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South Carolina U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy bowing out of Congress
Gowdy, chair of the House Oversight Committee, won’t seek re-election in 2018
WASHINGTON (CNN) — U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who drew national attention for leading a congressional investigation into the 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya, has announced he is retiring from Congress after four terms.
U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina
In a January 31 statement announcing his departure, Gowdy, a former federal and state prosecutor, said he planned to return to work in the criminal justice system, although he gave no specifics.
“Whatever skills I may have are better utilized in a courtroom than in Congress, and I enjoy our justice system more than our political system,” the Republican lawmaker said in his statement. “As I look back on my career, it is the jobs that both seek and reward fairness that are most rewarding.”
“The book of Ecclesiastes teaches us there is a time and a season for all things. There is a time to start and a time to end. There is a time to come and a time to go. This is the right time, for me, to leave politics and return to the justice system.”
Gowdy, who was named chairman of the House Oversight Committee last summer, becomes the eighth Republican committee chair overall, and the sixth Southern chair, to forgo a re-election bid this year.
His election will open up a seat in South Carolina’s 4th District, in metro Greenville-Spartanburg. The district is solidly Republican, so Gowdy’s successor is likely to be picked in the June primary. Filing for office begins March 30.
Gowdy, 53, was elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010. He quickly rose to prominence after former House Speaker John Boehner appointed him to head a special investigative committee that looked into a terror attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead.
The most lasting impact from that investigation was the disclosure that than-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had used a private email server during her tenure at the State Department, an issue which dogged her throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.
Gowdy joins a growing list of Southern House committee chairs who are leaving Congress, which includes Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chair of the Financial Services Committee; Diane Black of Tennessee, chair of the House Budget Committee, who is running for governor; Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chair of the House Judiciary Committee; Joe Barton of Texas, chair of the House Energy Commitee; and Gregg Harper of Mississippi, chair of the House Administration Committee.
So far, 15 Southern House Republicans have announced they won’t seek re-election in 2018, including six from Texas and two each from Tennessee and Florida. Only two Southern Democrats aren’t running, both in Texas.
South Carolina U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney named Trump’s budget chief
Mulvaney opposed Boehner, led the charge against 2013 bi-partisan budget deal
♦By Rich Shumate, Chicken Fried Politics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, an ardent proponent of deep cuts in federal spending, is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the the Office of Management and Budget.
U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-SC
Should Mulvaney be confirmed by the Senate, a special election will be triggered in the Palmetto State’s 5th District, which Mulvaney has represented since 2011. The district, which covers the north-central part of the state, is unlikely to change hands, as Mulvaney carried it by 20 points in the November election.
In a December 17 statement announcing his selection of Mulvaney, Trump called him “a very high-energy leader with deep convictions for how to responsibly manage our nation’s finances and save our country from drowning in red ink.”
“With Mick at the head of OMB, my administration is going to make smart choices about America’s budget, bring new accountability to our federal government, and renew the American taxpayer’s trust in how their money is spent,” Trump said.
In the same statement, Mulvaney said the new administration “will restore budgetary and fiscal sanity back in Washington after eight years of an out-of-control, tax-and-spend financial agenda.”
“Each day, families across our nation make disciplined choices about how to spend their hard earned money, and the federal government should exercise the same discretion that hardworking Americans do every day,” Mulvaney said.
Mulvaney, 49, from Lancaster, was elected to the House in the Tea Party wave of 2010, defeating former Democratic U.S. Rep. John Spratt, who had held the 5th District seat for 28 years.
Mulvaney is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers who have often been at odds with their own GOP leadership. In 2013, he refused to support the re-election of John Boehner as House speaker, and later that year, he also opposed a bi-partisan budget deal hammered out by congressional leaders that was designed to prevent a government shutdown.
In 2015, Mulvaney endorsed one of Trump’s presidential rivals, U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. But after Paul dropped out of the race, he switched his support to Trump.
Mulvaney is the second South Carolinian named to a major post in the incoming Trump administration. Governor Nikki Haley has been nominated to be the ambassador to the United Nations.
Ted Cruz drops out of presidential race after Indiana loss
Departure of the last Southerner in the White House contest hands nomination to Donald Trump
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
INDIANAPOLIS (CFP) — After a crushing loss to Donald Trump in the Indiana primary, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, ending a 13-month quest for the nation’s highest office.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz
“From the beginning, I’ve said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory. Tonight, I’m sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed,” Cruz told incredulous supporters in Indianapolis after the May 3 vote. “Together, we left it all on the field in Indiana. We gave it everything we’ve got, but the voters chose another path.”
Spectators in the audience shouted “No!” as it became clear that Cruz would bow out of the race.
Cruz was the last of the 10 Southerners still in the presidential contest, a field that one point included nine Republicans and one Democrat from the region. His departure came after losing to Trump by 16 points in Indiana and getting shut out in the hunt for delegates.
Trump’s win in the Hoosier State extinguished any hope of denying him a majority of the delegates to this summer’s Republican National Convention.
Cruz, 45, is in his first term representing the Lone Star State. He ran for president hoping to harness the support of religious conservatives and Tea Party forces that had carried him to the Senate.
Cruz won the first presidential contest, narrowly defeating Trump in Iowa. However, Cruz struggled to find traction with his base in the face of the Trump phenomenon. That was particularly true in the South, an evangelical-heavy region where he won just two states, Texas and Oklahoma.
As the field began to dwindle, Cruz tried to position himself as the alternative to stop Trump, which worked in early April with a victory in Wisconsin. But then Trump rolled through New York and several Northeastern states, giving him a delegate lead that became insurmountable after Cruz’s loss in Indiana.
Cruz was not helped by his deep unpopularity with his colleagues in Congress, one of whom, former House Speaker John Boehner, described him as “Lucifer in the flesh.” But Cruz wore their opprobrium as a badge of honor, saying it proved he was a genuine outsider.
U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster’s bid for speaker crushed by Paul Ryan wave
Webster received only nine votes, eight from his fellow Southerners
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — Florida U.S Rep. Daniel Webster’s longshot bid for House speaker has come up short — 227 votes short, to be exact.
U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster
Webster, a Winter Haven Republican, garnered just nine votes in the October 29 vote, which saw the rise of U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin into the top leadership spot.
Ryan received support from 236 of the chamber’s 247 Republicans. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, received support from 184 out of the 188 Democrats.
Webster, 66, launched his campaign for speaker September 28, after former House Speaker John Boehner stepped down amid a rebellion by conservatives in the GOP caucus.
Initially, members of the House Freedom Caucus–made up of the House’s most conservative members–endorsed Webster, a former speaker of the state House in Florida. However, after Ryan entered the race, that support began to melt away.
Of the 38 Freedom Caucus members, only six stuck with Webster on the final vote.
Among the nine House members who supported Webster, eight were Southerners: Dave Brat of Virginia; Curt Clawson, Bill Posey and Ted Yoho of Florida; Louie Gohmert and Randy Weber of Texas; Walter Jones of North Carolina; and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster enters contest for House speaker
Florida Republican calls for decentralizing power, empowering backbenchers
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida has announced he will run for House speaker to replace outgoing Speaker John Boehner on a platform of decentralizing the GOP leadership’s control of the House agenda by pushing down “the pyramid of power.”
U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster
“What I want to see is a principle-based, member-driven Congress,” Webster said in a September 28 appearance on Fox News where he announced his candidacy. “We don’t have that now. I’d like to have us have it.”
“We can show ourselves as leaders by opening up the process, by allowing lots of debate and lots of amendments and lost of opportunities for members,” he said.
Webster, 66, from Winter Haven in Central Florida, is serving his third term in the House. Prior to his service in Congress, Webster served 28 years in the Florida legislature and was state House speaker from 1996 to 1998.
Webster is running to replace Speaker John Boehner, who announced September 25 that he was stepping down amid conflict within the Republican House conference between Boehner’s allies and conservative backbench critics.
Earlier this year, Webster ran against Boehner in an unsuccessful attempt to bounce him from the speaker’s chair. Afterward, Boehner removed Webster from the powerful House Rules Committee.
Conservative critics of Boehner have complained about attempts to punish members who defied the House GOP leadership.
Webster will face one of those leaders, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, in the race for speaker.
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