Sunday, November 12, 2006
Goodlatte's power wanes in Congress
The representative will lose his position of Agriculture Committee chairman.
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From The Roanoke Times
U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte stayed up into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, losing politically well after he easily won re-election.
"I wanted to see what was happening with some of my friends," he said in an interview last week.
The election stakes for Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, extended beyond his own race. He watched as several of his congressional allies were defeated in a Democratic onslaught that cost Republicans their majority in both the House of Representatives and, with the defeat of Virginia's George Allen, the Senate.
The change means that Goodlatte will lose his influential post as chairman of the House Agriculture Committee sometime after Jan. 1 -- a position that had put him in a relatively small group that directs legislation and sets the GOP's House agenda.
What that means for people in Virginia's 6th District, extending from Roanoke north into the Shenandoah Valley: Their congressman will soon fall back a bit from his place at the very front of the room. Essentially, as a committee chairman, Goodlatte's colleagues came to him. Now the politics will be different to some degree.
Goodlatte, Agriculture Committee chairman since early 2003, has been able to use his political leverage to secure millions of dollars in federal funding for efforts such as the Roanoke River flood reduction project, which is years from being finished.
It is unclear what effect, if any, Goodlatte's loss of his committee chairmanship will have on the status of those ongoing projects.
Goodlatte, the first Roanoke Valley representative to ever ascend to a committee chairmanship, said it's not time to panic, however. He said history shows the party in control of Congress loses a politically significant number of seats in midterm elections such as Tuesday's. He said the politics in Washington will be different, but he doesn't expect the House will be turned upside down. He said he's in a place to help re-establish the GOP's position in Congress, whatever that may be, and that could offer him the opportunity to work more closely with Democrats.
He said he was hopeful Republicans would do better than they did overall this year, but he said predominant national feelings on Iraq, timed with the Mark Foley congressional page scandal, put the GOP in too difficult of a position to overcome.
He said he expects Democrats will offer up their ideas relatively quickly when the next Congress starts, but, when it comes to Iraq, he said he believes it will be a mistake if Democrats push a rigid timetable to withdraw U.S. troops.
"That will offer encouragement to the terrorists," he said.
Goodlatte said the election offers House Republicans an opportunity for a fresh start, something to which he looks forward.
As to the level of his influence, Goodlatte said he assumes he'll remain as the ranking Republican member of the Agriculture Committee, and he said that particular committee has always worked in a strong bipartisan fashion. He said he expects that to continue under the leadership of the ranking Democrat, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota. Peterson, who couldn't be reached for comment, is Goodlatte's likely successor as chairman.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, praised Goodlatte's work on the House Agriculture Committee in an interview Friday, calling him "a highly gifted legislator" who "has the ability to achieve broad consensus."
Goodlatte has been "tremendously beneficial to agriculture in our region and statewide, and in my personal view, across the nation," Boucher said.
Like Goodlatte and Boucher, Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Rocky Mount, was easily re-elected Tuesday. The trio represent three of the most rural districts in Virginia. Goode said his colleague's loss of the Agriculture Committee post is "going to hurt us some, because Bob was an outstanding chair and had a very sympathetic ear to the farm interests of my district and all across Virginia."
Goode agreed that the Agriculture Committee has been more bipartisan than many of the House panels. "I know Bob will be able to work with the Democrats and hopefully continue to assist agriculture in Virginia," Goode said.
Goode, once a Democrat and then an independent before becoming a Republican, has a seat on the House Appropriations Committee -- a group that decides how and where money is spent.
Goode said he is unsure what his committee status will be in the next Congress. He said he does expect Republicans will lose seats on Appropriations.
Meanwhile, Boucher can attest to the political significance of being a committee chairman. Boucher was easily re-elected Tuesday night to his 13th term but is still not in line to lead a full committee when the Democratic majority assigns leadership positions.
Still, the shift in power to the Democrats will give him "a significantly enhanced ability to advance Southwest Virginia's interests," he said.
Since the election, Boucher has most often talked about the possibility of chairing the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, an arm of the Energy and Commerce Committee, where he could promote bills supporting coal fuel and biofuel initiatives.
But he could also qualify to head the Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, part of the Energy and Commerce Committee, or the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, an arm of the Judicial Committee.
The Judicial and Energy and Commerce committees are two of the busiest and most influential of the House committees that help set policies affecting Southwest Virginia's economy, Boucher said.
Staff writers Mason Adams and Tonia Moxley contributed to this report.
