Boehner’s deft moves jolt critics

House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) swift action in assembling a handpicked leadership team has insulated him and others on the ticket from serious challenges, but the move has rankled some conservatives who consider it heavy-handed after a punishing election for Republicans.

House Republicans will hold leadership elections Wednesday. Boehner’s actions are expected to solidify his power and spare him a messy leadership fight after predictions were made earlier this year that he could have faced a strong challenge due to GOP losses.

{mosads}But conservatives’ lingering resentment led to Rep. Dan Lungren’s (R-Calif.) decision, as reported by The Hill late last week, to challenge Boehner for the top House GOP post.

Lungren, who lost a four-way race for the conference chairmanship in 2006, is unlikely to mount a formidable challenge. Instead, his candidacy is viewed as a shot across Boehner’s bow and a sign that the top leader does not have the full support of his conference.

Lungren has proposed a three-hour closed-door meeting devoted to the election of the Republican leader. The session will give rank-and-file lawmakers a chance to air grievances and lay out their ideas about rebuilding the GOP brand and communicating with voters.

In order to suspend the rules of “regular order” to have this proposed discussion, a majority of the conference must agree to do so.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who narrowly lost his bid for conference chairman in 2006, said he thinks the conference is generally comfortable with Boehner, someone he called a “conservative with moderate edges.” Still, he said, Boehner’s lightning-speed maneuvers after the election to back would-be and former challengers may come back to bite him down the road.

“Most people want to go back home and say we had a pretty good debate, we had some challenged races, but the reality is there are no candidates out there,” Kingston said.

“I think the slate approach can hurt in the long run,” he continued. “People tend to remember these things.”

The Wednesday after the election, Boehner openly announced his support for Indiana Rep. Mike Pence for chairman of the GOP conference and Texas Rep. Pete Sessions for chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). He also publicly backed Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.) for vice chairwoman of the conference. More recently, according to GOP sources, Boehner sent word to K Street that he also is behind Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.), who is facing a challenge from Rep. Michael Burgess (Texas).

Team Boehner continues to deny the existence of a “slate” of candidates.

“There is no quote-unquote ‘slate,’ ” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel. “Mr. Boehner has made his preferences known in certain races in order to get the most effective leadership team possible.”

Most GOP aides privately acknowledge that any difference between the concept of a slate and a Boehner-backed set of candidates is a matter of semantics.

“People who don’t like it call it a ‘slate,’ ” said one Republican aide. “People who are on it deny its existence.”

Boehner is spending most of his political capital supporting Sessions’s attempt to unseat Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, who currently runs the NRCC and wants another two years on the job.

Boehner and Cole have tangled throughout the last two years over how best to manage the party’s reelection efforts during a toxic climate for Republicans at the national level.

Even though the party was punished at the polls, Cole supporters argue that their candidate, a longtime party operative at the local, state and national levels, kept the losses to a minimum and exceeded expectations of what some predicted would turn out to be a 30-to-40-seat bloodbath.

In his bid to save his chairmanship, Cole is furiously calling members to seek their support. His supporters argue that Boehner should not be able to hand-select all of the members of the leadership team and deny rank-and-file members the right to elect whom they want.

{mospagebreak}Supporters also argue that Cole should not be punished for the bruising defeats while Boehner walks away unscathed.

“There’s a feeling that Boehner hasn’t accepted a lot of responsibility for what happened last Tuesday,” said a source close to the Cole operation. “He’s tried to dump most of that responsibility on Tom Cole when he was in charge of setting the Republicans’ agenda. Boehner’s trying to wash his hands of it.”

After the election, Reps. Roy Blunt (Mo.) and Adam Putnam (Fla.) stepped down from their respective positions of minority whip and GOP conference chairman. That move allowed Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, who has the votes to launch a serious challenge to Boehner, to move up to the key whip post instead of going for the top spot. Boehner backed Cantor and encouraged Pence to run for the conference chairmanship when one of Cantor’s close allies, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Texas), appeared poised to take over for Putnam in the conference job.

{mosads}Hensarling, who chaired the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), reacted by endorsing Pence, a friend who also served as RSC chairman before him. Hensarling accepted his fate, but others, such as Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (Ga.), were fuming about Pence’s decision to join the Boehner slate and elbow out Hensarling, his fellow conservative, according to several GOP sources on and off Capitol Hill.

(Pence had previously told Hensarling he had no plans to run. That changed after Pence received a call from Boehner the day after the election.)

Cole may have a tough time translating any animosity about the slate into votes in his race against Sessions, whom he beat by roughly 20 votes in 2006. Sessions has a lot of friends in the conference and will likely win the support of the large Texas delegation. For instance, both Hensarling and Westmoreland are backing Sessions in the race.

But no one in the Boehner or Sessions camps is claiming victory or discounting Cole’s level of support. One Boehner supporter predicted that the race would wind up being much closer than expected, although he said Sessions would prevail.

Rep. Zach Wamp (Tenn.) said he doesn’t blame Boehner or Cole for the terrible political climate for Republicans this year. Still, he’s backing Sessions because he’s simply closer to him.

“I think that Tom Cole has done a very good job, but I’m a friend of Pete Sessions,” Wamp said. “I supported him when he ran before. A lot of these things come down to relationships … I think it will be pretty close. It’s a secret ballot. You never know on these things.”

Most likely, Cole will benefit from the support of a majority of the freshmen he helped elect.
Rep.-elect Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), the current Colorado secretary of state who is replacing Rep. Tom Tancredo (R), said he’s supporting Cole.

“He came out here to help me during the general election,” Coffman said. “He called me and made a legitimate case that given the circumstances, we didn’t do that badly.

“Boehner sent me an e-mail seeking my support, but I didn’t get to read it until after he called me. When we talked, he didn’t mention it. It was more like he was just touching base.”

Mike Soraghan contributed to this article.