GOP's loss is Hawai'i's gain on Capitol Hill
Advertiser Staff and News Services
WASHINGTON — On a day of upheaval beneath the Capitol dome, Democrats snared control of the Senate on the strength of a party defection yesterday and pledged to temper President Bush's agenda while advancing their own.
"I can no longer" remain a Republican, said Vermont Sen. James Jeffords in a personal declaration of independence.
The move gave Democrats a 50-49 majority in the Senate.
Hawai'i Democratic Sens. Dan Inouye and Daniel Akaka will gain committee and subcommittee chairmanships that will help them push their agendas.
Inouye will become chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, the Appropriations subcommittee on defense, and the Commerce Committee's subcommittee on communications, according to his Hawai'i chief of staff, Jennifer Goto Sabas.
"Senator Inouye welcomes the challenges that come with the change in leadership," said Sabas. "The workload will increase, but will also provide greater opportunity to address the needs of our state."
Having Inouye as chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee could affect the issue of Native Hawaiian sovereignty, because the position "provides a greater opportunity to get the bill up and considered," said Sabas.
Lorraine Akiba, chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, also said Inouye's new position bodes well for the sovereignty bill introduced by Akaka. She said sovereignty is an important issue for all of Hawai'i's citizens.
Akaka would become chairman of 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.
"This is all tentative, because the official transfer will be either June 5 or when the tax bill reaches the president's desk," said Akaka's spokesman Paul Cardus. "This is the expectation that we're working under. That's what everyone was told to expect."
Akaka's Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on readiness and management support will put him right in the middle of the Makua issue.
Akiba said the new posts for both senators show the Hawai'i's Democratic delegation can be effective even when the White House is controlled by Republicans.
"We intend to govern" in a spirit of fairness, said Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the majority-leader-in-waiting and the nation's highest-ranking Democrat. "We can't dictate to them, nor can they dictate to us," he said of the GOP.
Bush, suddenly confronted with a Democratic-controlled Senate, said he respected Jeffords, but "couldn't disagree more," with his charge that the administration was too conservative.
While ducking blame for Jeffords' defection, White House advisers acknowledged that the political landscape will change dramatically. Bush will now work harder than ever to court Democrats in the short term and help elect Republicans to Congress in 2002, they said.
The Republican leader, Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, said he expected no change in his party's leadership. But there was some sentiment for a shift in style if not personnel. "We need to take some inventory here," said Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, "and maybe make some adjustments."
Democrats predicted a profound change when Jeffords' move becomes effective in early June. "We will be acting and they will be reacting instead of the opposite," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said of the Republicans.
His days as majority leader dwindling, Lott, R-Miss., began hustling several of Bush's nominations to confirmation, including the controversial choice of Ted Olson to become solicitor general.
But the power was already flowing to the soft-spoken Daschle, 53 and six years the Democratic leader. Democratic aides said he wanted to let Olson come to a vote now rather than have a partisan floor fight in his party's early days in the majority.
Daschle, who will have the ability to determine the flow of legislation to the floor, told reporters he would reach out to Bush with a telephone call, and said his first legislative objective would be to finish the education bill that has been pending for weeks.
After that, said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, "I think the first bill we're going to do is patient bill of rights."
Eagerly anticipating a return to power, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy told reporters he hoped to move a minimum wage increase quickly; Maryland's Sen. Paul Sarbanes scheduled a news conference to preview a Democratic agenda for the banking committee.
Not all chairmanships were set. For example, it wasn't clear whether Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware would choose to head the Foreign Relations Committee or Judiciary Committee.
But one shift was certain: Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, 83, becomes president pro tem, third in line of succession to the presidency, replacing 98-year-old Republican Strom Thurmond.
Jeffords' announcement sent a wave of jubilation through the ranks of Democrats, consigned to the minority since 1994.
"How does it feel to be in the majority?" former GOP Sen. Dan Coats asked Sen. Paul Wellstone when the two men crossed paths just off the Senate floor. "I can't remember," Wellstone, D-Minn., replied with a hearty laugh.
Jeffords, 67, an amiable but determined moderate in a party grown ever more conservative, seemed an unlikely politician to be at the center of an unprecedented event. A supporter of abortion rights, the environment and education, he clashed with the administration over budget priorities earlier in the year.
At a news conference in Montpelier, he dismissed talk that he had been snubbed as a result, but he said, "Given the changing nature of the national party, it has become a struggle for our leaders to deal with me and for me to deal with them."
Jeffords said he would become an independent but side with the Democrats for organizational purposes, the critical distinction that hands them control. He said the switch would become effective as soon as Congress sends Bush his income tax cut, expected by week's end.
For all the high-minded rhetoric, the defection was the culmination of political dealmaking on all sides.
Democrats agreed in advance to give Jeffords the chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, a move that will require Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the party whip, to step aside. Kennedy, four decades a senator, said he, too, had signaled a willingness to give up his chairmanship of the education committee if Jeffords wanted to claim it.
Republicans made a quick run at Georgia Democrat Zell Miller in hopes he would switch parties and throw the Senate back into a 50-50 tie, but he declined.
They also mounted a desperate last-minute attempt to entice Jeffords back into the fold, including his meeting with longtime colleagues who stood to lose their committee chairmanships.
"It was the most emotional time that I have ever had in my life, with my closest friends urging me not to do what I was going to do because it affected their lives very substantially," Jeffords told his news conference. "I know, for instance, the chairman of the Finance Committee (Charles Grassley of Iowa) has dreamed all his life of being chairman.
"He's chairman a couple of weeks, and now he will be no longer the chairman.'"
