West Virginia State Sen. Mike Oliverio drubbed 27-year House veteran Alan Mollohan (D-WV-01) tonight in the Democratic primary. They’re not done counting, but it currently stands at 56%-44%. With the announced retirement of Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, Mollohan stood to become second in seniority on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. It’s hard to exaggerate how badly the people of West Virginia’s First District need a top appropriator to represent them. It’s coal-mining country. That they threw Mollohan out in favor of a guy who doesn’t want to support Speaker Pelosi shows that there is something afoot in this country.
Don’t get me wrong, like most long-time appropriators of both parties, Mollohan had long ago compromised himself and become corrupt. I’m kind of glad to see that he’s gone. I’d be more enthusiastic about it if his replacement gave me hope for improvement. But, hey, West Virginia’s loss will probably be Philadelphia’s gain. Mollohan was the chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies. Now that he’s been defeated and Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island is retiring, the chair should go (by seniority) to my old congressman, Rep. Chaka Fattah. Of course, Fattah recently announced that he will compete in the next Congress for the chair of the entire Appropriations Committee. That doesn’t surprise me. When he was running for mayor of Philadelphia, we were talking at the upstairs bar at The Khyber when he explained to me that he wasn’t going anywhere in Congress. I had asked him whether he couldn’t better serve Philadelphia as a member of the House Appropriations Committee. And he explained that he had no seniority and no prospects of even chairing a subcommittee anytime soon. So, he was bolting to be mayor. Except, he got crushed in the primary, so he went back to his dead-end job in DC. And now he’s ready to become the first black man to be in charge of the Justice Department’s budget. Amen.
