Posted on 02/06/2006 10:47:53 AM PST by SmithL
WASHINGTON - As East Tennessee Rep. Zach Wamp was campaigning for the No. 3 House leadership post, he compared the U.S. Congress to a church-building committee.
"There are well-intended people getting together to do important work, but they have the capability of really messing things up," Wamp said. His House colleagues often laughed, though there was some truth to the comparison.
Wamp, whose district includes Oak Ridge and Chattanooga, spent recent weeks trying to become the first Tennessean in 70 years to win a top House leadership post. He said that he talked to more than half of the 231 House Republicans to try to win their votes. But the post he sought, majority whip, did not open for an election after all Thursday because its leader, Roy Blunt of Missouri, lost his bid for promotion to majority leader to John Boehner of Ohio.
"I think I would have gotten at least 50 votes ... maybe 70 or 80 votes ... and finished second," Wamp said in an interview. The leading contender for the post, Eric Cantor of Virginia, had reported that 150 members were backing him.
But Blunt thought he had a majority supporting him and still lost.
The experience gave Wamp a chance for more colleagues to know his views, for Wamp to get to know them better, and perhaps he has improved his chances of winning a future leadership post, he said.
"My interest has not waned whatsoever," Wamp said. "As a matter of fact, I'm more interested in it than when I began. I wasn't elected to Congress the first time I ran either, but I did get elected" the second time. "Anything worth anything is worth persevering for."
Cantor's office did not return a call for comment about how he might have fared against Wamp and two other contenders had there been a whip election.
But two of Wamp's supporters, Ray LaHood of Illinois and Gil Gutknecht of Minnesota, predicted Wamp would have had a strong showing.
"I thought it would have been a close election," LaHood said. "I believe that Zach would have been in the final two. What he's done is establish a launching platform for the future."
LaHood said Wamp has won many members' respect for his bipartisan work on the Appropriations Committee and his leadership at House members' Thursday morning prayer breakfasts.
"He's a hard-working fellow and somebody who is not afraid to try and bring people together and get things done," LaHood said. "Nobody works harder than Zach."
Gutknecht said Wamp's reform proposals are popular with many members. Those who have watched Wamp since his first election win in 1994 "know that Zach plays hard and he plays to win. I think he's got a competitive nature in him that is almost infectious," Gutknecht said.
On reforms, Wamp said he wants to end the practice of committee chairmen and their staff inserting special projects into spending bills when House and Senate committees are working on compromises. The system has been criticized for greatly increasing the cost of legislation and allowing lobbyists an opportunity to win prizes for clients.
Wamp also favors legislation to keep lobbyists from paying for members' trips or meals or meeting members during trips.
One reform he helped pass after years of effort, restrictions on campaign finances, made him less popular with some Republican members who liked the old system, Wamp said. "I have scars deep in my back from campaign finance reform because that's the most independent move that I've ever made," he said. "I heard about it quite a bit. I explained myself as best as I could."
Though he didn't win a leadership election, he did win a friend in high places.
Wamp said he has been a close friend for years with the new majority leader, Boehner.
He said he expects that Boehner will ask him to help the leadership organization "in some way. I had been consulting with John Boehner for months about the prospects for both of us."
Overheard in Rep. Cantor's office, "There some idiotic press moron on line one with the dumbest question I have ever heard, want me to tell him to go pound sand?"
Wamp's wife in ICU in Chattanooga
posted last night...
Prayers for Wamp's Wife Continuing, in the Name of our Lord.
This would very much tend to lower my opinion of Wamp seeing him associated with thug trash RINO like LaHood, who all but did the dirty work in running Pete Fitzgerald out of the Senate and replacing him with Stepinfetchit Obama.
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