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Texas: Seventeenth District Rep. Charles Stenholm (D) Last Updated July 14, 2003
West from Fort Worth, the West Texas plains stretch miles beyond the horizon, thousands and thousands of acres of rolling grazing land punctuated occasionally by oases of irrigated farmland (often in circles that show the reach of the sprinklers). This is primarily cattle country, with ranches specializing in Angora goats and sheep and exotic animals like ostriches, emus and aoudad sheep; there are cotton fields and pecan trees and mesquite, and many oil wells. Scurry County, far west of Fort Worth, is said to be the number one oil-producing county in the United States. On the interstate going west from Fort Worth, settlements start thinning out quickly. Before long, you are on open plains, with enormous skies and no people in sight: parched country in the drought of 2000. Then in the distance is a good-sized town, an oasis of activity. The largest towns here are Abilene and San Angelo; at Dyess Air Force Base near Abilene are stationed some of the nation's B-1 bombers, while Goodfellow Air Force Base near San Angelo houses electronic intelligence operations training and advanced imagery training. The communities here maintain their traditions and keep close to nature: Sweetwater in Nolan County has an annual Rattlesnake Roundup; Olney in Young County stages a One-Armed Dove Hunt. The local congressman's website describes the area: "The people of West Central Texas are independent, proud, good-natured, religious and family-oriented. In many of the smaller communities activities still center around local church and school events. From a political perspective, the region maintains a conservative outlook." The biggest problem here is water: the aquifers are at risk of being drained, and local communities have been clearing brush to improve the water flow and seeding clouds to get more rain. The 17th Congressional District takes up much of this "God's country," starting a few miles from Fort Worth and including 35 whole counties and most of another and extending westward almost to New Mexico. Settled by Confederate veterans suspicious of Eastern bankers and Yankee businessmen, this was one of the Democratic heartlands of America up through the 1970s. Since then it has become Republican, at first at the top of the ticket, then going farther down. In 2000 it cast 72% of its votes for George W. Bush. There is a growing Hispanic population, 20% in 2000, but that has not perceptibly tipped the district toward Democrats. The congressman from the 17th District is Charles Stenholm, one of several conservative Texas Democrats elected in 1978, and the only one still in the House; no other Democrat represents a district which cast a higher percentage of its votes for George W. Bush in 2000. Stenholm is a farmer from a small town settled by Swedes near Abilene; he graduated and received a masters degree at Texas Tech University. He returned to farm the family land and headed the Rolling Plains Cotton Growers Association and the Stamford Electric Cooperative. Stenholm became a Democrat because in the 1970 Senate race Lloyd Bentsen was interested in his issues and the senior George Bush wasn't. In 1978, when 32-year incumbent Omar Burleson retired, Stenholm ran for the seat and easily won. In the House, Stenholm and Phil Gramm were leaders of the "Boll Weevils," backing the 1981 Reagan budget and tax cuts. He threatened momentarily to run against Speaker Tip O'Neill in January 1985, but desisted when conservatives were promised more attention. His voting record is relatively conservative, at about the center of the House. In the 1980s and early 1990s Stenholm was the lead conservative Democrat on budget issues, as head of the Conservative Democratic Forum and on the Budget Committee. But that role faded as Republican leaders started viewing Stenholm as a conservative talker but a partisan Democratic doer, and the spotlight passed to other members of the Democratic Blue Dogs. He was one of five Democrats who voted to impeach Bill Clinton. But he has stood with Democrats on tax issues. House Democratic leaders let Stenholm and other Blue Dogs take the lead in arguing against the Bush income tax cut in March 2001. Later he opposed making the tax cut permanent and called for retaining the estate tax on estates over $4 million. In 1997 he became ranking Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, just after the Republicans had passed the Freedom to Farm Act, which purported to phase out farm subsidies. Stenholm argued that that bill was the product of Speaker Newt Gingrich, not the Agriculture Committee, and that it was based on the assumption--a faulty one, he says--that American farmers would be able to sell surplus production on the world market. He pointed out that the European Union pays $55 billion yearly in subsidies to farmers and that, after farm prices collapsed in 1998, Congress started voting roughly half that yearly in "disaster relief" to farmers, and that government payments amount to one-third to one-half of net farm income. Starting in 1999 the committee chairman was Larry Combest, from the next-door 19th District; these districts are both big producers of cotton, historically a heavily subsidized crop. In 2001 the farm bill was up for reauthorization, and the political stars were in alignment for a return to subsidies. In 1996 the House bill had been a project of the Republican leadership and the chairman and ranking members of the Senate Agriculture Committee were from Vermont and Indiana, states with no interest in subsidized crops. In June 2001, when Democrats took over the Senate, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee was Tom Harkin of Iowa, with much historically subsidized corn and wheat. Combest and Stenholm worked together to shape the House bill, just as they worked together to open up China to U.S. farm exports. Some $79 billion was set aside for 10 years of farm programs in the 2001 budget resolution, and Stenholm in August hoped for passage by December, before that number might be reduced in a new budget resolution--another reason, Stenholm said, he opposed the Bush tax cut. Markup was scheduled for the week of September 10, and had to be put off. But by October it had passed the committee nearly unanimously and was ready for the floor. There was something for almost everyone: resurrection of the cotton, rice, corn, wheat, soybeans, honey, wool and mohair programs; increased food stamps for "the nutrition community"; $12 billion more in land conservation programs, to please environmentalists; a new peanut program to buy up peanut quotas and pay off peanut farmers. Left out, at the insistence of the Republican leadership, was the Northeast Dairy Compact, which expired September 30. Warnings from the Bush administration that the bill was too expensive were brushed aside; Stenholm said that the administration needed votes from farm bill supporters to pass trade promotion authority (he himself was persuaded to vote for that only after a phone call from George W. Bush). The bill passed by a 291-120 vote. It took Harkin longer to get a bill through the Senate, and it had somewhat different provisions. Eventually the differences were hammered out in conference, and a generous new farm act was passed in May 2002. Few in the Bush administration liked the bill, which expanded government programs; but with two Texans in charge of the bill in the House, Bush had little choice but to sign it. It might not have happened: in November 2002, one week after the election, Combest announced he was resigning, effective May 2003, for personal reason; if he had done that two years before, the chairman would have been Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, from a district with no significant subsidized crops. Stenholm then took to defending the bill. In August 2002 he opposed the Bush plan to tap farm bill funds for drought relief. In December 2002 he started working to make sure appropriators would not impose payment limitations. Since 1995 Stenholm has been working to change Social Security by instituting individual investment accounts. In July 2001 he and his partner on this issue, Jim Kolbe, introduced a bill with individual investment accounts and with cuts in the guaranteed benefit, especially for those with high incomes, an increase in the level of earnings subject to FICA tax, a reduction in COLAs, an accelerated schedule for raising the retirement age and reductions in benefits in line with increases in life expectancy. Opponents of individual accounts said this showed that they were too costly; Stenholm and Kolbe said they were putting their proposal forward for discussion. Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, a longtime opponent of individual accounts, immediately opposed it; so did Speaker Dennis Hastert, who opposed increasing taxes and reducing benefits. In May 2002 Stenholm conceded that the 107th Congress wouldn't act; in December 2002 he urged action in the 108th and the next month took comfort in the fact that George W. Bush took two sentences in his State of the Union speech to plug Social Security changes, one more than he had before. Stenholm pointed to the success in 2002 of candidates who had actively backed individual investment accounts--Elizabeth Dole, Lindsey Graham, John Sununu, Wayne Allard, Jim DeMint, all Republicans. In early 2003 it seemed unlikely that the issue would be acted on in the 108th Congress, and that it could be passed only with Republican and a very few Democratic votes. But Stenholm promised to persist. "We can either make some tough choices today to honestly deal with the challenges facing Social Security, or we can leave a fiscal time bomb for future generations." Far more quixotic is another Stenholm proposal, advanced in January 2003: a constitutional amendment setting House terms at four years. Stenholm's relationship with the Democratic leadership has varied--not at all close in the early 1980s, much closer in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In December 1994 he tried to get into the leadership himself when he ran for minority whip; predictably, he lost to the far more liberal David Bonior 145-60. There have been far fewer conservative Democrats in the Caucus when the party has been in the minority than when it was the majority. At the same time, there has been no challenge in the Caucus to his ranking position on Agriculture; he produces bills that most Democrats like, and most committee Democrats are pretty conservative anyway. In 2001 he supported Steny Hoyer in his unsuccessful race against Nancy Pelosi for minority whip. Unlike his Texas colleague Ralph Hall, Stenholm in 2002 flatly refused to pledge that he would vote for the most conservative candidate for speaker if his vote made the difference in which party organized the House. But when the roll was first called in January 2003, he, like Hall and Ken Lucas, voted "present" for speaker. When Stenholm first ran for Congress in 1978, the Democratic party label was still a political asset in the 17th District. By the middle 1990s it had become a political liability. In 1994 he won by only 54%-46%, far less than his previous majorities. In 1996, Republican Rudy Izzard, a dentist and former San Angelo councilman, carried Abilene and eight other counties and Stenholm won by only 52%-47%. In 1998 Izzard ran again. Stenholm argued that Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey wanted to defeat him because they opposed the needs of agriculture. Stenholm won 54%-45%. In 2000, running against a former judge who moved into the district from North Dallas, Stenholm won with a solid 59%-35%. The 2001 redistricting added most of San Angelo's Tom Green County; this raised the Bush 2000 percentage in the district from 70% to 72%. In 2002 his Republican opponent was Rob Beckham, a broker and former Abilene Councilman. Stenholm emphasized his position on the Agriculture Committee and his conservative stands on many issues; he ran an ad showing a photo of him with George W. Bush. This was a race that the national Republicans, perhaps unwisely, did not target. The difference may have been made by the fact that Stenholm spent $1.5 million and Beckham $472,000. Stenholm won by only 51%-47%, a margin fractionally narrower than in 1996. Beckham carried the counties containing the district's two biggest cities, Abilene and San Angelo, which cast 33% of the district's votes; he also carried three of the new rural counties and four that Stenholm had previously represented. This is likely to be a seriously contested district in 2004; by April 2003, Beckham and Russell Gill, a Desert Storm fighter pilot, had already announced their intentions to run. Stenholm's seat will become even more precarious if the Texas legislature, now controlled by Republicans, adopts a new redistricting plan for the 2004 election. In any new territory--especially any in the fast-growing counties at the edge of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex--Stenholm would be at a disadvantage.
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