With Democratic Control of Senate, Bingaman May Take Over for Domenici

 

November 9, 2006

By Michael Coleman
Copyright © 2006 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Washington Bureau

    Tuesday's election altered the congressional clout of New Mexico's House members and put Rep. Tom Udall, a Democrat, in the majority for the first time in his career.
    Democrats captured at least 27 seats in the House on Tuesday, meaning they will control the chamber when the 110th Congress convenes in January.
    Udall and New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce, a Republican, won re-election, but the outcome of Republican Rep. Heather Wilson's race in the Albuquerque-based 1st Congressional District remained unclear Wednesday.
    Udall, first elected to Congress in 1998, said he looks forward to influencing the Democratic agenda, especially on issues of energy independence and the environment.
    "It feels great," Udall said. "I'm excited. Setting the agenda is a very important function and that's what this victory means."
    Control of the Senate went to the Democrats on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press, with the Virginia Senate race between Republican incumbent George Allen and Democrat Jim Webb called for Webb.
    With a Democratic majority in the Senate, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., will lose his chairmanship of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. But he will most likely pass the gavel to Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a fellow New Mexican and the ranking Democrat on the same committee.
    Bingaman briefly chaired the committee in 2001, after then-Sen. Jim Jeffords abandoned the Republican Party and gave control of the Senate to Democrats. But Republicans took the Senate back the following year and gave Domenici the chairmanship of the energy panel. He's held the gavel since.
    "I think whatever the case may be, we'll be able to work together and get something done and prove bipartisanship works," Domenici said Wednesday before the Virginia race outcome was known.
    With Democrats in control of the House, Udall is expected to become chairman of one of the following House Resources subcommittees: forests, national parks, or energy and water.
    Pearce chairs the national parks subcommittee, but he will have to relinquish it, possibly to Udall.
    Pearce, elected to a third consecutive term in conservative southern New Mexico, was sanguine about his soon-to-be diminished role in the House and on the House resources committee. He said when he chaired the parks subcommittee he worked with Democrats and expects them to do the same.
    "It's a little bigger challenge not being in the majority ... but I feel like we've already begun to work bipartisanly on the issues," Pearce said.
    As for Wilson, if she retains her seat, Democratic control of the House means she would lose her chairmanship of the House Subcommittee on and Technical and Tactical Intelligence, under the House Intelligence Committee.
    The House election suddenly makes Peter Visclosky, D-Indiana, one of the most important members of Congress for New Mexicans. Visclosky will take over chairmanship of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee— one of two congressional committee's responsible for $4 billion in annual Department of Energy spending in the state.
    In the past, Visclosky has been critical of spending on nuclear weapons design work— a viewpoint he shared with the Republican he is replacing, David Hobson, R-Ohio.
    With the Senate going Democratic, Domenici would likely be replaced as chair of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee by Nevada's Harry Reid, the current ranking Democrat. Reid's most notable stand on Energy Department issues is his staunch opposition to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site in his home state.

    Journal staff writer John Fleck contributed to this report.

 

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