republican primary. Foxx and conservative Vernon Robinson, then a member of Winston-Salem’s City Council, hit each other hard as they battled through a second primary.

One Robinson radio ad from that campaign accused Foxx of being a “liberal feminist”; another compared her to Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and senator who is now President Barack Obama’s secretary of state. It was not an apt comparison.

“I do not believe there’s a problem with having opinions,” said Betsy Cochrane, a former state senator who was the Republican leader in the chamber when Foxx was first elected to the General Assembly. “She has a philosophy that guides her. When you’re an elected official, you have a responsibility to speak up.”

Foxx credits Cochrane with teaching her one of the more important lessons of her political career. Foxx had hoped to serve on the legislature’s appropriations committee, which doles out state spending. Coch­rane steered her toward the finance committee, which handles tax matters and a host of topics that are less well understood.

“Virginia is highly intelligent, and I felt she could understand the subject matter of the finance committee,” Coch­rane said.

Foxx said she agreed, if for no other reason than because she wanted to be a team player.

“It was the best decision I ever made,” Foxx said. The committee gave her insight into a broad spectrum of legislation.

That lesson came back to her this year when Rep. John Boehner, an Ohio Republican and his party’s leader in the U.S. House, asked her to serve on the Rules Committee.

She turned him down at first, but he asked a second time.

“I said I’d do it for the team,” Foxx said. “I remembered Betsy Cochrane asking me to go on finance when I didn’t think that was my strong suit.... I thought if you’ve got people in leadership, they sometimes have a better view of where a person fits in than the person herself.”

The Rules Committee vetts just about every bill of any controversy, setting the parameters for its debate on the floor and giving committee members a detailed look at a broad spectrum of legislation.

“That’s an esoteric group,” said Rep. Howard Coble, a Greensboro Republican. “I have no idea what goes on up there, and I don’t think many other people do either.”

Coble said an appointment to the Rules Committee is a mark of confidence by leaders.

“When (Foxx) was a candidate,” Coble recalled, “I introduced her to the Republican Conference as a feisty woman from the Blue Ridge Mountains. And she is feisty. She’ll fight a buzz saw if need be.”

In an institution where seniority is a commodity and a grandmother of two can be a junior member of the body, Foxx has some respectable legislative feathers in her cap.

In 2006, President George W. Bush signed a law she authored to allow members of the military to invest their combat pay in IRAs. A measure she championed dealing with housing for noncommissioned officers passed the House as part of a larger bill this year. And a smaller measure dealing with a land swap between the town of Blowing Rock and the Blue Ridge Parkway has passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate.

She is still tilting away at a plan to require all federal agencies to send their employees pay stubs electronically rather than by mail, something she said could save the federal government millions.

And Foxx, much like Coble, is known for responding to constituents who call or write with questions. In addition to responding with handwritten notes, Foxx vigorously exercises her office’s ability to mail constituents with information about her work in Washington. That use of the franking privilege is sometimes noted by reporters, who cite her as one of Congress’s most frequent — and expensive — mailers, but it seems to have served her well at election time.

Still, outside the district, Foxx is probably best known for the fodder she has provided liberal commentators and cable comedy shows, such as “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”

Between managing rules on the floor of the House and participating in a Republican group that ensures the GOP is well represented during opportunities to speak on the floor, Foxx has created a lot of tape.

C-Span, the cable operation that broadcasts all House and Senate floor sessions, keeps a tally of every day a member appears on the floor. Among the 435 members of the House, only Rep. Ted Poe of Texas has logged more days this year than Foxx. During her first session in Congress, no House member had more entries.

During one such appearance in early November, Foxx harshly criticized the House version of the health care reform bill.

“I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country,” Foxx said.

That comment was featured on various news programs, including CNN, where Wolf Blitzer and correspondent Dana Bash picked over its significance.

“I suspect, Dana, that’s getting lots of reaction,” Blitzer intoned, as Bash explained it had already provoked a sharp critique from Democrats.

Foxx didn’t back off the comment weeks later, as she watched the Senate prepare to debate its own version of the health care reform plan.

“I’m a small-government conservative that doesn’t want to see more Washington control of our lives, and I see that bill as Washington controlling our lives, controlling our choices and putting us even more into debt than we are now.”

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com