Frelinghuysen Caught Between Gavel, District, and Trump

Rep. Rod­ney Frel­inghuysen had yet to see a bill signed in­to law as the new chair­man of the House Ap­pro­pri­ations Com­mit­tee, but he was already apo­lo­giz­ing to his col­leagues.

The mea culpa, de­livered to a House Re­pub­lic­an mem­bers-only meet­ing in the Cap­it­ol last week, had noth­ing to do with the power of the purse, the main perk of the com­mit­tee that his more than 20 years in Con­gress fi­nally gave him the seni­or­ity to lead.

In­stead, Frel­inghuysen apo­lo­gized to his col­leagues for his pub­lic and ill-timed dis­missal of Re­pub­lic­ans’ health care re­write the week pri­or. That a top com­mit­tee chair­man would break with lead­er­ship on a crit­ic­al bill was bad enough, even if it was for­giv­able giv­en the unique health care needs in his home state of New Jer­sey.

What really per­turbed his col­leagues was that, without fore­warn­ing lead­er­ship, he is­sued a pub­lic state­ment the day of the vote call­ing the bill “un­ac­cept­able,” even though lead­ers be­lieved they could count on his vote—and after lead­ers asked mem­bers to keep neg­at­ive opin­ions about the bill private. The le­gis­la­tion may well have been doomed be­fore then, but the state­ment was seen as its death knell. More mod­er­ate mem­bers sub­sequently came out against it and it was pulled from the floor.

“There is some dis­gruntle­ment be­cause this was a tough miss for our Re­pub­lic­an ma­jor­ity. It was an em­bar­rass­ing out­come to a sub­stan­tial is­sue that a lot of us talked about in our cam­paigns,” said Rep. Steve Womack, a fel­low ap­pro­pri­at­or. “I think there’s an ex­pect­a­tion around here that if you’re in a key lead­er­ship po­s­i­tion, then when the lead­er­ship of­fers you something … you’ll be there for it.”

Frel­inghuysen’s stance on the health bill il­lus­trates the dif­fi­cult and unique po­s­i­tion he is in, both polit­ic­ally and on mat­ters of policy. In a sense, he could not have come to power at a worse time; he is a North­east­ern, mod­er­ate, Re­pub­lic­an who sup­ports abor­tion rights, in a con­fer­ence that has drif­ted away from him.

What’s more, Demo­crats are tar­get­ing his seat for a 2018 elec­tion pick-up, and con­tro­versy sur­round­ing Pres­id­ent Trump and GOP ef­forts to re­peal Obama­care have en­er­gized lib­er­als, who have been protest­ing at Frel­inghuysen’s dis­trict of­fice de­mand­ing he hold a town hall.

Among his col­leagues, Frel­inghuysen’s state­ment was es­pe­cially strik­ing be­cause in or­der to se­cure his chair­man­ship, he had prom­ised lead­ers and mem­bers of the Ap­pro­pri­ations Com­mit­tee that he would not put his per­son­al polit­ics above the will of the con­fer­ence.

“One of the things we had dis­cussed go­ing in­to this, when he wanted to take the chair­man­ship, was that at the end of the day he un­der­stood that when he was ne­go­ti­at­ing these bills he’d be ne­go­ti­at­ing on be­half of the con­fer­ence, as op­posed to his own philo­sophy,” said Rep. Robert Ad­er­holt, an­oth­er ap­pro­pri­at­or. “He’s in a very dif­fi­cult situ­ation with his dis­trict, no doubt, be­cause his dis­trict is more out of sync with the rest of the con­fer­ence.”

Head­ing in­to an end-of-April dead­line to keep the gov­ern­ment fun­ded, col­leagues are left won­der­ing wheth­er Frel­inghuysen can really bal­ance the polit­ic­al and policy needs of his state with his role as a chair­man, es­pe­cially when shep­herd­ing bills through the House that are sure to in­clude budget cuts and anti-abor­tion lan­guage favored by Trump and the ma­jor­ity of the Re­pub­lic­an Con­fer­ence but not by Frel­inghuysen him­self.

Already, Frel­inghuysen has po­si­tioned him­self in op­pos­i­tion to sev­er­al of Trump’s budget pri­or­it­ies. He told con­stitu­ents last month that he is not in­clined to cut fed­er­al fund­ing for the arts, health re­search, or en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion. He also said he wants a de­tailed plan for a bor­der wall be­fore he agrees to fund it, which could set up a fight with the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Frel­inghuysen de­clined an in­ter­view re­quest. But his com­mit­tee spokes­wo­man, Jen­nifer Hing, stressed that any in­di­vidu­al vote Frel­inghuysen has taken should not be mis­taken for an in­dic­a­tion of how he will run his com­mit­tee.

“As al­ways, the com­mit­tee’s products will re­flect the will of the com­mit­tee, the con­fer­ence and ul­ti­mately, the Con­gress,” Hing said.

Still, rank-and-file mem­bers of the power­ful Re­pub­lic­an Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, which de­cides com­mit­tee chair­man­ships, have dis­cussed wheth­er to call a meet­ing to have Frel­inghuysen ex­plain him­self. But lead­er­ship has been re­luct­ant, for fear of open­ing an­oth­er in­tra­party fight, ac­cord­ing to two mem­bers, speak­ing an­onym­ously to dis­cuss in­tern­al con­fer­ence mat­ters.

In­stead, after the state­ment, lead­ers quietly dis­patched ap­pro­pri­ations car­din­al Rep. Tom Graves to get an ex­plan­a­tion.

“I still stand be­hind him,” Graves said. “Does it stress re­la­tion­ships with him and lead­er­ship? Maybe.”

That will be dif­fi­cult to heal in a busi­ness where re­la­tion­ships are cur­rency as much as policies and cam­paign dona­tions. Now, mem­bers noted, it will be all the harder for Frel­inghuysen to cred­ibly ask mem­bers to take one for the team and vote for his spend­ing bills when they can counter that he him­self didn’t. He’ll have to rely on the same whip team he spurned to rally votes for his bills. Fur­ther­more, mem­bers of the con­ser­vat­ive House Free­dom Caucus are smart­ing as they take the brunt of the blame for the health care bill’s fail­ure while Frel­inghuysen goes un­pun­ished, a point that is sure to re­sur­face in fights yet to come.

Giv­en all of that, mem­bers noted, the state­ment was a clumsy move for someone who has spent more than half of his life in polit­ics, and whose fam­ily is one of the coun­try’s most en­dur­ing polit­ic­al dyn­asties, with an­cest­ors in polit­ics dat­ing back to the Con­tin­ent­al Con­gress.

It was clumsy too for someone who un­der­stands his place as an out­lier in the con­fer­ence. Frel­inghuysen is viewed as a hard and smart work­er, and his col­leagues like him be­cause he in­cludes them in poli­cy­mak­ing. But he has few close re­la­tion­ships in Con­gress. Un­der­scor­ing a re­cog­ni­tion of his own vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies, last year he asked Graves to be his lead whip for his bid for chair­man, hop­ing Graves could lend the cam­paign the con­ser­vat­ive co­sign Frel­inghuysen lacked.

Frel­inghuysen had the seni­or­ity for the post, but be­hind the scenes, more con­ser­vat­ive Reps. Ad­er­holt and Kay Granger also con­sidered run­ning. Among their con­cerns were Frel­inghuysen’s past sup­port for and dona­tions to Planned Par­ent­hood. Ul­ti­mately, the whip ef­fort and Frel­inghuysen’s prom­ises to be a team play­er quickly tamped down those con­cerns. Lead­er­ship en­dorsed Frel­inghuysen’s run and he took the gavel without a fight.

With lead­er­ship now look­ing to re­vive the health care bill and with the first gov­ern­ment fund­ing bill of this Con­gress due by the end of April, Frel­inghuysen may have to choose again between his dis­trict and his party. He could be for­giv­en once for turn­ing his back on lead­ers, but per­haps not again.

“Oc­ca­sion­ally you go to the lead­er­ship and say, ‘This is go­ing to be very dif­fi­cult for me,’” Ad­er­holt said. “I think lead­er­ship would un­der­stand. But I think if it’s something that’s a con­tinu­al prob­lem, you get in­to an area that’s a bit more murky.”