Pelosi poised to pick future chairmen

WASHINGTON -- If Democrats win control of the House in November, minority leader Nancy Pelosi of California has decided to award committee chairmanships based almost entirely on seniority, ensuring that the House would have far more minority lawmakers, and some liberal firebrands, in key posts.

But, mindful of the growing power of an expanding band of Democratic moderates and conservatives, Pelosi has also vowed that she would keep her chairmen on a tight leash, according to leadership aides and current and former Democratic lawmakers.

She has assured conservative Democrats that she would personally temper the legislative impulses of her most liberal chairmen while keeping close tabs on the investigations that could dominate the final two years of the Bush presidency.

Although many races in the Nov. 7 elections remain fluid, officials in both parties said Democrats hold solid leads in roughly 10 of the 15 Republican-held districts need to win the House and four of the six they need to win the Senate.

House Democratic leaders and their would-be chairmen say in public that they are focused only on the elections and have not begun to plan for a possible takeover. But privately, Pelosi has had several conversations with the senior Democrats on the House's most powerful committees, as well as with conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats, who have sought assurances that they will have a voice after the polls close.

"We've inched our way back toward the majority by replacing Republicans with conservative-to-moderate Democrats, and you're going to see a lot more of that November 7," said Representative Mike Ross, Democrat of Arkansas, one of the leaders of the Blue Dog coalition. "Do I believe Blue Dogs will have a greater voice in the Democratic leadership? You betcha."

The Blue Dogs could hold the balance of power in a Democratic House. With 37 members, the group already has clout; 16 Democratic candidates have the Blue Dogs' endorsement, and a dozen of them could win. That would give them numbers surpassing the Congressional Black Caucus's 43 members.

Representative Dennis Cardoza, Democrat of California, a Blue Dog co-chairman, promised that the group would be "a moderating influence on any excesses that might be brought forth by other wings of the party."

"That's not a threat," he said. "That's just the facts of life."

For Republicans in this campaign season, however, the face of the Democratic Party is not the Blue Dog wing but what Cardoza called "other wings." Committee chairmanships would appear to be an unlikely campaign issue, but Republicans are using it with gusto, especially to rally dispirited conservatives to the polls.

Republicans have attacked Representative Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, as a proponent of tax increases.

The Republican National Committee called Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, the would-be chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee, "a liberal partisan" who "would launch criminal inquiries into the Bush administration."

In Topeka earlier this month, Vice President Dick Cheney singled out three of the most liberal Democrats in the House as foils: Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, the would-be Judiciary Committee chairman; Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, who is in line to take over the Government Reform Committee; and Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, the senior Democrat on the Financial Services Committee.

"In all the decisions that will come in the next two years, it's going to matter a great deal which party has the majority on the floor and the gavel in committee," Cheney said.

In a debate between six-term Representative John Hostettler, Republican of Indiana, and his Democratic challenger, Sheriff Brad Ellsworth, Hostettler warned that if Democrats take over, "Charlie Rangel will be the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee."

Misgivings exist in Democratic ranks as well. Several moderate-to-conservative Democrats in the House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of fraying party unity, specifically mentioned two members: Conyers, who has already laid out what he says are grounds to impeach President Bush, and Alcee Hastings, Democrat of Florida, a senior Democrat on the intelligence Committee, who was impeached and removed from his federal judgeship in 1989 for conspiring to take a $150,000 bribe and give light sentences to two convicted swindlers.

Pelosi aides gave strong assurances that Conyers would become Judiciary Committee chairman and that Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, would become chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. In a private meeting, Pelosi told Rangel that he would take over the Ways and Means Committee.

In the same meeting, she assured Representative John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, that she would back his return to the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee. She also told Representative David Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin, that he would have her support to take back the reins of the Appropriations Committee.