KEY GOP REPRESENTATIVE STUNS THE HILL WITH HIS QUITTING

…Jason Chaffetz as the Chair of the prestigious House Oversight Committee

 

Did Jason Chaffetz see the writing on the wall as not a good time to run for re-election?

 

One of the most ambitious Republican congressmen in Washington has given his notice that he is leaving the US Congress and will not run for re-election.

 

For Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), his decision has stunned Washington.  Who will replace Chaffetz as Chair of the House Oversight Committee is in question, and the announcement shocked The Hill when he stated that he was leaving Congress after his current term ends.

 

Speaker Paul Ryan said the Chaffetz decision had stunned the House GOP to hold a Saturday conference call.  Ryan (R-WI) said the House GOP was in the process of putting "finishing touches" on another shot at the healthcare bill and he wasn’t told of Chaffetz’s decision until that same evening.  According to an aide, the White House Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, only got a heads-up from the Oversight Chairman the next morning.  Sources on the Oversight panel also said they didn’t see this coming.

 

Chaffetz said he would not run for any office in 2018, which would also take him out of Utah’s Senate race that year. (Chaffetz had previously said he was considering running for the Senate seat.)  But he didn’t rule out a run for the Governor of Utah in 2020, saying he “may run again for public office.”

 

Asked by Utah's KSL Radio if he’d run for governor, Chaffetz just said “maybe.”  “I expect to be involved and engaged in politics. I'm not walking totally away. I want to have a voice out there. I enjoy that part of it,” Chaffetz said.

 

One reason the Chaffetz news was surprising is that he could have stayed on as Oversight Committee chairman through 2020, however, first he would need to be re-elected.

 

The Oversight Panel is one of Washington’s most powerful committees.  If Hillary Clinton had defeated President Trump, Chaffetz was poised to be her lead GOP interrogator. He had vowed to investigate Clinton back in October when it appeared she would win the presidential election. 

 

He is now in the position of largely defending Trump, which perhaps made the Oversight post less attractive for the media-savvy lawmaker.  Chaffetz has had many issues with Trump before he became the new president, so perhaps his leaving shouldn’t be that big of a surprise.

 

When asked what his top priorities were for the rest of his term as chairman, Chaffetz bizarrely highlighted a focus on Utah's Bears Ears National Monument designation made by the Obama administration…..?  But what wasn’t mentioned was any Oversight investigations into Trump or Clinton.  In explaining his decision, Chaffetz repeatedly cited a desire to spend more time with his family in Utah and to return to the private sector.

 

However, based on the problems Chaffetz has been having in his home district, there may be some other issues to support his leaving the congress.

 

First, he preemptively dismissed any speculation that he was stepping down for health reasons, or any GOP leaders’ confidence in his ability to serve as chairman, or his fear that he could lose reelection next year in his solidly red district.

 

The congressman has drawn negative responses in his district and in Congress for aggressively pursuing lines of investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server.  But he also has been sorely criticized for declining to investigate anything related to Trump’s business "conflicts of interest" and his alleged ties to Russia. 

 

He faced a very hostile town hall in February with constituents demanding to know why he wasn’t examining Trump’s business conflicts.  Videos appeared of people in the town hall shouting “Do your job!”  have ricocheted all around social media, and Chaffetz later downplayed the angry protesters as “a paid attempt to bully and intimidate.”  But there is no indication or proof that the protestors were being paid.

Though Chaffetz’s district is unlikely to be a main Democratic target next year, there were signs that the negative headlines about his declining to investigate the Trump administration were taking a serious toll.

 

Kathryn Allen, a long-shot Democratic challenger, has raised nearly $400,000 more than Chaffetz just last month.  The donations have been piling up after Chaffetz had said on CNN that low-income Americans might have to prioritize spending on healthcare “rather than getting that new iPhone.”

 

Chaffetz had also already drawn a primary challenger,  a lawyer named Damian Kidd.  And Evan McMullin, an anti-Trump independent presidential candidate,he drew a significant number of votes away from Trump in Utah.  McMullin has said he’s considering a run in Chaffetz’s district.  But Trump had won Utah with 46% support, compared to Clinton’s 27% and McMullin’s 22%, so it still might be a tough go for McMullin. 

In addition, supporters of the mayor of Provo, UT, John Curtis, had already formed a funding campaign for urging him to run against Chaffetz in the GOP primary. 

 

So, perhaps Chaffetz saw the writing on the wall that this was a good time to: “exit, stage left”.

 

Chaffetz’s departure will eventually set in motion a race to succeed him as the head of the Oversight Committee next year.

 

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who’s best known for leading the select committee investigating the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, he is the most viable contender despite being only 8th  in seniority. 

As it turns out, several members of the Freedom Caucus are more senior members of the Oversight Committee.  But they ran unsuccessfully against Chaffetz for the chair in 2014. The Freedom Caucus currently clashes with the GOP leadership, and they would likely again impede any of their chances of winning one of the most high-profile posts in Congress.

 

Aides to the Oversight Committee Republicans who could be in the running declined to say Wednesday whether they’d run for the post, underlining how unexpected the sudden opening was.

 

Chaffetz insisted he made the decision simply because he’d had enough after spending many nights in the last eight years sleeping on a cot in his congressional office.

 

“I’ve been away from my family for more than 1,500 nights and it’s as simple as a fact that I love my wife and I adore my kids, and you just gotta re-evaluate your life when you’re sleeping on a cot in your office,” said Chaffetz.

 

And you have to re-evaluate your chances at the ballot boxes in today's wacky GOP political arena.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017