Races of the week: Dickey vs. Ross

Once a king loses his throne, he rarely recovers it. Toppled from power in 1973 and driven into exile in Rome, Afghanistan's King Mohammad Zahir has returned to his home country, but not as a reigning monarch. He instead presides over a conclave of elders who are trying to write a new constitution for their troubled country. And while Bulgaria's onetime "boy king" did indeed return to power last year, it was not as Simeon 11-as he was known when last on the throne in 1946-but as "Mr. Saxe-Coburg," head of the new party whose sweeping election victory made him prime minister.

So it is with members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Once defeated, they rarely recapture their old seat. Some win other offices: Rep. Wayne Grisham (R.Calif.) returned as a state assemblyman shortly after losing his congressional seat, and Rep. Clint Roberts (R.-S.D.) came back as state secretary of agriculture after being defeated for re-election by one Tom Daschme. But, try as many do, House members who win back their old districts after defeat are extremely rare.

Nonetheless, former Republican Rep. Jay Dickey iff a good chance to win his old seat. For eight years, Dickey held Arkansas' 4th District, voted a solidly conservative line (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 94%), and always emerged triumphant. But 2000 was a freakish year. Two years earlier, Dickey had voted to impeach Bill Clinton, whose hometown of Hope was in Dickey's 4th District. Although the impeached President denied it, most Clinton-watchers believed the New York Times report shortly after his acquittal by the Senate that he was vowing revenge against the House managers and Jay Dickey, technically his congressman.

The Democratic nominee that year might as well have been Clinton himself. Mike Ross, a graduate of Hope High School, had cut his political eyeteeth in Clinton's winning race for governor in 1982 and then won a state senate seat in 1990. He nearly matched Dickey's $1.7-million campaign kitty dollar-for-dollar and had help from independent expenditure attacks against the incumbent by Big Labor. The final blow came on the Sunday before the balloting, when Clinton himself appeared in the 26county district and energized black churches on behalf of Ross.

When the smoke cleared, Jay Dickey found himself the only Republican U.S. representative outside California to be turned out by voters -albeit narrowly (51% to 49%), by about 4,000 votes out of more than 212,000- cast, as Al Gore was leading George W. Bush by 50% to 47% districtwide. That Dickey had won with a handsome 58% of the vote two years before was further evidence that his vote to impeach the 4th District's favorite son in December of 1998 was the killer bullet for him.

"There's no argument-the impeachment vote was fatal to me," he recalled, "but, as I have said many times, I could not have lived with myself had I voted the other way. Knowing the outcome, I would have done the same thing."

That was then, this is now. The Republican who had overcome polio to become a marathon runner was not going to let defeat at the polls under difficult circumstances discourage him. With memories of impeachment fading and popular Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee leading the statewide ticket, Jay Dickey is back for a rematch with Mike Ross.

Although the 40-year-old Ross publicly aligns himself with the less-liberal "Blue Dog" Democrats in the House and styles himself "conservative," his voting record is quite different (lifetime ACU rating: 36%). He has followed the union line by opposing the administration on repealing punitively anti-business ergonomics rules; has supported sending tax dollars to international groups that provide abortion services and counseling, and has backed the cloning of embryos for medical research. He voted for statist campaign finance "reform," while opposing measures to cut taxpayer funding of the controversial National Endowment for the Arts.

Best known as one of the first opponents of stem cell research (the so-called "Mengele Amendment") while on the Labor, Health, and Human Services Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, the 62year-old Dickey is Ross's opposite number on nearly every issue.

To the charge that his seniority is gone and he would enter Congress just like any other freshman, the GOP hopeful proudly brandishes a letter from House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill.) promising to support Dickey for his old spot on the powerful Appropriations panel.

Yes, it's a different kind of political year from 2000 and the changed political chemistry gives Jay Dickey a distinct shot at returning to Congress. But conservatives in the Razorback State and throughout the nation must rally to him because old habits die hard: At a banquet last month that raised Ross more than $100,000, the speaker was-you guessed it!-Bill Clinton.

(Jay Dickey for Congress, P.O. Box 8766, Pine Bluff, Ark. 71611; 870-5361221)

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Jul 1, 2002
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