Hawai'i senators may earn key posts
By Susan Roth
Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON — Hawai'i's senators are in line for leadership positions on several key committees involving Native Hawaiian and defense issues if Vermont Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords changes his political allegiance.
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Jeffords, a moderate who forced a compromise on President Bush's tax-cut proposal, is expected to announce today that he will leave the GOP and become an independent. Though he wouldn't be joining the Democratic Party, the change would shift the balance of power in the evenly divided Senate.
Sen. Dan Inouye may become chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee.
With the Democrats ascending, those senators who are top Democratic members of committees likely would become chairmen. That means Sen. Dan Inouye would become chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, the Appropriations subcommittee on defense and the Commerce Committee's Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Subcommittee.
Sen. Daniel Akaka could become chairman of three subcommittees: the Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support; the Energy and Natural Resources Committee's National Parks, Historic Preservation and Recreation Subcommittee; and the Governmental Affairs Committee's International Security, Proliferation and Federal Services Subcommittee.
Both senators were characteristically modest on the issue yesterday.
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Akaka declined to talk about his committees except to say that the parks committee chairmanship would ease the movement of his planned legislation to add more land to Hawai'i's national parks.
Sen. Dan Akaka hopes to add more land to national parks.
But he said Inouye's leadership of the Indian Affairs Committee "would have a huge effect on the Native Hawaiian recognition bill" the two co-sponsored. "We could move it out and move it on," Akaka said. The measure has passed the House Resources Committee and now moves to the House floor. The Senate Indian Affairs Committee has not addressed the bill.
Inouye said he did not believe that his leadership of the panel would make much of a difference. The current chairman, Colorado Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, "has been very helpful" with the Native Hawaiian bill, he said.
Last year, Campbell, the Senate's only American Indian, was one of several Republican senators questioning the measure early in the process, though he did move it through the committee for floor action.
By that time, however, it was too late for the bill to get a regular vote on the floor and Republican opponents blocked other means of passage.
