Wyden in Astoria/Stapilus |
BACKGROUND Changes of party control in Congress and changes in party control of the presidency make for big changes in who has at least potential impact in a congressional delegation. The results of the last two elections taken together have made for some large changes in the Northwest delegation, and on balance have strengthened its clout.
As matters stand, the most consequential person in the region’s delegation now looks to be Oregon Senator Ron Wyden.
| First of
three posts. |
Those changes in relative influence arise in various ways. Idaho’s House delegation probably picked up a little, since one district went Democratic and fell into the majority, while the member in the other stands to gain considerably more force within his smaller Republican caucus. (Whether the Senate delegation is about to gain in influence at this point, or lose, is a tougher call.)
Washington and Oregon, which together now elect (as they have for some time) 10 Democrats and four Republicans to the House, and now have four Democratic senators, there’s considerable massed seniority among the majority members, and they’ll pick up various chairmanships and useful slots. One, Washington Senator Patty Murray, is in the Senate majority leadership. Another, Representative Norm Dicks from west-Puget area, is among the senior members in the House and one of the most widely respected, notably on defense matters. The Northwest’s congressional delegation as a whole probably has not been so strong – from a standpoint of position and seniority – since the 70s.
But Wyden, a senator not especially well known nationally – he seems not to have been much sought out by the cameras and publicity machine – seems positioned to be the single most key player of all. A year from now, he may well be better-known nationally as well, and for substantive reasons.
The point isn’t a matter of titles. Though Wyden has been in the Senate for a dozen years (longer than anyone in the region but Murray), he hasn’t yet been chair of a committee and chairs just one subcommittee (public lands & forests, within the Energy and Natural Resources Committee). His committee assignments as this is written haven’t been set, but a look at seniority rosters appear to give him less than an even shot at a full committee chair, and his best chance probably would be Aging, not really a major committee (albeit one of growing import). Nor is he in leadership, and for most senators, Senate clout relates to chairmanships and leadership roles.
Wyden’s impact could come other sources. Partly, his policy ambition: Few senators have proposed such large-scale, sweeping legislation on such a variety of subjects of central import – health care, tax reform, resource management, and others. And partly his method, described this way in the 1992 Almanac of American Politics (written when he had been a House member for about a decade) this way: “He has a genius for coming up with sensible-sounding ideas no one else has thought of and a knack for making the counter-intuitive political alliances which are so helpful in passing unfamiliar measures though the House.”
Wyden has some track record for political entrepreneurship: He has spotted opportunity where others did not.
Just about the time of his 30th birthday, with political background consisting mainly of working on a couple of losing U.S. Senate campaigns (both for Democrat Wayne Morse, in 1972 and 1974) and a little lobbying and organization-building experience, but none as a candidate for anything, he decided to run for the U.S. House. He did that in a district that was away from the scene of most of his political work (which had been centered in the Eugene and Salem areas). He was running against an established incumbent of his own party, Bob Duncan, a three-term congressman with a long political record even before that, running statewide as well as serving in another congressional districts. By conventional measures, Duncan’s views were almost all well to the right of Wyden’s, which would seem to be a problem for Wyden running for Congress as he was in 1980 – the year of the Reagan Revolution, the year the Democrats, especially so many liberal Democrats, were thrown out of Washington.
Wyden’s insight was that the 3rd district, which included as it still does eastern Multnomah County, had been changing, socially and politically, and that Duncan (who might have gotten the label “Blue Dog” or “Reagan Democrat” had he survived that election) wasn’t anymore representative of Portland. Others might have developed a similar insight. But Wyden’s added skill was in developing a large and well-funded organization to campaign with – an Oregon Magazine profile said he pulled in more than 1,000 volunteers, a truly massive effort for that level campaign. (If you’re drawing a parallel or two with the Obama campaign of massive volunteer corps and community organizing, that’s not coincidental.) Wyden’s win was not close (60%).
He spotted the right opportunity again in 1996, when Senator Robert Packwood resigned. This was a much closer race, and the calculations had to be more difficult. As a sitting U.S. representative, a Senate race was a logical step – Wyden considered it in 1986 and on other occasions – but this was no slam dunk. There were structural issues: This was the first major race in the country where voting was done by mail – what effect would that have? No one then knew for sure. Wyden was running from a central Portland district – would opponents (and he had strong opponents in both primary and general, from other parts of the state) be able to use anti-Portland sentiment against him? This election would be held barely a year after the November 1994 Gingrich Republican revolution, when Republicans swamped Congress: What would be a Democrat’s odds in that atmosphere? (Remember that although Oregon had elected Democrat John Kitzhaber as governor in 1994, the legislature was Republican, and Republicans had two of the five U.S. House seats.) Wyden might understandably have passed on that race, as so many leading Democrats did in this (much more favorable) year. This was a matter of threading the needle, and Wyden managed it.
The political skills involved were substantial, as have been some lower-key achievements.
One has been developing the kind of deep support around Oregon, even in very conservative and very Republican areas, that have given him landslide wins (occasioned in part because no well-established Republicans wanted to take him on) in 1998 and 2004, and probably will in 2010.
The other – more significant for purposes here – is his ability to work with some effectiveness in a minority position. Wyden has spent the bulk of his time in the Senate in the minority, most of it with the other party in control of the White House. In the House, he was mostly in the majority (though not when he left); but Republicans were in the White House most of his time here, and often controlled the Senate. Wyden has been an unusual legislator in being able to work effectively from the minority, often with the majority, without caving on his core views. His famed friendship with Republican Gordon Smith was only part of that.
Let’s put a sharper point on it.
Since his election to the House 28 years ago, Wyden has had just two years (1992-93) when his party controlled both Congress and the White House, and that advantage devolved so quickly that Democrats lost Congress in the next election. And during that short time, Democrats were far more split than they are now.
Entering the next Congress, Wyden will bring his skills to work in an environment far more conducive to his efforts than they ever have been.
At home, though facing election in 2010, he now has a fellow Democratic senator with whom he can work politically, a significant advantage. Not only will he be on the same page, a lot of the time, with the new president, he also shares with that new president surprising similarities in how he handles politics and policymaking. (They are apt to find accord not only on much of what should be done, but also on how much of it should be done.) And in a Senate where Republicans still have just enough votes to throw up roadblocks if they see fit, Wyden may be among the best-positioned Democrats to develop majorities to push through major legislation. And he has a history, among the most substantive of senators, of developing major legislative proposals, and shaping and reshaping them so they can make practical progress through the process.
The question now being: Given this strong position, what will Wyden do with it in the window of opportunity just now opening?
[continuing tomorrow]
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