Government Executive - Authors - Charles Mahtesian

Dollars and Census

Charles Mahtesian — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0500

The national head count is about more than people-it's also about federal money and power.

The decennial census, our national head count, might seem like the most apolitical of exercises. Over time, though, it has emerged as anything but-there's simply too much federal money and power at stake. Among other things, census data determines how many congressional seats are apportioned to each state. It affects how those districts are drawn, and it shapes federal funding to states and municipalities. Understandably, then, the politicking over the 2010 census is well under way.

Some of the census-related skirmishes are almost too esoteric to warrant much attention. They deal with things such as what should be asked on the questionnaires, the inclusion or elimination of certain surveys or the vagaries of place designations. How long should the census form be? Should the minimum population threshold be lowered? Should there be a special census designation for places such as Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley? Is it still worth asking a question about foster children when past response has been spotty and another federal agency tracked the same data? The answers to these seemingly arcane questions matter in Washington and in statehouses and city halls across the country, because in the end they translate into dollars and clout-even if they don't attract much notice from the media or average citizens.

Though the census still is three years out, you can bet there are at least two issues that will generate headlines. The first is minority undercounting. This is not new, but it's likely to be affected by the current congressional pecking order. Since Democrats control Congress and most Hispanics and African-Americans in Congress are Democrats, minority undercounting will get increased scrutiny. The congressional Black, Hispanic and Asian caucuses already are working together to address it, and Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the census, has made clear that the undercount is a top priority.

For these lawmakers, the minority undercount has consequences that reach beyond federal aid. Clay, like many other African-American members of Congress, represents a big-city district that is declining in population-St. Louis. His home state is on track to lose a congressional seat after the next census, and the boundaries of his district undoubtedly will be affected in redistricting, perhaps in ways not to his liking.

The other contentious issue concerns the counting of illegal immigrants. Since the Census Bureau does not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens-its constitutional mandate calls for counting all "persons" within U.S. borders-states with large undocumented populations stand to benefit during apportionment of Congress' 435 House seats. According to a University of Connecticut study in September, illegal immigrants will affect the allocation of 12 House seats among 11 states. When these people are counted, the Sun Belt seats of Arizona, Florida and Texas gain seven seats, at the expense of Midwestern and Rust Belt states such as Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New York and Ohio. But under a scenario in which undocumented immigrants are not counted, Arizona, Florida and Texas gain only four seats.

Indeed, if undocumented immigrants aren't counted, the study reports that California would lose two seats, and New York, Ohio and New Jersey would lose one. Illinois, Michigan and Missouri would lose no seats at all.

For that reason, Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., has proposed a constitutional amendment that would allow only citizens to be counted for the congressional apportionment process. "It's one thing if we lose seats simply because of population loss, but it's another thing if we lose this seat because of illegal immigration, and that's exactly what is happening," she said in a statement. "Michigan simply cannot afford to lose another voice at the federal level during these tough economic times."

At a time when illegal immigration is a politically incendiary issue, all of this places the Census Bureau in a precarious situation. In 2000, the bureau worked with immigration officials to scale back efforts to apprehend illegal immigrants during the Census canvass. There's no such agreement as of yet, and it remains to be seen whether such an agreement could be worked out, given the current political environment.

Charles Mahtesian is editor of The Almanac of American Politics.

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Get Real

Charles Mahtesian — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

The politicization of the U.S. Attorney's Office happened long before the Bush administration.

On June 25, the Senate welcomed its 100th member, Wyoming's John Barrasso. He had been appointed to a vacancy by Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a former U.S. attorney, after being selected from a pool of prospective candidates that included Matt Mead, the state's U.S. attorney until he resigned to be considered for the vacant Senate seat.

In the Senate, Barrasso was in the company of several other former U.S. attorneys, including Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Ted Stevens of Alaska and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and immediately found himself thrown into the ongoing controversy surrounding the Bush administration's firings of U.S. attorneys.

A physician by training, Barrasso must have found the scene a bit confusing at first. He came from a state where the U.S. attorney's post recently had served as a platform for politically ambitious public officials, and joined a body whose ranks included several former U.S. attorneys. Yet somehow his new colleagues were expending considerable time and energy over the question of whether politics played a role in the administration's firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

It would have been hard for a Senate newcomer to determine which side was being more disingenuous-the obfuscating Republican administration that tried to deny the political component of the firings or the Democratic senators feigning outrage at the revelation. Both surely were aware that for at least two decades the U.S. Attorney's Office has been a springboard for aspiring politicians as well as a plum for politically connected lawyers.

Two governors, Freudenthal and Janet Napolitano of Arizona, prepped with a stint in the U.S. Attorney's Office. Two other governors won by defeating former U.S. attorneys. Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher is not a former U.S. attorney, but he selected one for lieutenant governor on his ticket in 2003. During the past decade, governors in Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Rhode Island have been former U.S. attorneys, and so were three of the 13 House impeachment managers in 1999. This list is by no means complete. It overlooks many other politically minded U.S. attorneys, such as Clinton appointee Betty Richardson, who in 2002 ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Idaho, and Bush appointee J.B. Van Hollen, who was elected as Wisconsin's attorney general in 2006.

None of this is to suggest that the U.S. Attorney's Office is staffed by political hacks or to imply that their work product is tainted by political considerations. In fact, much evidence has come forward in the investigation into the firings that suggests the opposite. Some of the fired appointees might have fallen out of favor because they failed to pursue allegations of Democratic voting fraud vigorously enough. But to contend that appointment and firing decisions are typically divorced from politics-or to pretend to be surprised that they are not-is to stretch the limits of credulity.

The list of the eight fired U.S. attorneys at the center of the controversy is instructive. Several were by no means political players, but a few were, and these prosecutors were not political naifs. Bud Cummins had made a respectable run for Congress in Arkansas. David Iglesias at one time was a rising star in New Mexico Republican politics, with an unsuccessful bid for statewide office already under his belt. In Washington state, John McKay is now frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for elected office. In May, he delivered a speech at the Mainstream Republicans of Washington convention, his political viability enhanced by his firing.

If McKay decides to run in 2008, it's safe to assume he won't be the only former U.S. attorney doing so. In fact, there could be one at the top of the Republican ticket: Rudy Giuliani, former U.S. attorney for New York's Southern District.

Charles Mahtesian is editor of The Almanac of American Politics.

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The No Surprises Rule

Charles Mahtesian — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0400

In the 110th Congress, oversight is about more than oversight.

When Congress left town for its Memorial Day recess, Republicans found the occasion a useful opportunity to highlight the paucity of legislative accomplishment by the new Democratic majority. "The first five months of the 110th Congress have been marked by broken promises, missed opportunities and gridlock caused by strife within the majority party's ranks," said House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio.

It's true that Democrats had little to show. By June, just one item from the "Six for '06" campaign agenda, a minimum wage increase, had been signed into law. But to focus on the legislative score card is to overlook the tremendous political value of another Democratic goal -aggressive oversight.

Oversight was a key theme that nearly every Democrat, whether incumbent or challenger, focused on during the 2006 campaign. They consistently criticized "a rubber stamp" Republican Congress that had failed miserably in its oversight responsibilities, and they made the case that it was an absence of any real checks and balances on the executive branch that led to the government's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, a misguided war on terrorism and a failed Iraq policy.

If nothing else, Democrats have delivered on this front. At the beginning of the 110th Congress, House Democratic committee chairmen added four new oversight and investigation subcommittees-on the Armed Services Committee, on Small Business, on Science and Technology, and a select intelligence oversight panel on Appropriations. To further telegraph the party's intentions, the Government Reform Committee was renamed the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Through the end of May, the House and Senate had held more than 250 oversight hearings. On just one day in March, there were 11 military-related oversight hearings; on one day in May, three different congressional committees voted to authorize subpoenas for various administration officials. There have been nearly 200 House and Senate oversight hearings on Iraq alone, and investigations have been launched into White House political activities, global warming, the Food and Drug Administration, Iraq reconstruction, the Valerie Plame affair, the Pentagon's alleged misinformation surrounding the death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman,and the rescue of Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch. All this has taken place in about six months' time.

A good portion of this activity has been dismissed by Republicans as partisan gamesmanship. But the oversight agenda still makes for good politics. Either by design or effect, it serves as a freshman protection initiative-the oversight subcommittees, which offer unusually rich opportunities for free publicity, have been populated with freshmen Democrats. Two from Florida landed on the Financial Services oversight subcommittee, where they will be able to hammer on regulatory issues surrounding the insurance industry-a central issue back home in the wake of recent hurricanes. Three of the five members on the Homeland Security oversight subcommittee are freshmen; it's even chaired by one. The Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations also is chaired by a freshman Democrat.

Aggressive oversight serves another political purpose, one that may prove invaluable as the ambitious Democratic legislative agenda runs up against the reality of the slim legislative majority. It throws red meat to the party's progressive wing, which harbors deep animosity toward the Bush administration, without actually passing liberal legislation that could endanger the reelection of the many Democrats elected from culturally conservative districts in 2006.

The danger, of course, is that congressional Democrats will overreach, crossing the fine line between legitimate oversight and partisan witch- hunting. As Republicans discovered in the late 1990s during the Clinton administration, that is a good way to pare down the size of your majority.

Charles Mahtesian is editor of The Almanac of American Politics.

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Getting Up to Speed

Charles Mahtesian — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Candidates find the new pace of earlier primaries demands quicker promises.

If it seems to you that the 2008 presidential race has started far earlier than usual, you're right. Candidates have raised more money at a faster pace at an earlier time than in the past, and more states are holding early presidential primary contests than in prior years.

This accelerated and front-loaded campaign already has forced presidential candidates to rethink tactics and strategy. And, for better or for worse, it's likely to expand the field of issues on which candidates are forced to take a position.

In past presidential seasons, there was a certain formulaic quality to campaigning. Candidates would talk in generalities about national issues, of course, but they also would have to be conversant on the issues that were most important in the key early primary states. For the most part, that meant federal farm policy and ethanol use in agriculture-oriented Iowa and tax policy in tax-sensitive New Hampshire.

But now that as many as 34 states could hold primary contests by Feb. 5, the 2008 schedule will have the consequence of introducing a slew of narrow but thorny federal and national issues that candidates might not have encountered in the past and will have to address in order to remain competitive in certain states.

More than a few of these issues come compliments of California, the behemoth that recently skewed the election calendar by moving its primary to the first week in February.

The issues that matter most in California politics are not necessarily the same as elsewhere. Environmental protection ranks high on voters' minds, so candidates will need to offer detailed positions on global warming and offshore oil drilling. They'll also need to bone up on federal water policy, since the state is outgrowing its supply. Armenian-Americans are a sizable constituency; they'll expect candidates to take a position on the congressional resolution calling for recognition of the Armenian genocide-which could put candidates at odds with the State Department, which has resisted the effort, arguing that it jeopardizes U.S.-Turkey relations.

There is immigration, of course, and then another issue that state politicians will force presidential candidates to confront: California's return on its federal tax dollars. It ranks as the No. 2 donor state, receiving just 79 cents in federal spending for every dollar it sends to Washington.

Other early primary states present a different issue mix. Now that Nevada and South Carolina hold two of the four critical January contests, nuclear waste suddenly takes center stage. South Carolina has a handful of facilities that produce tons of high-level nuclear waste.

Eventually that waste was supposed to be transported to Nevada, where a national nuclear waste repository was slated to be built at a facility called Yucca Mountain-a facility that Nevada residents desperately want to stop from being built.

Naturally this puts presidential aspirants in a tough fix. In Democrat John Edwards' case, he decided to change his position. During his term in the Senate, he voted to move forward with building Yucca Mountain. Now that he is courting Nevada voters, he opposes the project, explaining that nuclear waste might have to be stored at the facilities where it is produced. Florida is considering moving its primary to January, and if it does, an even more diverse set of issues will surface. The politically active Cuban community in South Florida will demand a detailed discussion of U.S. policy toward Cuba. Hurricane-beleaguered voters and politicians also will insist on a conversation about windstorm insurance and the question of whether there should be a federal backstop for natural catastrophes, perhaps in the form of reinsurance, subsidies for the purchase of insurance in the private market or by providing insurance directly to homeowners.

After a good grilling on the windstorm insurance question, presidential candidates could find themselves yearning for the days when ethanol and income taxes were all they needed to get up to speed on.

Charles Mahtesian is editor of The Almanac of American Politics.

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What’s in a Name?

Charles Mahtesian — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Democrats recast committee titles to signal a new era.

The House panel that oversees U.S. relations with foreign nations dates back to the Continental Congress in 1775. It was first known as the Committee of Correspondence, then the Committee of Secret Correspondence, before Congress finally settled on calling it the Foreign Affairs Committee in the early part of the 19th century.

With the exception of one brief period, that name sufficed until 1995, when the newly ascendant Republican House majority decided to buck tradition and give the committee a new name-the International Relations Committee.

The change was little more than a cosmetic alteration (a Republican leader explained at the time that the term "international relations" suggested a more outward-looking approach) but that was exactly the point. The new party in power rejected every element of the old Democratic order, right down to the names of particular committees. Between the renaming of some full committees and the outright elimination of others, Republicans managed to signal both their legislative intentions and their repudiation of decades of Democratic House rule.

Democrats never forgot the sting of that Republican reproach, so it should come as no surprise that they have engaged in a bit of payback in the 110th Congress. Now that Democrats are back in control, a handful of House panels have reverted to their pre-1995 names while other committees and subcommittees have been given entirely new ones, all of it designed to send a message about the new Democratic majority's priorities.

"A new sheriff has come to town, taking the reins with a purpose," said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., whose first act as chairman was to rechristen his International Relations Committee as the Foreign Affairs Committee. "Americans have demanded change in the way our country conducts itself in the world. Count on Congress to see to it." Foreign Affairs isn't the only committee to see its old pre-1995 name restored. The Education and the Workforce Committee is once again the Education and Labor Committee; the Resources Committee is again the Natural Resources Committee.

To the untrained eye, these subtle changes might appear meaningless and inconsequential. Yet in political terms, they are anything but. The Republican act of removing the word "labor" from the Education and Labor Committee in 1995 was viewed at the time as an affront to organized labor; the Democratic act of returning it in 2007 was an attempt by Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., to remedy that slight. Likewise, adding the word "natural" to the Resources Committee name is a calculated move designed to highlight a Democratic commitment to the environment, rather than to those who seek to utilize its resources.

In some cases, the motives behind the new names are more obvious. Since the need for increased congressional oversight was a central theme in the 2006 election, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., changed his panel's name from the Government Reform Committee to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. At the Homeland Security Committee, the subcommittee formerly known as Management, Integration and Oversight has now been renamed Management, Investigation and Oversight. Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., a liberal and harsh Bush administration critic, changed his Subcommittee on the Constitution to the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

It's no coincidence that chairmen like Conyers, Waxman, Miller and Lantos have led these exercises in Democratic muscle-flexing. As veteran legislators whose service predates the 1994 Republican takeover, they have fond memories of the glory days when Democrats were masters of the House and committee names reflected Democratic priorities. The opportunity to show their disdain for 12 years of Republican rule is an added benefit.

Charles Mahtesian is editor of The Almanac of American Politics.

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Immigration Redux

Charles Mahtesian — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Case of imprisoned Border Control agents returns issue to forefront.

Judging from the results of the November 2006 election, the politics of immigration policy turned out to be a bust. But just when it appeared the issue had lost its political salience, the controversial case of two imprisoned Border Patrol agents is reminding Washington of its volatility.

Nearly every aspect of the case is disputed, but this much is true. On Feb. 17, 2005, Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean pursued a suspicious van traveling near the Texas-Mexico border. The driver, later identified as an undocumented immigrant named Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, ditched the van and was shot once in the buttocks before he fled on foot into Mexico. The vehicle contained 743 pounds of marijuana.

After an investigation by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, Johnny Sutton, U.S. attorney for Western Texas, prosecuted the agents for shooting the unarmed man and attempting to cover it up. Federal prosecutors, who gave Aldrete-Davila immunity in exchange for his testimony, said Ramos and Compean were rogue officers. The agents contended there was reason to believe the man was armed.

In March 2006, a jury found the agents guilty. Ramos was sentenced to 11 years in prison and Compean got a 12-year term. Their sentences started in January. That, however, is just the beginning. The harsh sentences, the immunity deal given to an alleged drug-trafficker and subsequent revelations that several jurors felt pressured into delivering a guilty verdict have fueled a burgeoning grass-roots campaign to pardon the agents-complicating the Bush administration's ability to craft comprehensive immigration reform.

To conservatives, who already view the White House as soft on illegal immigration, the case represents not only a terrible miscarriage of justice but also an example of the administration's refusal to support front-line agents.

As such, more than a few in the GOP have been willing to press the issue. Republican Rep. Thomas G. Tancredo of Colorado, the leading congressional advocate for stricter immigration policy, sponsored a bill in January calling for an unconditional presidential pardon. Another House conservative, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, warned there would be talk of impeachment if either of the agents were killed in prison.

If it were just a matter of a few congressmen chasing headlines, the White House could easily ignore the furor. But last month, 45 House members signed a letter to congressional leaders requesting immediate hearings "into all aspects of the Ramos and Compean case."

Since many of those members are immigration hard-liners already at odds with the administration, their concerns might not ordinarily carry much weight. But the American Federation of Government Employees also supports a presidential pardon. And 90 members of Congress-a figure that includes a handful of Democrats-have co-sponsored a measure that calls for a congressional pardon and a review of the Border Patrol rules of engagement.

All this places the White House in an awkward position. If the administration pardons the agents, it undercuts U.S. attorney Sutton-a former Bush-Cheney transition team lawyer who served as criminal justice policy director to then-Gov. George Bush in Texas. It also would provide comfort to some of the administration's toughest immigration policy critics and shed more light on the lawlessness of the border region.

Denying a pardon would have equally meaningful consequences. At a time when the president needs all the allies he can get, he would risk alienating his conservative base-and likely jeopardize his chances of winning enough Republican votes to ensure passage of immigration law reform.

Charles Mahtesian is editor of The Almanac of American Politics.

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A Lot to Learn

Charles Mahtesian — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

The new Democratic majority must avoid making rookie mistakes.

On occasion, a politician will commit a gaffe so damaging that it jeopardizes his reelection prospects and requires a public apology. In freshman Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen's case, that moment came within weeks of his swearing-in. According to an account in a local alternative newspaper, Kagen bragged to a group of peace activists about his eventful first visit to the White House, where he allegedly menaced presidential adviser Karl Rove in a bathroom, confronted Vice President Dick Cheney and then insulted President Bush in a reception line by intentionally referring to First Lady Laura Bush by the wrong name.

The White House strongly denied the congressman's version of the events; Kagen himself backed away from his remarks when other news outlets sought to verify them, at first refusing to confirm or deny anything, then dismissing the episode as a "playful experience."

Before long though, the controversy became such a distraction that Kagen, an allergist who had never held elected office before, could no longer sidestep it. He issued a letter of apology to his constituents, writing that he was sorry for "handling this situation as I did."

It was an inauspicious start to his congressional career, and one that will likely haunt him when he comes up for reelection. Yet the Walter Mitty-style political fantasy will not be the only obstacle confronting Kagen in 2008: It turns out the Food and Drug Administration had formally warned him in December 2006 that his Wisconsin-based allergy practice appeared to be in violation of a federal law that requires a license for the manufacture and sale of allergen vaccines.

Kagen's rookie mistakes highlight one of the difficulties the new Democratic House majority faces. Among the large class of Democratic freshmen are a number of inexperienced newcomers who, like Kagen, are in need of political seasoning. The extent to which these greenhorns can limit their blunders could determine whether Democrats retain the House.

It's an unusual predicament, rooted in the unique circumstances of the 2006 elections, when a wave of revulsion against congressional Republicans swept in 42 new Democrats, some of whom might not have won in a typical election year. The problem they face is that the underlying political characteristics of their districts remain unchanged; in the absence of another strong Democratic tail wind in 2008, those places might be inclined to revert to old voting habits.

That leaves little margin for error, yet in the opening weeks of the 110th Congress a few of the newcomers seemed unaware of this fact. Take Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan., another first-time officeholder who pulled off one of the biggest upsets in 2006, knocking off a Republican incumbent in a Republican-friendly district.

In her first week in Congress, Boyda found herself on the defensive after making an ill-advised and patronizing comment during a nationally televised interview. Boyda, who opposes the idea of a troop surge in Iraq, nevertheless said she would vote to fund a troop increase. When the ABC News reporter noted that the recent election indicated that voters want a new direction, Boyda responded, "They should have thought about that before they voted for President Bush, not once, but twice."

Since her district is among those that twice voted for Bush, her remark didn't go over so well back home. Within a week, she publicly apologized, chalking it up to "first week jitters."

Even before her comments, political strategists agreed that Boyda would be among the most vulnerable incumbents in 2008. Fortunately for Boyda, the Democratic House leadership seems to understand the precariousness of their freshmen cohort and is actively engaged in initiatives designed to bolster their standing and to school them in the art of politics. Boyda, for example, was tapped to serve as the lead sponsor of the high-profile ethics bill to revoke the pensions of convicted members of Congress.

Charles Mahtesian is editor of The Almanac of American Politics.

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Transfer of Power

Charles Mahtesian — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Outsider states become insiders in the 110th Congress.

For much of the last century, under both Democratic and Republican rule, Texas has been a congressional powerhouse. The state has sent three Democratic House speakers to Washington, two Republican House majority leaders and numerous other powerful, longtime committee chairmen. Three Texans have been elected president; two of them prepped with a stint in the Texas congressional delegation.

As recently as two years ago, Texas had the largest GOP delegation in the House-21 members-and one of the most influential. Tom DeLay was the majority leader, Joe Barton chaired the heavyweight Energy and Commerce Committee and Henry Bonilla headed the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, making him a member of "the college of cardinals," the elite appropriations subcommittee chairs who control the purse strings.

But as the 110th Congress begins, Texas is a congressional also-ran. DeLay resigned last year, Bonilla lost his reelection bid and Barton's chairmanship vanished when Republicans lost their majority in the House. Democrat Chet Edwards is a cardinal (Military Construction/Veterans Affairs) but there are no Texans in top leadership posts in either party and just one who holds a full committee chairmanship-Democrat Silvestre Reyes, the new Intelligence Committee chair.

This is a serious loss of clout for Texas and illustrates an overlooked consequence of the new Democratic majority. States like Texas, which prospered under Republican rule, could be on the outs. And states that struggled to advance their interests now will be on the inside. These newly empowered congressional delegations will be wielding more influence on Capitol Hill, positioned to set the legislative agenda, alter federal funding priorities and shape the regulatory environment in ways that favor a different set of home-state interests.

New York is one of the biggest winners. After picking up three Republican-held seats in 2006, the Democratic House delegation is 23 members strong-roughly one-tenth of the Democratic Caucus. New Yorkers now chair three full House committees (Rules, Small Business, and Ways and Means), two appropriations subcommittees, and hold two additional slots on other exclusive committees. Sen. Chuck Schumer has ascended to the No. 3 position in party leadership.

California is another beneficiary of a Democratic Congress. The state more than held its own under 12 years of GOP rule-at one time during the 109th Congress, California Republicans served as chairmen of six different committees, including the money-spending Appropriations panel and tax-writing Ways and Means-but the state is in a stronger position than ever, thanks to the election of San Francisco-based House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

With 34 Democrats, California is the largest and most dominant bloc in the 233-member Democratic Caucus. Five Californians hold committee chairmanships; the number of California Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee grew from two to five. Senior Sen. Dianne Feinstein will chair the Appropriations Interior Subcommittee and the Rules and Administration Committee; Sen. Barbara Boxer chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Megastates like California and New York aren't the only ones poised to flourish. With six Democrats in its nine-member House delegation, Washington state interests such as Boeing and Microsoft will be well-served. Rep. Norm Dicks and Sen. Patty Murray chair appropriations subcommittees; Murray also holds a top Democratic leadership position. Minnesota also will muscle up in the House since it gained a new Democratic appropriator-Betty McCollum-and two of its eight members are now key committee chairmen-Collin Peterson (Agriculture) and Jim Oberstar (Transportation).

Florida, on the other hand, will see its influence wane since seniority is the building block for congressional clout and the state is sorely lacking in that department. The Senate delegation is among the most junior; five of the state's 25 House members are freshmen. There isn't a single committee chairman who hails from Florida. Worse, in a Democratic-controlled House, 16 of the state's 25 seats are held by Republicans. While Florida boasts a House appropriations cardinal, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, her fiefdom is probably the least useful of all for advancing Florida interests-she chairs the Legislative Branch Subcommittee, which oversees the budget for the House and the U.S. Capitol.

Charles Mahtesian is editor of The Almanac of American Politics.

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A Last-Minute Save

Charles Mahtesian — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0500

By rescuing the Medicare drug benefit, agency chiefs prevented 2006 from being even worse for the GOP.

When Congress passed the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit in November 2003, Republican strategists viewed it as a politically transformative event, perhaps the first step toward a "permanent majority." The way they saw it, the first federal prescription drug benefit would bolster the party going into the 2004 campaign and, equally important, cut into the traditional Democratic advantage among senior citizens. If Republicans could earn credibility among seniors through the expansion of Medicare benefits, then they would have political cover for their efforts to reform Social Security. Thus, the thinking went, the party would have a foothold among a grateful elderly population and also among a younger generation of voters who would recognize the GOP as the party that saved Social Security.

Yet things didn't turn out the way President Bush and congressional Republicans envisioned. Three years after Congress passed the legislation, Democrats ousted the Republican House and the Senate majorities after a 2006 midterm election rout in which it was hard to find a single race where the prescription drug benefit carried a GOP candidate to victory, but easy to point to a handful where it played a central role in an incumbent's defeat.

While the drug benefit might not have provided Republicans with the lift they expected, they can take solace from the fact that the results could have been much worse, if not for the efforts of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mark McClellan.

Going into 2006, the complex drug benefit had all the makings of a potential political calamity. The HHS secretary and CMS administrator who were in office when the bill passed, Tommy Thompson and Thomas Scully, were no longer around in January 2006, when it came time to actually implement the plan. As late as December 2005, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 50 percent of seniors had an unfavorable impression of the federal drug benefit compared with just 28 percent who had a favorable impression.

Then there was the troubled rollout, which led to widespread Republican panic since senior citizens tend to vote in higher numbers than other groups and are the last constituency politicians want to alienate.

The negative publicity surrounding early enrollment problems also provided ammunition for Democrats who fiercely opposed the plan as inadequate. During the February recess, congressional Democrats held more than 100 events and town hall meetings to attack the GOP plan and to present their alternatives. By then, the smell of fear had permeated the campaign trail.

But by summer, the precarious politics of Medicare Part D stabilized, largely due to Leavitt and McClellan. The chaotic and confusing enrollment process became a little less so after the 1-800-MEDICARE staff was bolstered by additional customer service representatives. The number of call centers was tripled-the average wait time dropped from four-and-a-half minutes in January to less than 30 seconds in March. Extensive congressional hand-holding helped assuage skittish GOP legislators. And a public outreach tour encouraged seniors to enroll before the May deadline-more than 2 million signed up in the final two weeks.

In June 2006, Leavitt reported that 32.8 million Americans, or 90 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries, had attained prescription drug coverage. That same month, a Kaiser poll found that 81 percent of seniors enrolled in Medicare drug plans were satisfied.

But the greatest political testament to Leavitt and McClellan's work came from the subtle change in the terms of the debate. Over time, the plan itself faded from Democratic campaign attacks, replaced by a separate, though related, issue-Republican ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

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Pelosi’s Posse Targets Bush

Charles Mahtesian — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Department chiefs can expect rough going on the Hill.

Forty-one freshmen House Democrats swept into Congress on Election Day, more than twice as many as elected in the classes of 2002 and 2004. The Senate has eight new Democrats, four times as many as in 2004. By and large, the newcomers are an experienced bunch. Among the new House members, 12 have run for Congress before and 36 have held elective office. In the Senate, three new members are moving up after stints in the House. Nearly all the rookies will arrive in Washington after campaigns in which they concentrated their fire on President George W. Bush.

That makes it highly unlikely they will be deferential toward the White House. But facing its largest class of Democratic freshmen is the least of the administration's concerns in the 110th Congress. More worrisome is the top of the congressional food chain where a passel of Democratic committee chairmen will be demanding answers and explanations from an administration unaccustomed and averse to giving them.

In the Republican-controlled Congress, oversight fell by the wayside; it was easy for the Bush administration to ignore queries from Democrats such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., while they were in the minority. But now that subpoena power is in their hands, Capitol Hill is going to become a much more unpleasant place for administration officials.

In the Senate, California Democrat Barbara Boxer has promised "vigorous oversight" from her chairman's perch on the Environment and Public Works Committee. No administration witness who has been singed by her questions in the past will relish repeating the experience. The FBI will get a good scrubbing before incoming Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; the FBI's counter-terrorism efforts might be closely scrutinized by an Intelligence Committee led by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. The National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program also will be of great interest to Leahy.

The Homeland Security Department is another sitting duck. Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., is likely to thoroughly probe fraud and abuse in federal contracts. The committee also is likely to extend the mandate of the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. Complicating matters is Lieberman's unusual party status as an "Independent Democrat"-his helmsmanship will be closely monitored by Democratic partisans who, in the past, have accused him of being too passive on oversight.

The House, of course, probably will offer the most drama, largely because of the return to power of Waxman and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. The powerful chairman of Energy and Commerce from 1981 until 1994, Dingell returns to his former post with two areas of immediate interest-the Medicare prescription drug benefit and the administration's energy policy.

Waxman, who will chair the House Government Reform Committee, is alternately de-scribed by his colleagues, usually admiringly, as a "bulldog" or a "barracuda." When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants a thorough investigation, Waxman will be the go-to guy; he'll be charged with looking into matters ranging from domestic security spending to Hurricane Katrina response.

The bad news for the administration doesn't stop there. Incoming House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., wants to investigate the administration's plan to impose mandatory animal identification on livestock owners; new Homeland Security Committee chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has signaled he expects to see Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff a lot more frequently.

Then there is Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., who plans to create a new subcommittee on oversight and investigations. He told National Journal in September that his plans, should Democrats win a majority, would be "oversight, oversight, oversight!"

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Hidden Treasure

Charles Mahtesian — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0500

A puzzling Census Web site impedes support for the bureau's mission.

Hidden in the recesses of the Commerce Department's Census Bureau Web site (www.census.gov) is a treasure trove of fascinating information about who we are as a nation. You could spend hours aimlessly poking around, haphazardly bumping into random but enlightening facts such as the percentage of population with bachelor's degrees in 1940 (4.6); the leading country of birth of foreign-born in 1930 (Italy) versus 2000 (Mexico); or the projected U.S. population in 2050 (419,854,000).

One recent Census report found that 49 percent of U.S. businesses are home-based. Another announced that Flagler County, Fla., was the fastest-growing county in the nation for the second consecutive year.

Unfortunately, as wide-ranging and engrossing as Census data can be, much of it will never be known to the American public. That's because the bureau's Web site is as maddening and unnavigable as it gets. Unlike, say, the data-rich and easy-to-follow Web site maintained by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov), the Census site is poorly organized, not intuitive and laden with demographic jargon.

The acronyms, summary files, estimates and projections are indecipherable enough to the casual user, but the Census Bureau exacerbates the situation by layering in a few other confusing designations-such as the American FactFinder and Quick Facts.

An impenetrable Web site might not matter so much if it weren't for the financial squeeze confronting the bureau. Congress has proposed cutting as much as $53 million from the bureau's 2007 budget, an especially painful reduction since the agency is beginning its preparations for the 2010 census.

At a time when the Census Bureau needs as much support as it can get, there is no public outcry and precious little media attention. It's worth considering whether this is evidence of the opacity, inadvertent as it might be, surrounding the agency's vital work.

As it stands, the only defense of the Census Bureau comes from academic researchers, demographers, commercial interests and others whose work depends on the amazing data the agency compiles. For their purposes, the Web site is just fine since it appears to be designed with them in mind.

While it's naïve to think that a more user-friendly site might stave off raids on the bureau's budget, a more inviting Web presence would go a long way toward creating the kind of popular constituency that Congress respects. At the moment, it is far too easy to dismiss advocates of increased funding as the usual supplicants.

Here's how Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who chairs the Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security Subcommittee, responded when Census Director C. Louis Kincannon testified that the 2007 budget cuts could potentially increase costs for the 2010 count. "It is the height of arrogance for the Census Bureau to threaten Congress with huge cost increases when it is unable to explain how it uses the money it already has," said Coburn. "Until Census makes a stronger case for why it needs more money, I will do everything I can to make sure the budget cuts in the House and Senate stand."

In the House, where the proposed cuts are largely the product of shifting $50 million from the Census Bureau to a law enforcement federal grant program, a similar mind-set has taken place. "Sometimes you have to prioritize," Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said in June. "Right now, we need more help on the streets with crime than we do in the Census Bureau."

That kind of logic always will be a problem for the bureau. But if members like Souder or Coburn knew that many of their constituents were deeply enamored of the Census Bureau and its attempts to chronicle the demographic majesty of this nation-something the Web site doesn't currently facilitate-it might be a different story.

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Election Bait

Charles Mahtesian — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Why Congress suddenly cares about illegal immigration.

It might seem strange that illegal immigration, which didn't warrant much national attention as recently as two years ago, would suddenly emerge as one of the key issues in the 2006 elections. The timing seems especially odd to congressional Democrats, many of whom believe the issue is a phony election-year wedge designed to distract attention from the troubles afflicting the Republican Party.

But a recently released report from the Homeland Security Department helps explain how the debate gained traction-and why it might prove to be politically rewarding for Republicans in November.

According to the August 2006 report from the DHS Office of Immigration Statistics, there were an estimated 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants in January 2005. While it's easy to guess which state has the largest estimated population of unauthorized immigrants (California, with 2.8 million), the rest of the top 10 is considerably more difficult to predict. It includes places such as Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina-none of them border states and none typically associated with large-scale illegal immigration.

This phenomenon is the driving force behind the new politics of immigration. It used to be easy to ignore the nation's porous borders because most Americans lived in places where illegal immigration was an abstract issue. But that's no longer true, as more and more undocumented aliens leapfrog the traditional destination states to pursue economic opportunities elsewhere.

Perhaps the best place to view the consequences is Georgia, home to the nation's fastest-growing unauthorized population. According to DHS estimates, 470,000 illegal immigrants live in Georgia-a quarter-million of whom arrived between 2000 and 2005. The state ranked a close third, after Texas and California, in average annual increase.

In Georgia, the challenge of absorbing a quarter-million illegal immigrants in just five years has sparked a backlash reminiscent of California in the mid-1990s.

In May, the Georgia legislature passed a sweeping immigration reform measure so restrictive that it drew criticism from President Vincente Fox of Mexico. The state's Republican congressional delegation is perhaps the most active-and hawkish-in the House of Representatives when it comes to immigration policy.

Georgia isn't the only state where the federal government's inability to police the borders sparked a political response. In 2004, Republican congressional incumbents in a handful of states began to see the emergence of primary election challengers whose sole focus was illegal immigration. No member of Congress lost a seat over the issue, but it seems many decided not to take any chances. So within a month after President Bush's reelection, a surprisingly large contingent of House Republicans drew a line in the sand during the intelligence reform bill debate over driver licenses for illegal immigrants.

At the time, it was a puzzling point to fight about, but now the picture is much clearer. Those members never would have put up such resistance on a national security-oriented bill unless they were picking up something big on the radar back home.

It's hard to know whether immigration politics will save the Republican majority in November. But there was an ominous sign in a June 2006 special election to replace Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the disgraced California congressman who resigned in late 2005.

In that highly competitive San Diego-based contest, the Democratic candidate faltered after making a remark that appeared to suggest she was encouraging illegal immigrants to vote. She quickly clarified her position, insisting the comment was misconstrued, but by then the damage was done. Her campaign never recovered from its tailspin, and the GOP held onto the seat.

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The Incumbent Advantage

Charles Mahtesian — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Ousting the GOP majority is harder than it looks.

As congressional campaigns enter the post-Labor Day homestretch, there is widespread agreement that the 2006 elections pose the greatest threat to the Republican House majority since it came to power in 1994.

Many political strategists and members of Congress see a Democratic landslide in the making; even Republicans concede that the party is likely to suffer a net loss of seats in November. Almost no one, not even at the National Republican Congressional Committee, can imagine a scenario in which Republicans actually gain seats.

Yet for all the talk of an impending tidal wave, not nearly enough attention has been paid to the power of incumbency-and the role it could play in safeguarding the GOP majority.

Everyone who follows politics understands the myriad advantages that incumbency confers. After all, it's the driving force behind the 95 percent House reelection rate since 1980. Yet few this year have taken full measure of those advantages or considered how the power of incumbency has intensified in the past decade alone. Incumbency isn't just an advantage anymore. It's a machine unto itself.

Traditionally, the power of incumbency has been rooted in the limitless fund-raising and pork barreling opportunities, the free media attention and the name recognition that attaches to members of Congress.

All those advantages still apply, only today they are amplified by recent advances in information technology. Sophisticated mapping software now enables incumbents to cherry-pick their constituents during redistricting. Congressional Web sites offer voters a wealth of information about a member's biography and legislative accomplishments, supplemented by weekly e-mails, podcasts, streaming video, electronic town halls and blogs. Can't read English? Not a problem. A few congressional Web sites offer a Spanish version.

Technology also has revolutionized congressional mail operations. Constituent mail has a quicker turnaround than ever before, largely because so many offices are equipped with software that enables them to track and manage incoming and outgoing communications. This, in turn, helps increase the volume of outgoing correspondence and, most important, facilitates the creation of databases filled with tens of thousands of e-mail addresses-along with the issues of interest to those individuals. In short, members of Congress know more about the people they represent, the things they care about and how to reach them than at any time in the history of the institution.

All this contributes to the high reelection rate of incumbents, but doesn't produce nearly as many votes as congressional casework. Every year, thousands of constituents reach out to their representatives, mainly for assistance in dealing with federal agencies, but also for help in almost any kind of nettlesome situation.

According to one office's constituent service guide, "A congressional office is essentially the customer service department for the federal government." As such, every office includes staffers whose sole job is to intercede with federal agencies on behalf of constituents on an impossibly wide variety of grievances, benefits claims, questions or requests. Thanks to case management software, this critical office work is conducted more efficiently than ever.

Consider one of the most common cases-the frightened retiree whose Social Security check has not arrived. Once an office resolves the crisis and the check is cut, that grateful retiree becomes a rock-solid vote who, quite likely, convinces his or her family to do the same. Even if only half of those who contact Congress in a typical year receive a satisfactory resolution to their problem, in just a few years' time, you are still talking about thousands and thousands of loyal voters.

Will all this be enough to hold back a Democratic tidal wave? It's impossible to know, but the GOP majority is better equipped to withstand one than any other congressional majority in history.

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Veterans in Vogue

Charles Mahtesian — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Candidates with wartime service making a comeback.

Sometime in the not too distant future, Congress will witness a momentous event. The last of the nine remaining World War II veterans will pass from the House or Senate, marking the first time in more than a half-century that the national legislature will be without the perspective of a veteran from that historic conflict.

The Greatest Generation's impending congressional exit has not gone unnoticed. Veterans groups and scholars who study legislative behavior began wondering about its impact back in the 1990s, when the declining number of military veterans in Congress-from all eras-first attracted attention. Today, only a quarter of Congress can claim military service, down from a postwar high of nearly 80 percent in the 1970s.

The war in Iraq, however, might end up altering that downward trend. Its highly politicized nature has sparked a boomlet of veteran candidacies in 2006 as Democrats, in particular, have aggressively recruited vets to run for office as part of an effort to counter charges that the party is weak on national security.

Depending on their success rate, this class of candidates could have a significant effect on American military and foreign policy, not to mention veterans affairs. Perhaps not in equal measure to the huge and influential World War II cohort, but in ways that could be felt for years to come.

In both 2002 and 2004, the newly elected House and Senate freshmen classes included less than a dozen vets. This year, though, depending on primary election results, there could be as many as 75 to 100 military vets on the congressional ballot. Many of these candidates, it should be noted, are long shots. But enough of them are in competitive races to make it likely that the Class of 2006 will include more than enough veterans to replace the 10 who are retiring from Congress this year.

The most senior among these candidates are Vietnam War veterans, whose views on the use of force overseas-and the aims of civilian policymakers-were forged in a far more cynical theater than World War II. The same might be said of the most junior veterans, a handful of whom are fresh from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The newcomers would be different from the WWII and Korean War-era veterans in another way: Many of them entered the military as college graduates and served as officers, in contrast to their predecessors who often attended college after discharge with the assistance of the G.I. Bill.

It's impossible to say with any certainty whether those dissimilar experiences will make a difference in their voting habits. But if nothing else, this class of warrior candidates could force both political parties to recalibrate their approaches on a broad range of issues.

Since more than half are Democrats, in the event of a Democratic tidal wave in November the party would suddenly find itself with a much-needed infusion of credibility on military and national security issues. Republicans, who constitute roughly 60 percent of the veterans in Congress, would suddenly find it much more difficult to dismiss the opposition as soft on defense or reflexively anti-military.

But keep in mind that a Democratic majority with a newly enlarged contingent of veterans is an unstable one. If Democrats take control of Congress, it will be due to the resurgence of the party's liberal wing as much as its veterans' strategy-and that faction might be disappointed to discover the one trait that veterans of all eras have always shared: a commitment to robust defense spending.

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The Scenic Route

Charles Mahtesian — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Using the national parks as a platform catches voter attention.

Every special interest group has an archnemesis, and for environmentalists that man is Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif. The Sierra Club once labeled Pombo, who is the chairman of the House Resources Committee, an "eco-thug." The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund refers to him as "Wildlife Enemy No. 1."

Despite the harsh characterizations, Pombo has never had much trouble winning reelection. His strong support for private property rights, scaling back environmental restrictions on public lands, rewriting the 1973 Endangered Species Act, and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge plays well in broad swaths of his California Central Valley-based district.

This year, however, his detractors believe they've finally found traction in their effort to deny Pombo an eighth term. The issue? His family's two-week national park vacation in 2003.

At first glance, a family tour of the national park system hardly seems like the kind of indiscretion that gets members of Congress in trouble. The facts are not even in dispute. Pombo rented a recreational vehicle, piled his wife and three children in the back, and proceeded to drive 5,000 miles across six Western states, visiting seven national parks-including Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Joshua Tree-and some Bureau of Land Management properties along the way. Since he met with various park officials during his travels, he billed the government $4,935 for the rental cost of the RV.

Pombo has argued that, as chairman of the House committee that oversees the national park system, the expenditure was entirely appropriate. If he had flown the route, rather than driven it, the trip would have been far more expensive. Besides, he explained, he didn't charge taxpayers for the vacation-related costs incurred by his family.

It's not an indefensible position, but the national park angle is too rich in partisan possibility for his critics to pass up. For nearly a century, the national park system has been leveraged for political gain, and there's no indication that it's about to change. Presidents dating back to Theodore Roosevelt have found the national park system to be an effective tool for burnishing their legacy; in recent decades, they've discovered it also offers an unparalleled repository of breathtaking photo ops. They're not the only pols to turn the park system to their advantage-members of Congress have used the selection and designation of new parks as another avenue for pork-barreling.

In Pombo's case, his opponents have shoehorned the national park/recreational vehicle flap into a broader assault on his ethics and spending practices, as well as his support for opening underutilized national parks to energy and commercial development. The Defenders of Wildlife ran radio ads mocking Pombo's trip as a taxpayer-paid vacation and outfitted their own RV for a tour across his congressional district to remind local voters of "The Pombo National Parks Tour."

All of this might seem excessive for what ultimately amounts to an insignificant amount of money. But to focus on the expenditure alone is to miss the point. The average citizen doesn't follow Congress closely enough to know that members such as Pombo shape federal policy on a broad playing field of issues ranging from fisheries and wildlife to forest reserves and national parks to marine affairs and mining on public lands. But the much-loved national parks system, with its rich environmental symbolism, is something most voters can understand. By focusing attention on Pombo's national park trip, his foes can give life to an otherwise abstract issue-that is, the specifics of his environmental record.

It's a clever strategy and one that is well-suited for Pombo's new constituency. California's last round of redistricting in 2001 dramatically reconfigured his district, adding some Bay Area suburbs where Pombo's views on federal land use are not well-received. These voters might not pay much attention to forest management policy, mining claims on federal land or to the minutiae of the Endangered Species Act, but when it comes to the national parks, that's a different story.

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At Revolution's End

Charles Mahtesian — Mon, 01 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Interior nominee's career path mirrors the Republican cycle.

One way to trace the arc of the 1994 Republican revolution is to follow the career trajectory of former senator and now Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho, who was nominated in March to serve as Interior secretary. Just as Kempthorne's unexpected 1998 departure from Washington was a sign of the vim and vigor of the Republican agenda, his prospective return offers an insight into the malaise that currently grips his party.

Kempthorne first won election to the Senate in 1992, so he wasn't actually a member of the historic 1994 congressional class that gave Republicans control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Yet he was clearly infused with its spirit, which became apparent when the Senate made his signature issue, unfunded federal mandates, the first order of legislative business in 1995.

Ensconced in a safe seat, Kempthorne likely could have remained in Washington for as long as he wished. Instead, he announced he would run for governor in 1998 after serving just one Senate term. "I truly do believe power now is irreversibly returning to the states," he said, "and that is where the important action will be."

At the time, his decision was surprising though not entirely illogical. In the revolution's early years, the principle of devolving authority back to the states was a central tenet of the Republican agenda. A generation of impressive GOP governors was busy showcasing a conservative theory of statehouse governance that reinforced and validated the rhetoric emanating from their Capitol Hill allies. It was only natural, then, that an ambitious and bright politician like Kempthorne might want to trade his junior status in the Senate for the invigorating challenge of running a state government.

But the Republican Congress rather quickly discovered that federalism was a far less attractive prospect than it originally thought. After all, what was the point of shifting power back to the states after spending decades trying to attain it? Why dismantle the levers of federal government when the opportunity to use them finally presented itself?

From that point forward, even if no Republican governor ever admitted it, the appeal of the governorship no longer seemed as alluring as it did in the heady days of 1994, and the GOP governors who held office that year began to blaze a trail to the nation's capital.

One of the first to leave was William Weld of Massachusetts, who gave up his office in 1997 at the mere pros-pect of becoming an ambassador to Mexico, signaling that perhaps the statehouse wasn't becoming the exciting laboratory of democracy promised by the 1994 revolutionaries.

By 2000, the flight to Washington was on. Texas Gov. George W. Bush became president. Three other governors-George Allen of Virginia, George Voinovich of Ohio and South Dakota's William Janklow-ended up in Congress. Another three-Michigan's John Engler, Oklahoma's Frank Keating and Bill Graves of Kansas-took jobs running influential D.C. trade associations.

A handful of governors proved quite willing to forsake the action in their state capitals to run Cabinet agencies-New Jersey's Christine Todd Whitman, Utah's Mike Leavitt, Pennsylvania's Tom Ridge and Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson. By 2006, when no one in Congress talked about federalism anymore, so many Republican governors had found their way to Washington that even the return of a states' rights evangelist like Kempthorne hardly warranted attention.

Thus for the second time in a decade, Kempthorne's career path provides a glimpse into the soul of the GOP revolution. His departure from Washington reflected an optimistic belief that a new era of federalism was dawning. His imminent return underscores the reality that such lofty notions are in their twilight.

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The Next Congress

Charles Mahtesian — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Retirements, election losses and a host of new committee chiefs will dramatically alter Capitol Hill.

No matter what happens on Election Day, every federal agency is going to discover that dealing with the next Congress will be quite a bit different than dealing with today's 109th.

First, there is the familiarity issue. Due to retirements, resignations and the departures of members seeking higher office, there will be at least 26 new members of the House in 2007 and at least four new senators.

By historical standards, that's not many new faces. But keep in mind that the 2006 midterm elections are still seven months away. Invariably, some members of Congress will fail to win reelection. If this year's politically volatile environment leads to major Democratic gains in November, then the class of 2006 might end up two or three times larger than it looks right now.

A Democratic House or Senate majority also will mean a wholesale changeover of committee chairmen, many of whom will take office with an aggressive oversight agenda that is heavy on investigations and subpoenas and hostile to Bush administration priorities.

At this point, a Democratic takeover is still a long shot. But even if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate, federal agencies could still find Capitol Hill a far less hospitable place than in previous years.

Many congressional Republicans already assume that the party will enter 2007 with diminished majorities. In that event, the administration will shoulder some of the blame for election losses. Amidst the likely recriminations, Republicans will begin distancing themselves from their lame-duck leader and a sizable contingent of conservatives will regroup around the party's traditional theme of fiscal discipline.

A Republican-controlled 110th Congress also would feature a passel of unfamiliar House chairs since at least eight committees will be up for grabs in January as a result of term limits on chairmen.

It was tough enough to handicap the races for these posts before Republicans elected John Boehner as their new majority leader in February. Now things are even more complicated. Aspiring committee chairs who backed Boehner in the leadership race suddenly find their prospects brightened. Those who supported Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., on the other hand, are confronted with the consequences of backing the wrong horse. What's certain is that there will be an infusion of new blood into the top ranks of panels with broad jurisdiction over federal government activity.

Subcommittee chairmanships also will be changing hands, some due to the ripple effect from the scramble for gavels and others stemming from retirements. The retirement of Bill Jenkins, R-Tenn., will bring new oversight to federal peanut, sugar and tobacco programs. Colorado Republican Rep. Joel Hefley's departure will mean a new chairman for the Armed Services Committee's Readiness Subcommittee, which is responsible for the preparedness of military personnel, housing and construction, and the operation and maintenance of all bases. Military veterans will lose a champion in Rep. Michael Bilirakis, R-Fla., the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

That's just a sampling of the impending changes. Since committee and subcommittee rosters won't become clear until early next year, there's still time for congressional relations shops to prepare for the new landscape. But given the unpredictability of the current political environment, it's not entirely clear where to start.

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The Color of Exurbs

Charles Mahtesian — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The connection between federal spending and voting habits isn't so obvious on the outskirts of town.

No one believes that federal spending alone drives voting behavior. But no one can reasonably argue that it doesn't play a role, either. Just as Democratic control of big-city America was a consequence of the rise of the social services complex, Republican dominion over suburbia can be traced in part to the party's staunch anti-communism and support for increased military spending. These positions fostered the growth of defense and aerospace industries that at one time employed tens of thousands of workers in suburbs as varied as Orange County in California, and Nassau County in New York.

Federal money didn't buy New York City's loyalty to the Democratic Party any more than it bought Orange County for the Republican Party. But the values and politics associated with those expenditures had a profound and lasting influence in those places.

It's not yet clear what effect federal expenditures will have on the newest voting frontier, the exurbs. But a new Census Bureau report suggests that the rapidly growing exurbs, the outer fringes of metro areas, might follow a different political path than the cities and suburbs. According to the Consolidated Federal Funds Report for Fiscal Year 2004, a document that tracks domestic ex-penditures, some of the fastest-growing places in the nation get some of the worst returns on their federal tax dollars.

The report includes data from a broad range of cate-gories including grants; government salaries and wages; procurement contracts; direct payments for individuals such as Medicare, Social Security or food stamps; direct loans; guaranteed or insured loans; and insurance. Much of the data confirm what you might expect. Counties with high levels of poverty or military presence or large elderly populations tend to see more per capita spending than those without. Agriculture-dependent counties also are magnets for federal dollars.

Curiously, many of the places that rank lowest in federal spending per capita are the exurban counties that played a pivotal role in the 2004 presidential election. Eight of the bottom 10 counties in per capita federal spending rank among the top 30 fastest-growing counties. Douglas County, Colo., which ranked dead last among the more than 3,000 counties, averaged just $1,206-roughly six times less than the national average. But it was the third-fastest growing county from 2000 to 2004.

The low level of federal expenditure is in part a reflection of exurban demographics. These communities are filled with young, married white couples with children-in other words, a cohort that tends to be neither poor, disabled nor retired. The housing developments in which they live have replaced subsidized farmland; in many cases, the newly emergent local economies are not dependent on military spending.

In 2004, these precincts were key to President Bush's reelection strategy. According to a Los Angeles Times analysis, Bush carried 97 of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties.

It's tempting to assume that these places will remain impregnably Republican. Exurban voters seem to be doing just fine without the more active and expansive federal presence that Democrats might prefer. But it's important to keep in mind that, within this vacuum, nothing is anchoring them to the Republican Party either. As these places age and lose their luster, they will require more federal spending on social services and infrastructure.

Already, there is evidence of political volatility. Democrats point with hope to once reliably Republican Loudon County, Va., the nation's fastest-growing county, which backed Democrat Tim Kaine in his successful 2005 run for governor. Just two months later, Loudon voters again went for the Democrat, this time in a special state Senate election. For this Northern Virginia exurb, in both elections, one concern mattered above all: the consequences of unchecked growth.

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Ambush Alley

Charles Mahtesian — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Impassioned Democrats skate dangerously close to the impeachment trap.

The sound is faint, but unmistakable. It is the drumbeat for impeachment, this time emanating from the Democratic Party.

So far, the most insistent voices hail from the party's leftmost fringe. But it might only be a matter of time before the idea enters the party's mainstream, and if it does, it might prove to be a contagion that thwarts the effort to win back a House majority in the 2006 elections.

The case for impeaching President Bush has two lines of argument. One focuses on the contention that he lied in an attempt to take the nation to war in Iraq. The other is tailored to the recent revelation that the president authorized domestic spying by the National Security Agency without court approval. The idea of impeaching Bush isn't exactly new-a handful of House Democratic Caucus liberals have been talking about drafting articles of impeachment since before the invasion of Iraq-but it has gained momentum in recent months as critics have intensified their opposition to the military presence in Iraq and to the administration's conduct in the war on terrorism. There's even a political action committee now, ImpeachPAC, that supports candidates who favor impeaching Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The recent domestic spying furor offered the first evidence that the notion of impeachment had reached beyond the House and into the Senate, a consequential development since senators operate under different political constraints than House members. In the House, many congressional districts are so mono-partisan that the legislators who represent them are free to traffic in any ideological pursuit that captures their fancy, no matter how capricious. Senators, with their broader constituencies, are usually forced to take a more measured and disciplined approach. So when an idea begins to percolate in the Senate, it has crossed a meaningful threshold.

In December, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., became the first in her chamber to publicly discuss the notion, though technically Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., preceded her by a few days. At a holiday event, Kerry noted that Democrats could make a case for impeachment if they recaptured Congress in 2006, a statement that his office later insisted was only a joke. Regardless of his intent, the Republican National Committee immediately responded with a press release slamming Kerry for "his impeachment advocacy."

The RNC understands the political potency of this issue, and was acting not to shield the president but rather to turn impeachment talk into a weapon it can wield against Democratic congressional candidates in November. Republican campaign operatives see impeachment as the fulsome gift that it is, for they remember the comeuppance their own party received back in 1998-a loss of five seats in the House-after pressing for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

This time, the bet is that the public will view impeachment as a vengeful pursuit; GOP candidates then can charge that the first act of a Democratic-controlled Congress would be to draft articles of impeachment against the president, a message that would dovetail nicely with their theme that Democrats are bankrupt of ideas. As to alleged high crimes and misdemeanors, few Republicans blanch at the prospect of defending a president on trial for overzealously executing the war on terrorism. Indeed, the inevitable comparison to the circumstances that sparked the last impeachment attempt would be especially welcome.

It's an ambush that Democrats have walked into over and over in the Bush era. The liberal wing gets ahead of the rest of the party, stakes a position and then watches incredulously as Republicans harvest the fruits of its fervor. At the moment, most congressional Democrats are avoiding this trap. Whether they continue to do so may determine the outcome of the 2006 elections.

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A Salute to the Hawk

Charles Mahtesian — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

John Murtha's stand redefines the debate over the Iraq war.

It's a rare moment when a lone member of the House of Representatives, one who is largely unknown outside his own congressional district, can step up to a microphone, make a statement and, by virtue of his pronouncement, single-handedly alter the course of the national debate.

That is exactly what happened in November when a Pennsylvania Democrat named John Murtha appeared alone at a press conference and called for pulling American troops out of Iraq as soon as possible and replacing them with a limited "quick reaction" force that would be stationed in the region.

At first, Republicans responded by going on the offensive. Within minutes of Murtha's declaration, the White House responded that "it is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party."

After the Republican House leadership engineered a vote on a troop withdrawal proposal designed to embarrass Democratic war critics, a vituperative debate ensued, marked by the comments of a freshman GOP backbencher who inelegantly suggested that Murtha was a coward.

But within two weeks, President Bush was forced to publicly clarify the administration's plan for winning the war in Iraq and a 38-page document called "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" appeared on the White House Web site. Suddenly, the contours of the Iraq war debate had been redefined, largely due to Murtha's evolution from war supporter to critic.

How did one congressman's opinion come to have such far-reaching consequences? Perhaps because he is among the last of a dying breed.

He is a moderate in a party that is increasingly liberal, and he's a highly decorated Marine Corps veteran in an institution with a declining number of members with military service. At a time when the Democratic Party draws its strength from the two coasts and from metropolitan America, Murtha represents the places where Republicans have made great gains-the forgotten blue-collar small towns and rural areas of middle America.

Murtha wasn't the first Democrat to demand a rapid withdrawal, but he is without question the most meaningful, because of his stature as one of the party's leading hawks in Congress and as one of the most respected congressional voices on military spending. It was no coincidence that no else appeared with him on the podium when he made his announcement.

Through all of this, some unpleasant truths about Congress were revealed. The minority party's credibility on national security is so suspect that only one of its spokesmen has the standing to effectively question the president's war policy. The majority party is so deferential to the administration and reflexively hostile to its opponents that it is unable to distinguish between serious, thoughtful dissent from the president's war policy and that which is driven by political opportunism.

A few Republicans recognized Murtha's criticism for what it was. During the House debate over the Murtha-inspired withdrawal resolution, Sam Johnson, a Republican conservative from Texas, took to the floor to respond. A former Air Force fighter pilot whose plane was shot down over North Vietnam, Johnson spent 1966 to 1973 imprisoned in the hell-on-Earth known as the Hanoi Hilton. Just before delivering his strenuous objection to any withdrawal measure, he paused for a moment, looked at Murtha, and saluted.

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Fertile Ground

Charles Mahtesian — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Census shows a GOP edge in states with higher birth and marriage rates.

When the Census Bureau released in October its first-ever state-by-state analysis of the links between marriage, fertility and other socioeconomic characteristics, it was hard not to notice the familiar red- and blue-state divisions. The top 11 states with most births per 1,000 women were carried by Republican President George W. Bush in 2004. Of the bottom 11 states, eight were won by Democratic Sen. John Kerry.

In the Northeast, the Democratic Party's stronghold, men and women marry later, on average, than in any other region, and the Northeastern states feature some of the highest levels of unmarried-couple households in the nation. Marriage rate data reveal similarly stark distinctions: Red states dominate the top of the chart while blue states are clustered at the low end.

These figures would be nothing more than curiosities if they weren't so portentous. Democratic strength is concentrated in states with low fertility and low marriage rates, which wouldn't be a problem if these places were attracting large numbers of new residents. But most are not, at least when compared with the fastest-growing states, and that will have consequences after the next decennial census when congressional seats (and thus electoral votes) are reallocated according to population. Based on 2004 population estimates, Poli-data of Lake Ridge, Va., a political data analysis firm, projects that nine states will lose House seats after the next census-all but two of them voted for Kerry. Seven will gain seats-all but one of them carried by Bush. In 2012, even if every state voted the same way it did in 2004, there would be a net gain of six electoral votes for the GOP ticket based on these projections.

Mapping out Census projections two decades from now, the picture gets even more stark: Eight of the top 10 population gainers ranked by projected percentage change between 2000 and 2030 were Bush states in 2004.

Before Republicans can celebrate these trends, it's important to remember how fluid the political landscape can be. Between 1952 and 1988, California voted Republican in every presidential election but one. As recently as 1994, the state elected a GOP governor for the fourth time in a row along with a Republican state House. Today, that scenario seems almost unthinkable, in no small part due to Democratic gains among Latino voters. Likewise, Arizona's raging growth and changing voting habits over the past two decades have turned it from one of the most conservative states into one that, for a brief moment in 2004, appeared to be a presidential battleground state.

For that reason, the Census Bureau's marriage data should be more worrisome than trends in population growth. For if it seems that the Democratic Party is struggling to speak to married people, it might be because it does not represent enough of them to truly understand how that demographic thinks.

Democrats are not only concentrated in low-marriage states but also in low-marriage congressional districts. Consider this: As of 2002, 55 of the top 60 congressional districts ranked by percentage of married people were represented by Republicans. That disparity was manifested on Election Day when national exit polls revealed that the Democratic share of the two-party vote among married women (under 65) with children was 43 percent in 2004, down from 49 percent in 1992. Among married men with kids, the Democratic share was even more anemic at just 38 percent, down from 46 percent in 1992.

Since the New Deal era, the Democratic Party has been accustomed to thinking of itself as the nation's majority party. This was true enough for decades but today, as political analyst Rhodes Cook has pointed out, Democrats are at best the plurality party. That leaves Democrats with one last option if they hope regain their former status: The party needs to figure out why the Census Bureau's marriage and fertility data so closely mirrors the 2004 electoral landscape.

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Wooing Washington

Charles Mahtesian — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Battered states pursue federal aid in strikingly different ways.

To watch the post-Hurricane Katrina maneuvering of Louisiana and Mississippi politicians is to see surprisingly divergent strategies for securing federal aid. Louisiana is throwing itself at the mercy of Washington, requesting a $250 billion package of spending and tax relief, including $40 billion for Army Corps of Engineers projects. Mississippi, by contrast, is quietly making its case through the back channels, where its political influence is at its greatest.

In large part, these dissimilar approaches reflect the disproportionate level of damage sustained by each state-if Louisiana is asking for more, it's because the state suffered more catastrophic losses. But they also reveal important distinctions between two different political cultures and congressional delegations-distinctions that might play a role in the success of each state's reconstruction effort.

In national politics, Mississippi is politically conservative (Republicans have carried it in the last seven presidential elections) while Louisiana is one of the last Southern states where Democrats remain competitive. Does that matter in this tragic context? It seemed to in the days immediately after the hurricane landed, when Louisiana Democrats and the Bush administration scrambled to affix blame for the inept response. Across the state line, the reaction was decidedly different as Mississippi's governor, a Republican, declined to criticize the feds and instead noted that President Bush was in frequent contact with him.

No one seriously suggests that partisan considerations will determine federal recovery aid to the two states. But Louisiana begins its pursuit of federal dollars with a different disadvantage: its long-standing reputation as America's banana republic. Despite the reservoir of national compassion over the state's plight, Louisiana's historic tolerance of corruption, demagoguery and government inefficiency inevitably tarnishes its massive request with a patina of suspicion-which explains why the project-laden $250 billion plan was greeted with incredulity in Congress.

Another handicap is the state's dearth of congressional clout. The retirements of Senate Democrat John Breaux and House Republican Billy Tauzin in 2004 drained Louisiana's delegation of two senior deal makers. While Reps. Jim McCrery and Richard Baker are well-placed Republican insiders, four of the state's seven House members are in their first or second term; the senior Democrat, Rep. William Jefferson, is under investigation by the FBI, a development that limits his effectiveness. On the Senate side, there is Republican David Vitter, who had just two full House terms under his belt before winning Breaux's seat in 2004. The senior senator is Democrat Mary Landrieu, who didn't do Louisiana any favors by threatening to punch the president in the nose if he criticized local officials for their hurricane response efforts.

Compare that with Mississippi. It's no model laboratory for democracy, but it lacks Louisiana's notoriety, at least in the post-civil-rights era. More important, the state is unusually well-connected on Capitol Hill. Its Senate delegation is a GOP powerhouse, featuring Appropriations chairman Thad Cochran and Trent Lott, the former majority leader; the most junior of its four House members is in his fifth term. Like Louisiana Democrat Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, Gov. Haley Barbour was elected in 2003, but unlike Blanco, Barbour is a veteran of national politics who was among Washington's most influential lobbyists before he returned home.

The Mississippi strategy so far is telling because if there were a massive federal spending program forthcoming, you can bet the state would be tapped into it. Instead, Barbour has stressed the importance of the private sector in the rebuilding effort and, along with the Senate delegation, has avoided assembling anything like a Louisiana-style package of spending needs.

This approach could be viewed as an expression of the state's conservative impulse but, more likely, it's a practical-minded assessment of the federal budget environment-and of the most effective way to work within its confines.

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Caught in the Crosswind

Charles Mahtesian — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Will Hurricane Katrina shake up elections in her aftermath?

Even before Hurricane Katrina touched down in late August, Republicans had good cause for worry about 2006. First, there was historical precedent: Midterm elections in the sixth year of a presidency traditionally have proved cruel to the party in the White House. Then there was the matter of President Bush's job approval ratings, which are at or near record lows. Finally, there was the volatility of the likely issues-Social Security, congressional ethics, gas prices, the Medicare prescription drug program rollout and the war in Iraq.

Now, the political landscape is even more treacherous. The stunning visuals from New Orleans and the scale of suffering, combined with the national humiliation and anger over the bungled response, have laid the groundwork for an unsettling election year.

The problem is not that Republicans are likely to shoulder the blame. Rather, it is that hurricane politics will dominate Capitol Hill for the foreseeable future and Republicans will be on the defensive, unable to move forward with their legislative priorities or advance the case for reelecting a GOP majority.

The ability to control the legislative agenda already has been compromised. Estate tax repeal was the first casualty as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., announced that, after the August recess, the Senate would focus on hurricane relief legislation.

The debate over the Federal Emergency Management Agency's performance will drag on, and rancor over a formal probe-Republicans are calling for a bipartisan, bicameral committee while Democrats insist on an independent, 9/11 commission-style panel-seems likely to put Congress' image into further disrepute. Whatever the form, its findings inconveniently will be reported in 2006.

All this stands to obscure recent GOP accomplishments such as passage of the U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement, the energy bill and the highway bill, and all but guarantees that the upcoming budget reconciliation process will be even messier than anticipated, with hurricane politics offering Democrats a platform from which to oppose spending cuts and tax relief.

That's not the worst of it. Republican members returning from recess report that the rising cost of gas is what most concerns their constituents; in Katrina's wake, prices spiked again. For Republicans, this is a no-win situation since the playing field puts them at a disadvantage. There is, of course, no near-term solution short of price controls, and any focus on price-gouging or rising profits will inevitably shift attention to Republican and Bush administration ties to oil and gas interests. In 2004, for example, 80 percent of oil and gas industry political contributions went to Republicans.

As bleak as the post-Katrina setting might appear, there is some prospect that the GOP can regroup. The trademark of Democrats in the Bush era has been personal hostility toward the president, which has had the perverse effect of enabling Bush and his party to prosper despite a multitude of mistakes. Just as GOP antagonism toward President Bill Clinton galvanized support within his party and among voters, the distasteful and reflexive nature of much of the anti-Bush criticism tends to harden his base and win support from those who might not otherwise be inclined. And so far, Democrats have shown every indication of overplaying their hand on Katrina by attempting to pin full responsibility on the administration.

Only once since the Civil War has a president's party won seats in the sixth-year election-in 1998, the year independent counsel Kenneth Starr delivered his report to Congress chronicling President Clinton's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, when Democrats picked up four House seats. It may be useful for Democrats to reexamine the reasons this happened at a time when Clinton was arguably at his weakest.

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The Geography Of Success

Charles Mahtesian — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The diversity of GOP-held districts boosts the party's message.

Congress passed a flurry of important legislation just before its August recess, but the breakdown for one vote, in particular, reveals the state of the majority and minority parties in the House. On July 28, when the House passed legislation to implement the Central American Free Trade Agreement by a razor-thin 217-215, 42 members voted against the position taken by their party's leadership-27 Republicans and 15 Democrats. The fact that so many Republicans broke ranks on an issue dear to the Bush administration and House leadership is actually a sign of the GOP majority's vigor. The party might not have a large edge by historical standards, but it now holds congressional seats representing enough geographically and socioeconomically diverse constituencies-232 seats in all-that it has become close to impossible to achieve unanimity on consequential issues.

This is especially obvious when it comes to trade policy. Republicans hold nine of the Top 10 manufacturing districts in the House and 34 of the Top 50, which means the GOP majority now includes both free traders and members from economically hard-hit districts once exclusively held by Democrats. These members are obliged to vote with district interests on trade, as four North Carolina Republicans did when they opposed CAFTA. Likewise, GOP strength in rural America produced Republicans who opposed the agreement over its agriculture provisions.

Trade is only one issue where the broad range of Republican-held congressional districts becomes apparent. Notable intraparty divisions also have surfaced on Amtrak funding, veterans' benefits spending, Social Security and immigration-all reflections of the GOP's disparate constituencies.

This broad collection of districts acts like a brake on the party's impulse to veer to the right. House Democrats, by contrast, are increasingly concentrated in heavily Democratic, big-city and university-oriented districts that lack such a braking mechanism. This has created a politically tin-eared party represented by members whose districts are a vast echo chamber. They return home each weekend and hear only a stream of invective against President Bush and little else. It's only natural for them to presume that the Bush administration or the Iraq war or any number of other GOP initiatives are wildly unpopular, since that is the primary feedback they receive.

There are 20 Democrat-held congressional districts, for example, where Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry won an astonishing 80 percent or more of the vote in 2004. By contrast, there isn't a single district where Bush won 80 percent or more. In 91 Democratic districts, Kerry won 60 percent or more-figures that are well out of proportion to his vote in the rest of the nation.

In one sense, Democrats might be said to suffer from the geography of defeat. The collection of monolithically Democratic districts skews the party's message and sometimes blinds the Democratic Caucus to what constitutes mainstream political thinking. Consider the type of districts represented by both parties' top leaders. Back when Democrats were the House majority, Speaker Tom Foley held a seat that gave Ronald Reagan 60 percent in 1984. His district offered a close approximation of the popular vote. Today, Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi represents a California district that gave an 85 percent landslide to Kerry. Compare that with House Speaker Dennis Hastert's Illinois-based seat: There, Bush won just 55 percent, only four points above his national average of 51 percent.

Republicans, of course, hold lots of monolithically partisan districts and elect a fair share of sharp partisans, too. But by necessity, the party is now forced to temper its approach because a growing number of its districts are not enamored of free trade or reduced federal spending or smaller government.

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BRAC Breakdown

Charles Mahtesian — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Only in theory are base closings apolitical.

When Republican John Thune was sworn in as South Dakota's junior senator in 2005, he was welcomed as a conquering hero. He had just defeated Minority Leader Tom Daschle in the most important Senate race of 2004, and his GOP colleagues giddily celebrated his victory over the Democrat they called "the obstructionist-in-chief."

But on May 13, the adulation faded as suddenly as it began. That was the day the Pentagon released the list of recommended base closings and realignments that would go to the independent Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. On that list was Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota's second-largest employer with 3,852 jobs, which was slated for closure.

No member of Congress who represented an endangered facility took the news well, but none took it harder than Thune. During his campaign, he told voters that his connections to the Bush administration would better serve Ellsworth's interests than Daschle's seniority. Now he looked not only foolish but ineffective, and Democrats were quick to attack him. In response, Thune introduced a bill to delay the base-closing round. He also played a few other cards to signal his displeasure to the Bush administration. First, he declined to take a position on a key administration trade initiative. Then he announced his opposition to the nomination of John Bolton as U.N. ambassador. When asked whether his opposition to Bolton had anything to do with base closing, he told the Associated Press, "I'm concerned about our diplomatic posture as a nation, and I'm concerned about our defensive posture. These issues are not unrelated."

Thus the truth about the base closure and realignment process was cleverly revealed: Base closings, like diplomacy and defense policy, are apolitical in theory only.

That wasn't the intention back in 1988 when Congress crafted the original legislation that created the commission. At the time, lawmakers recognized that the only way it could work was if the process was designed to minimize political interference. That's why the House and Senate can only accept or reject the commission's recommendations as a whole, and it's why only the president can send the recommendations back to the panel for revision before deciding whether to accept or reject the package as a whole. Either way, it's an all-or-nothing deal.

But while you can take the politics out of the process, you can't keep it out. The 1995 round witnessed the spectacle of President Clinton's machinations to avoid signing the death warrant for McClellan Air Force Base in California, a state that was critical to his 1996 reelection bid. A senior Democratic congressman accused the commission itself of playing politics that year, wondering aloud why Georgia, home to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, was spared from closings.

Since then, both parties have played the process for all it's worth, with members vying for funds to dress up and bolster the position of their local bases in anticipation of the 2005 round. Even challengers have found the BRAC process a fertile ground for politicking: In 2004, Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, was criticized by his Republican opponent for leaving the Armed Services Committee and taking a position on the Energy and Commerce Committee at a time when Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery and Brunswick Naval Air Station were possible targets for closure.

With Portsmouth slated for closure and Brunswick for realignment under the May 2005 recommendations, Allen's safe House seat now looks a little less safe for him. But he's not in nearly as much trouble as Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., who recently won reelection in a politically marginal district in large part because he told voters that his clout could help save the submarine base in New London. That base also was recommended for closure by the Pentagon. As for Thune, the outlook is not so dim: He's not up for reelection until 2010.

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