Just like his father, the famous civil rights activist, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. always has demanded that high-minded assurances of good intentions be matched by down-to-earth commitments of dollars and cents.
Now, the Chicago Democrat is closing in on a position to exercise insider influence over the federal budget.
A senior Democratic leadership aide said chances are “very good” that, come next Congress, Jackson will be appointed to the House Appropriations Committee, the powerful panel that governs federal spending.
The charismatic, 33-year-old politician already is considered a rising star in the House. A place on the committee would greatly enhance his position in Congress, bestowing on him the ability to assist or hinder funding requests for House members’ pet projects.
Of course, there are no guarantees. The limited spaces available on the Appropriations Committee are perhaps the most eagerly sought assignments in Congress. And with decisions on committee appointments not made until year’s end, plenty of time remains for potential rivals to maneuver past Jackson.
Anything less than unanimous backing from the Democratic House members from Illinois also would badly damage his candidacy.
But Jackson’s campaign for a place on the committee has impressed members of the leadership. And party leaders have placed “a high priority” on adding an Illinois Democrat to the panel, said the leadership aide.
Only two years ago, the state had two Democrats on the committee, both in senior positions. When Democrats controlled the House, then-Rep. Dick Durbin of Springfield and Rep. Sidney Yates of Chicago each chaired Appropriations subcommittees, putting them in the powerful Capitol Hill clique known as the “College of Cardinals.”
Durbin left for a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1997. Yates will give up his committee seat when he retires at the end of the congressional session.
Jackson has been campaigning for a position on the committee almost since he arrived on the Hill three years ago, making his case to every member of the Democratic Steering Committee, which makes committee assignments.
Jackson said he already has received a personal assurance of support from Democratic Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri.
“I’ve asked them all for their support. They all indicated their support at one time or another,” he added.
The politician also has built a reservoir of goodwill by campaigning in 1996 for some 30 Democratic House candidates. In just one Texas district, he spoke in 13 African-American churches on one Sunday.
Jackson said he will be back on the campaign trail this fall, doing the same. But this time he will have to balance the campaigning against commitments at home: His wife, Sandra, is expecting a child, the couple’s first.
Power of the purse: If all goes as expected, the former home of the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing–the federal print shop that produces currency–soon will become the Yates Federal Building.
Plans are in the works to place Yates’ name on the red-brick, Victorian-era Auditors Building, which is on Washington’s historic Mall and now used as headquarters for the U.S. Forest Service.
For 20 years, Yates was chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that governed funding for the U.S. Interior Department and related agencies, including the Forest Service.
U.S. Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), who succeeded Yates after the 1994 GOP takeover of the House, intends to offer legislation to change the building’s name once Congress returns in September.
Birds of a feather: Who was that gray-haired man working the crowd at a Capitol Hill fundraiser earlier this month for former U.S. Rep. Bob Dornan (R-Calif.)?
That’s Dornan as in “B-1 Bob,” the bombastic conservative famous for delivering red-faced diatribes on the House floor against liberals, President Clinton and gays.
Well, it was none other than the North Shore’s own U.S. Rep. Phil Crane there to show his enthusiastic support for returning Dornan to Congress.
Republican Crane and his re-election committee together have contributed $1,000 to Dornan’s effort to regain the seat Dornan lost to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) in 1996.
The two “are old friends,” said Crane spokeswoman Megan Muldoon. “They share fiscal and social conservative philosophies. . . . We’ll do what we can to help out B-1 Bob,” she added.
