Republican Election Strategy in the House

Target committee chairs.

This is Why it is Important to Respect Seniority

From Texas Politics:

Some State Board of Education members reacted angrily Wednesday after board Chairman Don McLeroy ignored seniority in appointing committees.

"This is a real slap on the face," said Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi, who has been on the board since the mid 1980s.

Berlanga landed on the school initiatives committee instead of getting either of her two preferences - instruction or the school finance/Permanent School Fund committee.

"I'm not sure that I should even come to the meetings," Berlanga said. "I am very disappointed. You are doing an injustice to the people we serve and an injustice to the children. You might as well put me on the basket-weaving committee because that's what you have done."

Patricia Hardy, R-Fort Worth, complained that at least four board members did not get any of their first two choices in committee appointments.

The process lacked integrity, she told McLeroy: "You have made a mockery of this whole thing."

State Board of Education members fight and feud over most major matters that come before them.

McLeroy did not try to justify the committee appointments.

Geraldine "Tincy" Miller, R-Dallas, another long-time board member chastised McLeroy for ignoring seniority rules in appointing the committees.

Miller said she was "very disappointed" in what she described as "in-the-face democracy."

More on the Waxman - Dingell Battle over the house Energy and Commrce Committee

First, it gives us a window into the process by which Democrats decide their committee chairs, and second in tells us something about the priorities of the incoming Congress.

Politico tells us:

In a secret ballot vote in the Cannon Caucus Room, House Democrats ratified an earlier decision by the Steering and Policy Committee to replace the 82-year-old Dingell with his 69-year-old rival. The vote was 137-122 in favor of Waxman.

The ascension of Waxman, a wily environmentalist, recasts a committee that Dingell has chaired since 1981 with an eye toward protecting the domestic auto industry in his native Michigan. The Energy and Commerce Committee has principal jurisdiction over many of President-elect Barack Obama's top legislative priorities, including energy, the environment and health care.

"Seniority is important, but it should not be a grant of property rights to be chairman for three decades or more,” Waxman said after emerging from the caucus meeting. Waxman’s win is a big victory for environmentalists who want a more aggressive stance on global warming from the committee, and the vote showed the powerful hand of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Waxman ally, even though she officially remained neutral in the race.

The ousting of the ultimate Old Bull — just three months before Dingell was set to become the longest-serving chairman in the House — is also a shot across the bow for other senior lawmakers who have enjoyed a comfortable and unchallenged ride in their chairmen’s seats.

In other words, the current Democratic majority feels confident enough to shake up things in its own caucus to make changes in policy that it otherwise could not. The key, according to Politico, was the newly elected freshmen who supported Waxman's environmentalism over Dingell's support for the auto industry.

More comments:

- Slate calls it a gift for Obama.
- Kate Shepard anticipates increased support for climate policy.
- Huffington Post argues that energy policy will now be more "California" than "Michigan."

The End of an Era

Southern influence in Congress appears to be waining.

During the days of strict seniority the South ruled the roost, but the rise of two party competition has cut the length of southern members' congressional tenures, and the region's shift to the Republican Party has put them at a disadvantage now that Democrats are the majority Party.

The South can no longer check policies favored by the rest of the country, or push policies opposed by them.

Consequences?