Rep. Mineta to Quit Congress : Politics: San Jose Democrat says he will leave Oct. 10. The 20-year member plans to work for defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp.

U.S. Rep. Norman Y. Mineta, the San Jose Democrat who spent his childhood behind the barbed wire of an internment camp and went on to see that Japanese Americans were compensated for the indignity, announced Monday that he will resign Oct. 10 after 20 years in Congress.

A nose-to-the-grindstone lawmaker who spent a brief but powerful stint as chairman of the House Transportation Committee that oversees billions of dollars in public works projects, Mineta is leaving to become a vice president with Lockheed Martin Corp.

Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest defense contractor, is based in Bethesda, Md., and Mineta will run the transportation systems and services division from Washington.

While some congressional Democrats have switched parties or aborted their congressional careers in dismay over the first GOP takeover in 40 years, Mineta said he holds no ill will toward the institution to which he was first elected in 1974. He said he is simply closing one chapter in his life to open another with the nation’s largest military contractor.

“I am a great believer in American democracy, and I believe that there are few callings to rival that of public service in our society. . . . I also believe that there is no finer meeting place for our nation than the United States House of Representatives,” Mineta said as he announced his resignation in front of the San Jose house where he was born 63 years ago, in the front bedroom.

Looking back over two decades in Congress, Mineta estimated that he had gladly escorted more than 12,000 visiting constituents to lunch, walked them through a House gallery tour and then posed for a photograph on the House steps. He has helped write laws that built airports, transit systems and highways across the nation. He has overseen the passage of Japanese American redress.

It was just time to go, he said. “Part of the challenge and responsibility of public service is to know when to turn back the mandate of the people to the people--even though it may not be the time we normally set aside for elections,” he said. “For me, this is that time.”

Mineta’s midterm departure could tighten the GOP’s grip on the House, where Republicans outnumber Democrats 233 to 201, with one Independent. Although the Democrats hold some hope of wresting back control of the chamber they ran for 40 years, three in their ranks have switched parties in the past year and a fourth--Ray Thornton of Arizona--announced that he will not seek reelection.

Under California law, Gov. Pete Wilson has 14 days from the resignation date to call a special election, which must then be held in 112 to 119 days. But Democratic leaders seemed confident that the party would retain the seat. Mineta’s San Jose district, though slightly more conservative than the liberal Bay Area, has remained solidly Democratic, reelecting the veteran congressman with 60% of the vote in 1994.

“Make no mistake, California’s 15th Congressional District is a seat that we expect to hold,” said Martin Frost, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, calling Mineta a “conscientious and extraordinarily effective legislator” who “leaves a legacy of Democratic performance.”

Born in San Jose on Nov. 12, 1931, Mineta’s adolescence was abruptly interrupted when his family became among the more than 120,000 Japanese Americans interned after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He was 10 when he was sent to a camp in Wyoming.

“Some say the internment was for our own good,” Mineta once said. “But even as a boy of 10, I could see the machine guns and the barbed wire faced inward.”

They spent four years there, lost their home and his father’s insurance business. The memory of such governmental callousness never left him when he began what would be three decades of public service, first on the San Jose City Council, then as mayor and finally in the House of Representatives.

He was one of the leaders of the post-Watergate class of Democrats who prompted reform in the House. His assignment on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee made up in influence what it lacked in glitz, authorizing billions in transportation projects, and overseeing major environmental legislation such as the Clean Water Act and Superfund.

“He has been a great friend to the environment and his leaving creates a vacuum that will be hard to fill, particularly in these times when the environment needs all of its friends,” said Debbie Sease, legislative director of the Sierra Club in Washington.

During all but the last of his 11 terms, Mineta’s party has never been out of power. He rose to chairman of the Transportation Committee in 1993 but lost the post when the GOP swept the majority in January.