McDermott Is Known as a Liberal Who Plays Hardball

Neither his critics nor his admirers are surprised to find Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) in the middle of the furor over the tapes of an intercepted telephone conversation involving the ethics case against House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Both those who agree and disagree with McDermott find common ground on one point: the outspoken Seattle liberal is ever-ready to play hardball when fighting for what he deems a just cause.

It matters not whether McDermott’s antagonist is the president of the United States--as he demonstrated during the debate over the Clinton administration’s ill-fated health care plan--the speaker of the House or powerful congressional committee chairmen.

“He’s not a team player,” said one veteran Washington lobbyist.

For two years, McDermott has been the Georgia Republican’s most severe critic on the House Ethics Committee. But now McDermott’s actions have been called into question.

McDermott, a psychiatrist, was publicly named by a Florida couple on Monday afternoon as the recipient of a possibly illegal tape recording that they had made of Gingrich discussing strategy on the telephone with allies over how to combat the ethics charges against him.

McDermott--privately suspected by GOP leaders as the culprit when the controversy first surfaced last Friday--has steadfastly declined to comment on the issue.

Some Republicans, meanwhile, are calling on him to resign his House seat. At the least, he could well face an ethics inquiry himself.

When McDermott, 60, arrived here as a House freshmen in 1989, he already was a practiced politician, having served 14 years in both houses of the Washington legislature.

In Congress, McDermott embraced health care reform as a specialty. In 1993, he spurned overtures from the new Clinton White House to serve as the administration’s coordinator of the war on AIDS so that he could promote his cherished, government-run “single-payer” health care system, which quickly became a rival to the president’s own health care reform agenda.

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In the ensuing months of heated contention, McDermott angered fellow Democrats on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Even after it became increasingly likely that Congress might not enact any reform measures, McDermott refused to settle for less, as most Democrats eventually and begrudgingly were willing to do.

“He would have compromised,” one McDermott ally insisted Monday evening. “But the problem was, you had an administration that was so convinced that it had come up with the most wonderful health care proposal in the world that they chose to ignore him and his group--and assumed that they would all fall in line. Well, they didn’t.”

In a 1994 White House meeting, McDermott told the president and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton that he and his allies would vote against the administration’s plan unless it guaranteed universal coverage and removed all financial barriers to health insurance.

Later that same year--when Rep. Sam Gibbons (D-Fla.), then acting Ways and Means Committee chairman, stitched together a compromise plan in a last-ditch effort to salvage some modicum of health care reform--McDermott denounced the plan as “a special interest smorgasbord with the insurance industry as the main glutton.”

One White House health care aide, recalling those days, said of McDermott: “He likes to be the focus of attention, clearly. He doesn’t like to be taken for granted. His attitude was: ‘If you do, I’ll show you that I can create problems for you.’ He just takes a lot of care and feeding.”

But the aide also attributed McDermott’s behavior to his passion for the underdog, adding: “I’ve never known him to be dishonest. He tells you he’s going to screw you. . . . But he was never overly behind the scenes.”

McDermott was born in Chicago and remains a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan 30 years after moving to Seattle. He also served a stint in the Navy, serving in Long Beach.

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His political career includes several failed runs for governor in Washington state. In 1987, McDermott quit the state Senate and signed up for a three-year stint as a U.S. Foreign Service psychiatrist based in Zaire. But when Washington’s 7th congressional seat opened, McDermott returned home and was elected.

He served as chairman of the House Ethics Committee until the GOP took control of Congress in 1995. Republicans were especially antagonized by his public criticism of the panel last year for what he considered its dilatory tactics.