Valley GOP Stresses Ties to Gingrich

Rep. Newt Gingrich may be controversial to some, but San Fernando Valley-area Republicans stood solidly behind the incoming Speaker of the House on Monday in what amounted to a day of celebration for the long-frustrated GOP.

“If you know the guy who has the clout,” one Republican congressional aide explained, “you have some clout yourself.”

As Gingrich formally accepted his nomination as Speaker, Rep. Howard (Buck) McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) was one who was playing up his ties to the next House leader, calling himself a close ally of the Georgia lawmaker.

McKeon has proudly noted that Gingrich appeared at one of his fund-raisers earlier this year and named McKeon to the transition team that is preparing for the start of the 104th Congress next month.

“We’ve worked pretty closely with the Speaker-elect on a number of projects,” said Bob Cochran, McKeon’s chief of staff. “Once a month, Buck has been meeting with Gingrich and other leaders.”

Not quite as tight is Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale), who was slighted by Gingrich last month when the incoming Speaker bypassed him for two committee chairmanships. Still, Moorhead refuses to knock Gingrich and vows to work closely with him as a subcommittee chairman.

“I support the new administration,” Moorhead said. “We’re all working together to carry out the terms of the ‘Contract with America’ and bring about the reforms in Congress that are so badly needed.”

In his characteristically controversial way, Gingrich caused a stir over the weekend when he suggested that a quarter of President Clinton’s aides had used drugs in the four to five years before they joined the Administration. He also urged Hillary Rodham Clinton to see the movie “Boys Town” before condemning his support of orphanages for welfare children.

Yet criticism of Gingrich’s loose tongue was hard to find among Republicans gathered at their leadership meetings Monday, which at times took on the air of a high school pep rally. Gingrich himself has said he intends to tone down his fierce rhetoric when he assumes the House leadership Jan. 4 and begins work on government reform.

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) stuck up for Gingrich, whom he says he has known for many years.

“The press is out there looking for the 1% of the remarks that are going to be controversial,” Gallegly said. “I can’t speak to the specifics of his recent remarks, but Newt is a guy who is not going to shrink away from controversy. But he is intelligent enough to push our agenda forward.”

Democrats, on the other hand, were watching Gingrich’s ascension with apprehension and acknowledging far more tenuous ties with the Speaker-in-waiting.

A Democratic policy group proposed a set of options to counter those being pushed by Gingrich and vowed to--in the words of Al From, president of the Democratic Leadership Council--”engage (the Republicans) in hand-to-hand combat for every inch of ground in the battlefield for ideas.”

Reps. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), for their part, do not profess to be close confidantes of the next Speaker.

Waxman knows Gingrich but does not have a particularly close relationship, a staffer said, and Berman knows Gingrich primarily from an overseas trip the two took with other Congressmen.

“They at least know each other by sight,” a Berman aide said.

With Gingrich and other Republican leaders now selected, the GOP turns its sights to committee and subcommittee assignments, which local lawmakers are awaiting anxiously.

Among those under consideration for subcommittee chairs are Moorhead, who is expected to head the subcommittee on intellectual property and judicial administration, and Gallegly, who is pushing for the chairmanship of international law, immigration and refugees. They will learn their fates by midweek.

Although Democrats have lost their chance to wield the gavel, they also have an interest in the results of this week’s Republican caucuses.

Berman, chairman of the international operations subcommittee, and Waxman, who chairs the subcommittee on health and environment, will learn how Republicans lawmakers plan to overhaul their panels.

Along with a greater ratio of Republicans on the committees, GOP lawmakers have proposed cutting committee staffing, consolidating some committees and even selling a House office building.