Rep. Waters to Chair House Black Caucus

Rep. Maxine Waters, the Los Angeles lawmaker whose outrage over alleged links between the CIA and crack cocaine helped rocket the issue into the national spotlight, has been elected to chair the influential Congressional Black Caucus next year.

Known as an outspoken advocate for the poor and sometimes stingingly plain-spoken, Waters is only the third woman to chair the 39-member coalition of African American lawmakers whose collective voices have given them sway in Congress beyond their numbers.

Also elected Thursday to the House Democratic leadership as vice chair of the Steering Committee, the three-term Los Angeles Democrat will occupy two high-profile posts, providing her an instant national platform and giving the Californian a greater voice and negotiating power in Congress.

“In six years of being here--if I can just toot a little bit--I have been catapulted into leadership and elected to chair the black caucus, a combination that gives me the opportunity to be an advocate on behalf of people who have been excluded, who have not had power in the halls of Congress,” said Waters, 58, on Thursday.

After intense lobbying at a closed caucus meeting Wednesday night, Waters edged out Louisiana Democratic Rep. Bill Jefferson by a handful of votes--no one would say exactly how many. To present a united front, the caucus voted afterward to make her selection unanimous.

But behind the scenes there were deep divisions carefully concealed to avoid anything but the appearance of unity. Even one of Waters’ political arch-rivals, Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, had only this to say of her victory: “Congratulations.”

One Hill staffer grumbled, insisting on anonymity: “Maxine throws rocks and pounds her fists. She holds demonstrations in front of the cameras while others are working quietly behind the scenes.”

But observers said Waters’ aggressive, press-savvy style and tenacious commitment--the very things her detractors deplore--are what put her over the top.

“She has a great deal of talent and a large following outside the Congress and outside her district,” said outgoing chairman Donald Payne (D-N.J.). “I think her time has come.”

Her election is seen as indicating a desire by black caucus members for bolder, more aggressive leadership in the 105th Congress. And they are very likely to get it. Waters is an outspoken liberal who boasts of her ties to President Clinton but has no compunctions about taking him on. She is known for jumping into congressional dust-ups. Some deridingly call her the “Bob Dornan of the left.”

In 1994, Waters protested Clinton’s Haitian refugee policy and was arrested at the gates of the White House. When Republican Rep. Peter T. King of New York grilled one of Hillary Clinton’s staffers on Whitewater that same year, Waters told him to “shut up.”

The next day, King said that the remark, “even for the gentlelady from California, went to a new low.”

Declaring from his inauguration that she would support the president but would not be part of a “lovefest,” she pressured the administration for a crime bill that addressed the root causes of crime and considered racial bias in death penalty sentencing. She was one of six black caucus members to vote against the president’s bill.

Her legislative career and marriage to former professional football player Sidney Williams--named by Clinton as ambassador to Bermuda--has made the congresswoman financially sound. But her upbringing was poor and indelible--she was one of 13 children raised in a welfare family in St. Louis. As a teenager, she bused tables in a segregated restaurant.

She has been a champion of the disadvantaged ever since, protecting low-income neighborhoods from the loss of banking services as institutions merged and standing against rent hikes in public housing.

Perhaps her greatest celebrity so far came this year when she took the lead in calling for a federal investigation into newspaper reports accusing the Central Intelligence Agency of helping introduce crack cocaine into South-Central Los Angeles.

While Waters furiously denounced the CIA in speeches across the country, it was her colleague, newly elected Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Carson), who invited CIA Director John Deutsch to visit Watts and answer residents’ questions directly.

“Does the shouting and the stone-throwing get in the way of the problem solving?” one critic asked. “We’ll see.”

Since its formation in 1971, the caucus has attempted to leverage benefits for America’s blacks through news conferences and negotiations and even once boycotted President Richard Nixon’s State of the Union address. Past leaders have included California Reps. Julian Dixon (D-Los Angeles) and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, now a Los Angeles County supervisor.

Waters represents California’s 35th Congressional District, which includes Inglewood, Hawthorne, Gardena and part of South-Central Los Angeles.

Although all of the caucus’ members are African American, it is a diverse body with its own internal politics. On issues as varied as gun control, agricultural subsidies and the 1992 crime bill, caucus members have parted ways as they sought to represent districts that range from Southern agricultural areas to urban centers in the North and West.

It will now fall to Waters to keep the group’s 39 members focused. Even before she officially takes the reins, there is behind-the-scenes grumbling over whether her sometimes abrasive style will suit the caucus at a time when the GOP is running both houses of Congress.

But past chairman Kweisi Mfume, now president of the NAACP, called her election “great news.”

“She’s the right person for the caucus at this time in its history,” Mfume said. “People respect her and her enemies fear her.”

Just elected to her fourth term in Congress, Waters takes the helm at a time when several explosive issues confront the black community--most notably California’s Proposition 209 that ended state-run affirmative action programs, and the shocking taped revelations of corporate discrimination in a Texaco board room.

Such events have left many African Americans feeling under assault and prompted Waters to come up with a plan.

“My mission is to use the collective power of the caucus to design solutions to some of these problems we are confronted with,” she said, reciting a three-point agenda she plans to bring to the post:

* To declare a “real war on drugs,” funded in the president’s budget and targeting crack cocaine on urban streets. She said she will continue to probe the CIA-crack allegations as the CIA inspector general conducts its own inquiry.

* To set up a toll-free telephone hotline for complaints while teaching corporate executives how to ferret out racism and end it before lawsuits are filed. Waters predicts that charges of corporate racism will climb as victims draw courage from the Texaco revelations.

* To endorse a business development initiative to stimulate small and minority enterprises.

Times staff writer Sam Fulwood III contributed to this report.