McKeon Bemoans His 1st Dose of Partisan Feuding in D.C.

Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon is learning what it means to be a Republican.

The Democrats fight political wars with you.

The conservative freshman representative lectured Friday to a mostly friendly gathering of about 40 people at Santa Clarita City Hall on the Hatfield-McCoy relationship he found that the two political parties share in Congress.

“I went back there as a nonpartisan, and came back as a partisan,” McKeon said in his first address to Santa Clarita community leaders since taking the oath of office earlier this month. “That is not what I wanted.”

Dividing a conference table of people in half to demonstrate a point, he designated one side Democrats, jokingly apologizing to them for doing so. He then classified the other side as Republicans, calling them “the heroes.”

McKeon went on to show how, in his view, the Democrats exploit their overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives to block Republican initiatives and aid the “pro-labor, anti-business movement.”

The Education and Labor Committee, on which McKeon sits, has been particularly partisan in its focus, he said, pointing to the expedited passage of the proposed family leave bill.

“The Republicans offered some good amendments that made sense and anybody with any kind of open-mindedness would know that they made sense,” said McKeon, who won office in a landslide in November. “But every Democrat voted no and every Republican voted yes.”

McKeon also repeated his party’s line on issues of education and labor and went on to criticize President Clinton’s leadership in his first week in office, particularly over the issue of homosexuals in the military.

“I heard that Clinton was a good politician,” McKeon said, “but it seems like everything he is doing is designed to alienate Congress.”

The digs at Clinton and the Democrats took some locals by surprise. McKeon’s criticism of partisanship in Congress brought criticism from some in the audience that he, in turn, was becoming excessively partisan.

“I didn’t quite expect so much negativity,” said Roberta Gillis, a member of the Democratic Club of the Santa Clarita Valley.

“For the first time, this area has its own representative, and I was hoping that the Democrats and Republicans would work toward mutual goals, and all I saw was divisiveness,” said Gillis, who called the 1 1/2-hour meeting “just a lot of Democrat-bashing.”

McKeon attributed his growing sense of partisanship to the atmosphere generated by veteran officeholders of both parties in Washington.

“So many of those people have been back there for so long that they’re going to do things the way they have always been done in the past,” McKeon said. “When you sit there in the House and you look across the aisle and see the Democrats sitting there laughing at you, kind of arrogant, you kind of get that way.”

Supporters of the former mayor of Santa Clarita said they don’t see any harmful changes in their man.

“I’m glad he’s in town. He’s a down-to-earth representative, someone you can talk to, someone who will implement things,” said Gary Johnson, president of the Valencia Industrial Assn. and owner of a local computer firm.