Boss May Be Out of Awkward Ethics Chair

When he became chairman of the House ethics committee, Rep. Joel Hefley took on perhaps the most thankless job in Congress: investigating his colleagues and meting out discipline.

But after issuing three rebukes last year to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, the chamber’s second-ranking Republican, Hefley is fighting to keep the committee gavel that few of his colleagues would want. On Thursday, the Colorado Republican didn’t think he was likely to hold onto it.

“I guess I’m going to get booted,” he said in a radio interview.

The solidly conservative 18-year congressman who voted the party line 92% of the time in 2003 would seem an unlikely Republican rebel.

“If there’s ever been a get-along, go-along guy for the Republicans in the House, it’s been Joel Hefley,” said Robert Loevy, a Colorado College political scientist who has known Hefley for years. “In many ways, you could argue, he was the perfect person to give the ethics committee job -- solid, but with a record of being a plain, down-home guy.”

A Capitol Hill newspaper once listed Hefley, 69, as one of Congress’ most obscure members. But he raised his profile last fall when his committee -- formally known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct -- admonished DeLay three times, including twice in one week, for hardball political tactics that had endeared the Texan to many of his GOP colleagues.

Hefley, the son of an Army soldier, was born in Ardmore, Okla., and moved to Colorado to seek work as a cowboy and ranch hand. He served in the state House from 1977 to 1979, then the state Senate from 1979 to 1986, before winning election to Congress.

His voting record in the House is solidly conservative, and in 1998 he led an unsuccessful effort to void President Clinton’s executive order prohibiting bias against gays in the federal workforce. He said at the time that the measure was aimed at the president’s abuse of executive orders to circumvent Congress.

But he also is a bit of a maverick on spending issues, seeking cuts beyond those favored by many of his Republican colleagues. He has issued “Porker of the Week” awards for what he considers wasteful spending.

Representing a district that is bristling with military bases and is home to the Air Force Academy, he strongly supports missile defense. An aide said Hefley considered among his proudest accomplishments shielding Ft. Carson, his district’s largest employer, from a round of military base closures.

His wife, Lynn, serves in the Colorado state House, representing his old district. They have three daughters and four grandchildren.

A onetime rodeo rider, he has decorated his office with western scenes he has sculpted.

Hefley has been a member of the ethics committee since 1997 and its chairman since 2001. He didn’t relish taking the responsibility of being chairman of the panel, but agreed to do so when asked by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, said Jeff Crank, a former Hefley staffer who is now senior vice president for governmental affairs for the Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce.

“He told me, ‘It’s a little bit like jury duty,’ ” Crank said. “It’s not something you want to do, but when you’re asked to do it, you have an obligation because somebody needs to do it.”

While the committee’s actions against the majority leader angered some of Hefley’s Republican colleagues, some congressional watchdog groups also have been critical of the chairman for failing to pursue ethics complaints more aggressively -- notwithstanding the rebukes of DeLay.

“His record as chair of the Ethics Committee has been to run an ethics committee that has been incredibly permissive about corruption in the House,” said Gary Ruskin, who runs the Congressional Accountability Project.

Some watchdog groups, though, have spoken out against Hefley’s potential ouster.

If Hefley, who serves at the pleasure of the speaker, is replaced, it would follow the GOP-controlled House’s approval earlier this week of a rule change that would make it more difficult for the ethics panel to initiate inquiries.

“The reward for Chairman Hefley’s effort to enforce the House ethics rules apparently is to be fired,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a Washington watchdog group.

If Hefley were replaced, an aide to Hastert said it would be not in retaliation for the committee’s actions, but because House GOP rules limit the terms of membership on the committee. Hefley’s supporters say the speaker has the power to waive the term-limit rule.

Hefley said in an interview Thursday on National Public Radio that the job had been no joy.

“I get a whole lot more guff than I do glory” out of the job, he said.

Hefley’s handling of reports that he might be forced out as chairman provides a glimpse into his persona, said Crank, his former aide.

“People are seeing now the kind of convictions that he has,” Crank said. “It’s not easy to stand down the leadership. But that’s what he’s done. But he’s done it in a polite way. He’s not said any negative words about leadership. He’s just kind of stood firm.”

Hefley has said he believes that the ethics process must be bipartisan. When the House this week approved the rule change that would make it harder for the ethics panel to initiate investigations, he complained that the new rule was drafted by the GOP leadership without consulting his committee.

But he also ended up joining every other Republican in supporting the change, approved on a strictly party-line vote.

Still, Hefley told NPR that he thought his party’s leaders picked the wrong time -- as the first order of business in the new Congress -- to change ethics rules, contending that they handed Democrats an issue to use against Republicans.

But, he added, “it doesn’t serve me well to criticize the leaders of the House. I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

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Times staff writer Mary Curtius contributed to this report.