Voinovich Known to Put Principles Before Party

The maverick tendencies of Republican Sen. George V. Voinovich are no secret.

The former Ohio governor and Cleveland mayor has challenged President Bush and party leaders on numerous issues. But Tuesday, when Voinovich held up Bush’s nomination of John R. Bolton as United Nations ambassador, even his Capitol Hill colleagues were stunned.

“I’ve heard enough today that I don’t feel comfortable about voting for Mr. Bolton,” Voinovich told the rest of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressing concern about reports that the nominee had bullied subordinates.

“I think one’s interpersonal skills and their relationship with their fellow man is a very important ingredient in anyone that works for me,” he said. “I call it the kitchen test. Do we feel comfortable about the kitchen test? I’ve heard enough today that gives me some real concern about Mr. Bolton.”

Voinovich had been expected to support the nomination -- and still may -- but he pushed for a delay in order to get more information about the nominee’s character and behavior.

“Who would have expected Sen. Voinovich to do what he did today?” said Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who was widely regarded as the Republican most likely to cause trouble for Bolton.

Voinovich is less inclined than some GOP mavericks, like Sen. John McCain of Arizona, to part ways with his party. Still, the Ohioan ranked eighth among Senate Republicans in breaking ranks with the majority of his party on votes in 2004, doing so about 12% of the time, a Congressional Quarterly analysis found.

“Sen. Voinovich is not a showboat, but he is always willing to stand up for things he believes in even if it goes against the party line,” said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group.

Voinovich, a self-described deficit hawk, resisted Bush’s 2003 tax cuts until he got what he wanted: a bill with a net cost of no more than $350 billion. And he supported an unsuccessful drive to reinstate budget rules that made it harder to cut taxes by requiring that they be offset with spending cuts or increases in other taxes.

He often goes to the Senate floor to push for spending restraint, even if it means challenging his own colleagues.

“The bitter truth is that, regardless of which party is in control, Congress has never shown an appetite for fiscal restraint,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor last month. “We are always much more likely to spend like drunken sailors than to save our constituents’ money the way we would save our own.”

In 2002, he drew national media attention when he boycotted a Capitol Hill hearing where a member of the Backstreet Boys, a teen-oriented singing group, testified about coal mining. Complaining about the use of celebrities to draw attention to issues, he said, “We’re either serious about the issues or we’re running a sideshow.”

Voinovich’s staff sought Tuesday to play down any differences between the senator and the president. “This is not a ‘no’ vote” on Bolton, his spokeswoman, Marcie Ridgway, said. “This is him hearing concerns and saying we need to clear the air.”

“The senator,” she added, “believes in this president and is a strong supporter.”

But Democrats, in considering who among the moderate Republicans might be persuaded to support their case against Bolton, knew Voinovich was a possibility, a Democratic staffer said.

That’s because the Ohio lawmaker also sits on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where “he has been a stickler on management issues and the way subordinates are treated,” the staffer said. “He gets really incensed at jerks.”

Voinovich’s questioning of Bolton’s nomination is certain to make him a target of heavy lobbying by the White House and fellow Republicans.

But he is in a particularly strong position to be independent: Unlike Chafee, another moderate with qualms about the nomination, Voinovich, 68, does not need the party’s support for a reelection campaign in 2006. He was reelected to a second term in 2004 with 64% of the vote.

And he has weathered heavy lobbying before.

When Voinovich was slow to back Bush’s tax cuts, he was the target of a television ads in his home state that pictured him next to the French flag at a time when France was opposing the U.S. war in Iraq.

Voinovich said then that the tax issue paled in comparison with other challenges he had faced during his lengthy political career.

“If I ever get to the Pearly Gates,” he said, “I’m going to say that I was the mayor of Cleveland.”

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this report.