Two top Democrats in a showdown for key chairmanship

WASHINGTON - When House Democrats return to Washington next week, they will have to choose between two of the party's most senior lawmakers.

The elder statesman is Michigan Representative John Dingell, 82, of Michigan, the longest-serving House member, with 52 years in office. The challenger is Henry Waxman of California, 69, who has been in Congress for 34 years and is vying to replace Dingell as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

The stakes are high because the panel has jurisdiction over energy, healthcare, and telecommunications issues, central elements of President-elect Barack Obama's agenda.

Dingell, one of the auto industry's staunchest allies, is being challenged as the nation's carmakers are in financial turmoil and have asked for up to $50 billion in federal support. Next year, he is likely to be one of the strongest advocates of a universal healthcare plan. Waxman's record as chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee indicates he would be tough on the energy, drug, and auto industries.

The battle also is a departure from House protocol.

Dingell is "the personification of the Old Bull in terms of someone who is in command of a committee and expects to be treated with the respect his position confers upon him," said John Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based research organization that usually supports Republicans.

The fight pits the Rust Belt against Silicon Valley, Big Labor against the new economy, and the old guard against relative newcomers. Almost all the House committee chairmen are backing Dingell because his removal would erode a long-standing seniority system for such posts.

The average age of chairmen is 65, while the average age for freshmen lawmakers in 2006 and this year was 49.

The fight has divided Democrats. On Thursday, Dingell won the backing of Representative John Lewis of Georgia, a leading civil rights activist, and five other members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

House majority whip James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the chamber, favors Dingell because he has more seniority on the panel and he and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus are concerned that the effort to unseat him would undermine the seniority system, said Kristie Greco, Clyburn's spokeswoman.

Dingell today wrote a letter to 152 of his Democratic colleagues, assuring them that a climate-change measure he has proposed includes most of the principles they outlined in a letter to him in October.

"I intend to move quickly, especially now that our president-elect shares our commitment to solving this problem," Dingell said in the letter.

Waxman, meanwhile, has been endorsed by Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, another member of the Congressional Black Caucus, who is "campaigning hard" within the 43-member group, Cummings spokeswoman Jennifer Kohl said.