Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 26, 1994 TAG: 9411280029
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: H. JOSEF HEBERT ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The burly, second-generation congressman from Michigan is losing the committee chairmanship and accompanying staff he used to become one of the most powerful and feared lawmakers in the nation's capital.
They've called him the Grand Inquisitor, Congress' Junkyard Dog, or, in deference to his 6-foot-3 frame, The Truck - or just Big John.
For more than a dozen years, Dingell, who learned the art of political arm-twisting from the likes of Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson, has been chairman of the wide-reaching House Energy and Commerce Committee.
But with Republicans winning a majority in the House for the first time in 40 years, Dingell will be thrust into the minority, losing most of his clout.
``It's not going to be as much fun,'' said Dingell, 68. ``My ego doesn't demand that I be chairman.''
Many on Capitol Hill find that hard to believe. Dingell, who succeeded his late father in 1955 as the congressman representing a largely working class area outside of Detroit, has been called intimidating, a bully, vengeful and just plain overpowering.
He also has been said to be thoroughly honest, a dogged pursuer of government waste and fraud, and a master of politics and legislative deal-making. And as chairman of a committee that handles 40 percent of all the legislation before the House, he has had few equals in terms of political power and influence.
Atop this power base, Dingell has reigned supreme, consolidating his control within the committee, rewarding friends and punishing opponents, and, according to critics, taking every opportunity to expand the panel's reach. Few pieces of legislation survived without Dingell's imprint.
``He was like an almighty king and the Energy and Commerce Committee was his realm,'' says Don Ritter, a former Republican lawmaker who was a member of the committee for 12 years.
And a lawmaker who crossed Dingell was taking his chances. James Scheuer, a former New York congressman, learned that when he pushed for a requirement in 1979 and again in 1980 for air bags in new automobiles. Like the automakers, Dingell strongly opposed the bill. The next year, Dingell had Scheuer's subcommittee disbanded, arguing it was not needed.
Dingell's congressional office is decorated with big-game trophies, including the head of a 500-pound wild boar that he is said to have felled with a pistol as it charged him during a hunting trip in Soviet Georgia.
But some of Dingell's biggest trophies are of the human variety. His team of about a dozen investigators has pursued mismanagement, excessive spending and wrongdoing at federal agencies, on Wall Street, in universities, at the Pentagon, among the government's biggest contractors and in the White House.
In the early 1980s, his probes led to the criminal conviction of Michael Deaver, a top adviser to President Reagan; forced the resignation of Reagan's first environmental protection chief, Anne Gorsuch Burford; and led to the perjury conviction of a top Burford aide.
Dingell's investigations into the misuse of federal research money by universities led to the resignation of a Stanford University president. The Pentagon's $640 toilet seat was exposed as a result of a series of Dingell inquiries into Pentagon waste.
Bureaucrats and contractors have been known to quake when they receive what has become known as a ``Dingellgram'' - a lengthy letter of inquiry often seeking answers to dozens of painstakingly specific questions about a particular subject that caught Dingell's attention. Those inquiries now won't come nearly as frequently nor have the same urgency. But Dingell, who won re-election Nov. 8 with nearly 60 percent of the votes, shows no sign of disappearing from the Washington landscape.
Reports of a rumor that he might resign and open the way to be succeeded by his son, now a Michigan state senator, brought an angry response.
``This is asinine, what kind of a jacka-- do [those circulating such a rumor] think I am?'' he snapped.
``There's an old Polish story,'' Dingell added, when asked if he would like to see his son succeed him. ``Before you sell the bear's hide, you've got to shoot the bear. I'm going to serve here for some period of time.''
by CNB