Posted on 07/20/2005 5:57:32 AM PDT by E Rocc
LaTourette doesn't let boundaries bind him Sunday, July 17, 2005 Sandy Theis Plain Dealer Columnist Washington
-- Need something from Congress? Maybe a bridge or a road in Cleveland, or preservation of 1,200 civilian jobs that the Pentagon is threatening to cut?
You could call your congressman, Dennis Kucinich, or your congresswoman, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, depending on whether you live on the west or east side of town. You'd be better off, however, leaving Cleveland and grabbing Steve LaTourette.
The bearded, sixth-term congressman from Lake County has become Cleveland's most effective representative in Washington.
"He is our champion," says one local leader.
Never mind that his district covers not even an inch of Cleveland. Business and civic leaders in Cleveland, many of whom can't vote for LaTourette because he's outside their districts, have come to count on the non-Cleveland Republican much more than they count on their two resident Democrats.
Nowhere is that more clear than in the campaign to stop the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission from shuttering the Defense Finance and Accounting Service's downtown Cleveland office. About 1,200 jobs are on the line.
In a methodical manner befitting his history as a local prosecutor, LaTourette and his communications director, Debbie Setliff (the former Debbie Winston, who used to be a Plain Dealer reporter and columnist), have been re-examining the BRAC Commission's logic, going deep into the federal bureaucracy to mine information. He has challenged the commission's purported cost-saving numbers with more accurate figures unearthed from this needle-in-the-haystack search.
The result: LaTourette has been documenting how the BRAC commission's recommendation is deeply, factually flawed.
"There are two ways to approach everything that happens here," LaTourette, who turns 51 on Friday, said in an interview in his office last week. "You can approach it politically, or you can approach it by rolling up your sleeves and looking at the details and the facts."
That's a lot more effective than complaining, as Kucinich did, that the BRAC recommendation appeared to be President Bush's way of telling Cleveland to go to hell - an assertion that made even Democrats grimmace. Kucinich has since toned it down.
Tubbs Jones' role in fighting for Cleveland's DFAS workers has been to focus on the city's fragile economy and on the quality of the local workforce. That's reasonable, but it's unlikely to poke holes in the recommendations.
LaTourette will not speak ill of his colleagues, and he and community leaders stress that saving DFAS is a group effort. But DFAS is only one example.
Greater Cleveland turns to LaTourette when it comes to roads, hospitals, universities or just about anything other than challenging President George W. Bush's leadership.
"What I try to do is take a regional approach," the Lake County Republican says. "If Cleveland doesn't do well, Lake County doesn't do well and Geauga County doesn't do well. . . . Jane Campbell asks me for assistance from time to time. It's not that she doesn't think that Dennis and Stephanie aren't effective, but she recognizes that there are different things that I am able to do. And so if Case Western Reserve does well, if University Hospital does well, and the Cleveland Clinic does well, then the people where I live do well."
One of LaTourette's biggest assets is his service on the House Transportation Committee, giving him a say on roads, bridges, even the Coast Guard.
Government, civic and business leaders also quietly call on Ralph Regula, a senior appropriator who's expert at finding money for Cleveland even though his district barely extended north beyond Canton until recently, and David Hobson, a Springfield-based lawmaker whose know-how on military projects has been helpful to the NASA Glenn Research Center. And, of course, they call on Sens. George Voinovich and Mike DeWine. All of those men are Republicans.
Publicly, no one in the Cleveland civic and business community wants to knock Kucinich or Tubbs Jones. But privately, you hear acknowledgements that it's a darned good thing the largely Democratic city has the LaTourette to turn to.
It's not entirely Kucinich's or Tubbs Jones' fault. They're Democrats in a Republican-led Congress. Assuming that Democrats someday regain a majority - unlikely in the near future - Tubbs Jones in particular could grow to be influential, having wisely snared a seat on the House Ways and Means Committee.
But the Cleveland Democrats' relative effectiveness goes beyond their minority-party status. Both are so stridently anti-Bush that they not only burn bridges, they threaten to ignite whole villages. Some of Tubbs Jones' colleagues are still smarting over the way she challenged Bush's electoral votes early this year, mounting a rare protest on the House floor. Hobson says that has made it more challenging for him to get money from Republican leaders for Cleveland, especially since it has to come at the expense of some other Congress member's project.
Her protest was heartfelt, colleagues admit. But the drama and the timing, when Cleveland was vying to expand programs at its NASA center, was less than ideal.
Still, there's always Steve LaTourette. He doesn't represent the city. But that's only a technicality.
-Eric
-Eric
Well, except for Kucinich himself, that makes it unanimous.
How did Kucinich get elected? Is his district predominently Black? He's such a wackjob I can't imagine anyone voting for him.
The people who voted Tubbs-Jones into office deserve her as their representative. No further commentary necessary.
How did Kucinich get elected? Is his district predominently Black? He's such a wackjob I can't imagine anyone voting for him.It's actually largely white. He's a good rabble rouser despite the fact that he has perhaps the worst administrative record of any unindicted politician in America. The GOP downstate consolidated as many gullible white Democrats in his district as they could.
He's actually in his element. He can whine and make noise and go after headlines, but as a minority Congressman he can't be held responsible for anything.
Drones is a tool of the east side political machine, nothing more.
-Eric
Don't stop there, Sherrod Brown is just as bad.
N.E. Ohio PINGS!
Sounds like the old Bonior Macomb County district back in the 80's and 90's.
http://smythecramer.howardhanna.com/apps/propertysearch/homes/index.cfm?action=detail&search_LN=2213863+&x=38&y=6
LaTourette house for sale.
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