He’s the Stickler of the House

On a typically frigid winter’s night in this affluent Milwaukee suburb, about a dozen people braved the cold for a recent town hall meeting with their local congressman. But Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. did not see it as an opportunity for an intimate chat with constituents.

Sensenbrenner, chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, asked anyone who wished to speak to submit a written request. At the scheduled start time, he ascended the podium in the borrowed Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors chambers, then gaveled the meeting to order.

He was separated from the small group by yards of carpeting and a waist-high slatted-wood fence. And when someone spoke out of turn, the 61-year-old Republican grew red-faced and angry, wielding his gavel to rein-in the offender.

Watching Sensenbrenner “sitting up there in that chair, with everybody kept at such a distance when the turnout was so small,” offended jewelry shop owner Rita Hulstedt, 55, a Democrat who came to voice her worries about budget deficits and the Iraq war.

“I thought that was inappropriate,” Hulstedt said after the meeting. “It set the tone of a forbidding nature -- it was: ‘I get to make the rules, you get to speak according to my rules.’ ”

The rules are near-sacred to Sensenbrenner. He prides himself on playing by them, and demands nothing less of others -- including presidents.

Sensenbrenner’s commitment to the causes he believes in was on full display last week, as he pushed through the House a bill aimed at blocking states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

That provision and others in the measure were attacked by some as anti-immigrant, and the bill may stall in the Senate. But Sensenbrenner plans to keep pushing his proposals, saying they are needed to help protect America from another terrorist attack.

Sensenbrenner also has the power to help or hinder White House efforts to enact key revisions to what President Bush in his State of the Union address called an “outdated” immigration system. Sensenbrenner has given every indication that he will be no rubber stamp, saying the president’s plan smacks of rewarding lawbreakers.

His views mean that the House Judiciary Committee looms as a potentially key hurdle for Bush’s immigration plan. Despite decades as a GOP loyalist, Sensenbrenner could find himself thrust into the spotlight as a Republican leader willing to thwart a key aspect of Bush’s domestic agenda.

Until December, when he defied Bush and nearly torpedoed the bill to overhaul the nation’s intelligence-gathering system in ways outlined by the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, Sensenbrenner was best-known nationally for his role in prosecuting President Clinton in the Senate’s 1999 impeachment trial.

His summary of the charges -- “We are here today because President William Jefferson Clinton decided to put himself above the law, not once, not twice, but repeatedly” -- won praise from GOP colleagues.

But the burly Sensenbrenner was lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.” Sensenbrenner looks like a “harried businessman who’s having a heart attack at a steakhouse,” comedian Colin Quinn said. “He looks like he’s about to keel over with his buttered baked potato.”

The ridicule did not faze Sensenbrenner, secure both in his congressional seat and as the scion of a wealthy Wisconsin family that for generations has been influential in the state’s business and philanthropic communities.

He has an estimated personal fortune of more than $10 million. His great-grandfather was an early chief executive of the Kimberly-Clark paper company, and his father and grandfather were also businessmen.

Sensenbrenner chose a different path, focusing on politics before he graduated from high school. Since 1978, he has represented one of the most heavily Republican districts in the nation, a swath of wealthy suburbs and rolling farmland north and west of Milwaukee. It is an area where his family’s name is emblazoned on buildings at college campuses endowed by his great-grandfather.

In Washington, Sensenbrenner has built a reputation as a rock-solid conservative willing to buck party and president on a point of principle, even in the face of near-certain defeat. Considered one of the House’s toughest negotiators, he is also regarded as one of its most prickly members. As far back as 1990, the Almanac of American Politics referred to his “abrasive personality and stickiness over details.”

Privately, Republicans and Democrats who have served on committees with Sensenbrenner describe him as one of the least collegial members on the Hill.

“All I can tell you,” sighed an aide to a Republican senator who requested anonymity when discussing Sensenbrenner, “is that if all Republicans were like him, I couldn’t be a Republican. He is the original angry white man.”

Still, Sensenbrenner surprised Judiciary Committee Democrats after he became chairman in 2001 -- although he had served on the panel for more than 20 years. The man who had never reached out to them as a colleague went out of his way to provide them more staffing and to ensure that hearings included their witnesses.

His actions restored a measure of comity to what had long been one of the most partisan House committees.

In the rough-and-tumble world of Capitol Hill, Sensenbrenner’s sharp tongue and cantankerous nature are effective political tools, said Stuart Roy, former press secretary for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

“The way he operates is to not really care what you think about him,” said Roy. “He uses the porcupine strategy, and it works for him.... When he believes he is right on principle, he is immovable.”

Sensenbrenner almost derailed the intelligence reform bill late last year by insisting it include immigration-related proposals, such as thwarting illegal immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses. He lost that fight, and Sensenbrenner’s hard-edged attitude in closed-door negotiations over the intelligence bill drew sharp criticism, with Republicans and Democrats painting him as obstructionist. In an earlier battle, Sensenbrenner defied the Justice Department, the White House and some House conservatives after the Sept. 11 attacks by insisting on fashioning a bipartisan Patriot Act -- the bill to expand the powers of law enforcement agencies and remove walls between the nation’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the war on terrorism.

Sensenbrenner started out at loggerheads with the Bush administration over the measure. He took offense when he heard from a television news show that the Justice Department was sending the package to the Hill and expected passage within days.

After demanding a draft from then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, Sensenbrenner called House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) with a request.

“I said: ‘Give me a month to let the committee system work,’ ” Sensenbrenner recalled. Hastert agreed.

By all accounts, Sensenbrenner worked hard to reach a consensus on the committee. He had to reconcile the views of conservative Republicans with concerns among Democrats -- and some of the panel’s GOP members -- that parts of the Patriot Act would infringe on civil liberties and the privacy rights of U.S. citizens.

“We ended up crafting a bill where he took compromise versions of amendments proposed by Democrats and incorporated some of them,” said Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-North Hollywood), a longtime committee member.

The panel passed its bill unanimously. Sensenbrenner’s victory, however, was short-lived.

The Senate passed a bill that granted more powers to law enforcement officials, and Sensenbrenner was forced to accept a final product that was closer to that version. Still, he successfully retained “sunset” provisions on clauses that gave the government greater leeway to wiretap and share information among agencies.

Those clauses expire this December, and Sensenbrenner has promised thorough hearings on them.

In this year’s Congress, Sensenbrenner has signaled that he is prepared to chart his own course on immigration reform.

In his State of the Union address Feb. 2, Bush said he intended to push for a program that would at least temporarily legalize the status of millions of workers in this country illegally.

In the House, Republicans are deeply divided over the so-called guest worker program, with a sizable minority arguing that Bush should be cracking down on undocumented immigrants rather than granting what some view as a form of amnesty for those working here illegally.

For now, Sensenbrenner looms on the other side of the issue from Bush. And he makes it clear that pressure from the White House agenda will not sway him.

“I’m at the point in my career where threats don’t have the clout they did my first and second term,” he said during the recent visit to his district. “I just want to do what’s right.”

Groups identified with immigration restriction now consider Sensenbrenner a hero. But he insisted he is not against immigrants -- merely determined to do what he can to keep would-be terrorists from “gaming the system.”

Some advocates for immigrants believe that ultimately, if the White House negotiates respectfully with Sensenbrenner, it may be able to win his backing for a bill that combines a guest worker program with tough law enforcement measures.

“I genuinely believe that he believes these are important national security issues,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative office in Washington.

Murphy has watched and worked with Sensenbrenner for more than two decades. While saying that “on probably 95% of the issues, we are probably polar opposites,” she expressed respect that “he is his own person.”

More than once, Murphy said, Sensenbrenner has seen eye-to-eye with the ACLU on issues of privacy and government power.

“We now vigorously disagree with him on a number of immigration issues,” she said. “But he’s been a longtime advocate of preventing the FBI from spying on 1st Amendment-protected activity.”

She said she had learned “that you mess with him at your peril.”

But, she added, “underneath that brusque manner is a very sensitive human being -- just don’t offend the man, don’t try to usurp the prerogatives.” And “don’t try to change the rules in the middle of the game.”