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Repub Accepts Trasnportation Secretary Job

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Anonymous

Guest
LaHood Accepts Transportation Secretary Job
Updated 6:07 p.m.
By Paul Kane and Philip Rucker
Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) last night accepted an offer to become President-elect Barack Obama's transportation secretary and the nomination will be made official in coming days, two senior Democratic officials said.

LaHood, 63, who is retiring after representing a rural downstate district in Congress since 1995, becomes the second Republican tapped for Obama's Cabinet. In recent years, LaHood developed a close relationship with Obama and the man who will become his White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, becoming a key player on the House Appropriations Committee on behalf of the Illinois delegation. A moderate Republican, LaHood has not shied away from criticizing the Bush administration and has a reputation for working with leaders of both political parties.

From his perch atop the Department of Transportation, LaHood will be a key player in the new administration's public works projects designed to stimulate the struggling economy.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/12/17/lahood_accepts_transportation.html?hpid=topnews
 

VanC

Well-known member
LaHood's Congressional district is right next to the one I'm in. He's a good man, and did things the right way from what I've heard.


Ray LaHood yields back
By Jim Mills
Posted: 12/08/08 06:21 PM [ET]
In the 1950s, young Ray LaHood of Peoria, Ill., was not a member of the politically prestigious and gold-plated Lucky Sperm Club. Grandson of a Lebanese immigrant and son of parents who ran a small hometown working-class restaurant and bar, LaHood would have been hard-pressed, between flipping hamburgers, bussing tables and washing pots and pans, to name one local politician, let alone contemplate becoming a member of the House of Representatives.


“We never talked about politics. Back in those days I wouldn’t have known who the city councilman was, or even the mayor. Politics never played a role in our lives. Never. Not for one second.”


But what LaHood lacked in lofty political connections he more than compensated for by seeing the 12-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week schedule of a father he calls “the hardest-working guy I have ever known.”


LaHood went on to apply that same ethic to a series of jobs, working as an outdoor carhop, in a grocery store and, eventually, as elected representative of the people of Illinois’s 18th district.


After junior college, then a degree from Peoria’s Bradley University, LaHood started out as a junior high school teacher and then worked to keep delinquents on the straight and narrow while serving as director of the youth services in Rock Island, Ill.


After a stint working for then-Rep. Tom Railsback (R) and then fulfilling an appointed term in the statehouse, LaHood became House Minority Leader Bob Michel’s (R) chief of staff.


Although the 1980s were fairly lean times for Capitol Hill Republicans, working for Michel provided LaHood with a front-row seat to the Ronald Reagan Revolution. Although Reagan’s celebrated relationship with legendary Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill (Mass.) is often heralded as the high-water mark for a time when diametrically opposed political adversaries could actually enjoy each other’s company, much of Reagan’s success came because of Michel’s civil and soft-touched across-the-aisle outreach. LaHood was apparently taking notes in case his own opportunity ever came along. And it did.



LaHood won his boss’s seat when Michel retired in 1994, and although he came to power during the heady days of the Newt Gingrich invasion, he quickly found himself the odd man out for being just one of a few Republicans who refused to sign Gingrich’s Contract with America. Not wanting to cut taxes during a time of high deficits, LaHood’s act of defiance tagged him as a suspect character within the Gingrich-Dick Armey-Tom DeLay power axis.


As he prepares to retire after 30 years on Capitol Hill, LaHood remains humbled by his surroundings, thankful for the privilege of serving the folks back home and for those who invested in him during the early years.


“What I had were political mentors who taught me the right way and the wrong way to do things. Not just passing bills, but how to serve the people. How to make sure that doing what you’re doing is the right thing to do not for me, but for the people,” LaHood said.


Having been a key leadership staffer, LaHood knew he would wind up in hot water with GOP leaders when he declined to sign the Contract, but resolved that his own contract with his constituents was more important. Besides, LaHood wasn’t buying into the new tactics (effective or not) that had earned the GOP the majority for the first time in 40 years.


“I knew the real Newt Gingrich. I knew who Dick Armey was. I saw these guys elbowing their way up the ladder. Tom DeLay the same way. When I got elected, I told Tom DeLay, ‘I’m supporting Bob Walker [R-Pa.] for whip. He’s the most qualified guy,’ and Delay never, ever forgave me for that and held a grudge against me. I saw these guys. Every leadership meeting. Boom. Boom. Not about the party, but about them.”


That kind of candor, though it drove leadership nuts, also endeared LaHood to the media throughout his time on Capitol Hill. Even Gingrich eventually came around when he entrusted LaHood with the gavel to oversee 1998’s high-profile House impeachment of President Clinton.



In the old days of vaudeville, the future success of an act would often be measured by the phrase “Will it play in Peoria?” An old-timey tribute to the normalcy and decency of the small town located on the Illinois River halfway between Chicago and St. Louis, the message was clear: If the act could play well in Peoria, it would work anywhere in the country.


Despite often being considered a thorn in the side and a gadfly by some in his party, LaHood fans from both sides of aisle wonder if his style of politics will ever come back into vogue. Having watched him fairly closely for all of his 14 years in office, it is no stretch to say that LaHood was a class act that not only worked in Peoria, but deserved the rave reviews he got here in the nation’s capital, too.
 
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