National
Journal Group
Learn more about our publications and sign up for a free trial.
E-Mail Alerts
Get notified the moment your favorite features are updated.
Need A Reprint?
Click here for details on reprints, permissions and back issues.
Advertise With Us
Details on advertising with National Journal Group -- both online and in print -- can be found in our online media kit.
Go Wireless
Get daily political updates on your handheld computer.
|
Oklahoma: Junior Senator Sen. James Inhofe (R) Last Updated July 15, 2003
James Inhofe (pronounced IN-hoff), Oklahoma's junior senator, is a Republican first elected in 1994. He grew up in Tulsa, served in the Army, and worked in real estate, insurance and aviation. He has for years regularly flown planes and is one of Congress's few certified commercial pilots; he flew around the world following Wiley Post's route and on short notice flew into Texas military bases to check on readiness. He was elected to the Oklahoma House in 1966, at 31, and to the Oklahoma Senate in 1969; he ran for governor in 1974 and lost to David Boren, 64%-36%. In 1976, Inhofe ran for the U.S. House against Jim Jones and lost; from 1979-84, he was mayor of Tulsa. He won the heavily Republican 1st District House seat in 1986, but held it with uninspiring margins. He was hurt by negative publicity about a family business lawsuit (he eventually was awarded $3.6 million) and charges of campaign finance irregularities, leveled often by the liberal-leaning Tulsa World. Inhofe's great achievement in the House was reforming the arcane discharge petition rule. For years, House rules kept secret the names of signers of petitions to discharge bills stuck in committees; members could say they had worked to bring legislation to the floor when they had done just the opposite. That was changed September 28, 1993, and one of the first bills to benefit from the new rules was the aviation liability reform bill, co-sponsored by Inhofe, which limited the liability of small airplane manufacturers in lawsuits resulting from crashes. The discharge petition was also the vehicle for House passage of campaign finance regulation in 2002, a bill Inhofe opposed. Inhofe jumped into the 1994 Senate race when his onetime opponent David Boren, a conservative Democrat who carried not only every county but every precinct in 1990, announced he was retiring to become president of the University of Oklahoma. The Democratic nominee was Dave McCurdy, congressman since 1980 from southwest Oklahoma, chairman of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council. But in Oklahoma in 1994, the Clinton burden was too heavy for even McCurdy to carry. McCurdy had voted for the 1993 Clinton budget and tax package with its original Btu tax and for the 1994 crime bill with its assault weapons ban. Inhofe won by a solid 55%-40%. In the Senate, Inhofe was president of the conservative 11-member freshman class. He was elected to a full six-year term in 1996 over James Boren, David Boren's cousin, by 57%-40%. Inhofe has a very conservative voting record and is not given to backslapping and banter. "I'm more of a maverick. I'm second only to John McCain," he told a reporter in October 2002. "They don't know where I'm going to be coming from. Philosophically, I'm very, very rigid in the things I believe in." He is capable of acerbic comments: He compared Clinton EPA administrator Carol Browner to Tokyo Rose and said her agency used "Gestapo tactics." He can also use sharp tactics. For two years, he stalled the nomination of openly gay James Hormel to be Ambassador to Luxembourg and has said that he will not hire gay staffers. In September 2001, two weeks after the September 11 attacks, he offered the Republican energy bill as an amendment to the defense authorization and threatened to bring it up as an amendment to every bill. For this, Democrats and editorial writers across the country denounced him. Inhofe was trying to get Majority Leader Tom Daschle to schedule floor time for the energy bill; he says he was unphased by the criticism. Inhofe also blocked the confirmation of Robert Bonner as head of Customs Service until he agreed to test contraband detection technology as a substitute for X-ray machines. "I had to play hardball. Everybody screamed and said, 'How can you do this after the tragedy? We need to have him on board.'" In January 2003, Inhofe became chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee; his colleague Don Nickles became chairman of Budget, and so Oklahoma has two Senate committee chairmen for the first time since 1935-36. Inhofe is committed to very different policies from those of his predecessors, Independent Jim Jeffords and Republican Bob Smith. He strongly favors oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and more oil and gas drilling exploration in the United States generally. He strongly opposed the policies of the Clinton administration EPA, arguing that its air-quality standards were based on a dishonest rationale, and called for their delay. He has also argued that the Endangered Species Act has gone too far. "America has adopted an attitude that places more value on the life of a critter than on a human being. We want to protect the Arkansas River shiner, a bait fish in Oklahoma, yet we will allow unborn babies to have their brains sucked out in a partial-birth abortion." On the brownfields bill in April 2001 he got $50 million extra to clean up abandoned gas stations and petroleum sites that are not covered by the Superfund. He hailed the Bush administration policy for reducing emissions. Looking forward to the chairmanship, he struck a conciliatory note in November 2002. "I want to work in a bipartisan fashion to create fiscally responsible policies that are based on sound science and cost-benefit analyses." He called for new concrete goals to reduce emissions, increased research and development, including on renewable energy sources like wind and solar power and on fuel-cell vehicles. But he still wanted to avoid imposing what he sees as undue costs on the economy. Inhofe has also taken an active role on the Armed Services Committee. He has been a strong supporter of missile defense. He was one of the leaders of the successful fight in October 1999 to deny ratification to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Inhofe attacked the Clinton Administration's handling of base closings as dishonest, especially the ''privatization'' of depot bases in electoral-vote-rich California and Texas, rather than transfer of work to bases in Oklahoma, Utah and Georgia. He has worked to maintain at least 50% of Air Force repair work in Air Force bases and has opposed further base closings. When Puerto Ricans called for an end to live-fire amphibious exercises on the island of Vieques, Inhofe called for their continuation and said that if they were stopped the Navy should close its $3 billion Roosevelt Roads base in Puerto Rico. He harshly criticized the Bush administration for agreeing, before September 11, to close the training ranges at Vieques. Inhofe also disagreed with, and was disagreeably surprised by, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's decision in May 2002 to cancel the Army's Crusader cannon, which was to be manufactured in Elgin, Oklahoma, near Lawton, and deployed at nearby Fort Sill. In September 2002, he inserted into the defense authorization $368 million to build a different cannon and a requirement that it be deployed in 2008. "I just flat beat the White House on this thing," he boasted. "If successful, we can end up with an indirect fire cannon system that will meet the Army's needs by 2008 and still be assembled with the same Lawton, Oklahoma-based team and the same technology as Crusader." He also put in $16 million to fund two projects at Vance Air Force Base near Enid, and said that the base was safe as long as Republicans had a majority in the Senate. Inhofe often casts lonely votes. He was one of the few votes against Richard Holbrooke for UN Ambassador, against the May 1997 budget deal and the October 1998 omnibus budget, against the bipartisan Everglades bill. Inhofe has worked with others in the Oklahoma delegation to simplify the land laws applying to the Five Tribes, so that land can be developed and mineral rights exploited more easily. Another pet measure was his provision allowing pilots to appeal a license suspension by the FAA to the National Transportation Safety Board. In 2002, Inhofe came up for reelection. His Democratic opponent was former Governor David Walters, who in October 1993 pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating campaign finance laws in his 1990 campaign; the prosecution dropped eight felony counts. Walters had competition in the primary from businessman Tom Boetcher, who said he would be a drag on the Democratic ticket. The former governor led in the August primary, 49-34%, but was forced into a runoff which he won by the less than overwhelming margin of 57%-43%. Walters argued that he could protect Oklahoma interests better because he would be a less predictable vote; he attacked Inhofe for the cancellation of the Crusader and said he should donate $24,000 he had received from WorldCom contributors to the state teachers' retirement fund. Inhofe said that he had produced a weapon to replace the Crusader and ran ads showing Walters and a Clinton lookalike. Oklahoma voters seem to have a fixed view of Inhofe: the result was almost identical to those in 1994 and 1996. He won statewide 57%-36%, winning big margins in metro Oklahoma City (62%-31%) and metro Tulsa (60%-34%) and winning more narrowly (52%-41%) in the rest of the state.
Recent News Coverage
DC Office State Offices Committees
National Journal Group offers both print and electronic reprint services, as well as permissions for academic use, photocopying and republication. Click here to order, or call us at 877-394-7350. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NEW FEATURE
[ Site Index | Staff | Privacy Policy | E-Mail Alerts ]
[ Reprints And Back Issues | Content Licensing ]
[ Make NationalJournal.com Your Homepage ]
[ About National Journal Group Inc. ]
[ Employment Opportunities ]
Copyright 2013 by National Journal Group Inc.
The Watergate · 600 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20037
202-739-8400 · fax 202-833-8069
NationalJournal.com is an Atlantic Media publication.
