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Washington Journal
By Times staff writers 'Win-win-win' or not, lawmaker stays in raceElected in 1955, Michigan Democratic Rep. John Dingell is the longest-serving member of the House. But redistricting has thrown Dingell into an Aug. 6 primary with a popular incumbent, Rep. Lynn Rivers, a favorite of women's groups and liberals. The situation is inflicting maximum pain on Democrats, as the Republicans who drew up the new congressional districts no doubt intended. Michigan Rep. John Conyers, though, has a plan. Dingell, he says, should bow out of the primary and then run for speaker of the House in two years. Technically, the scheme is possible because the Constitution says only that the House shall elect its leader, not that the speaker must be a member of the House. The Conyers plan assumes that Democrats will win the House in November and their leader, Richard Gephardt, would give up the speakership in two years to run for president. "This is my vision of how we keep Lynn Rivers and promote John Dingell and support Dick Gephardt," Conyers told Roll Call. "It's a win-win-win situation for all my friends." Dingell, who will return to his former job as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee next year if Democrats retake the House, issued a statement shooting down Conyers' idea. "I'm flattered by the suggestion, but I'm running for the job I want," he said. NPR official apologizesConservatives love to hate National Public Radio, whose newscasts they regularly denounce as biased in favor of liberal positions. On Wednesday, they made NPR pay. The network's president and chief executive officer, Kevin Klose, apologized Wednesday to a conservative Christian group for a report in January implicating the Traditional Values Coalition in last fall's anthrax attacks. "I'm sorry about our mistake, and I hope we can move forward from here," Klose told the House Energy and Commerce telecommunications subcommittee. The NPR report had implied that federal investigators were suspicious of the coalition's criticism of Democratic Sens. Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, both of whom received anthrax letters. The coalition had once issued a press release berating Daschle and Leahy for supporting a move to drop the phrase "so help me God" from the oath Senate witnesses take before testifying. "Maybe NPR considers smearing Christians a normal story, but members of Congress do not, taxpayers do not and millions of Christians do not," the coalition's executive director, Andrea Lafferty, said at the hearing. In line for FAA post?Marion Blakey, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, is emerging as a leading candidate to take over the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA administrator, Jane Garvey, is leaving in early August because her term has expired. She has not announced her plans. Blakey, a former chief of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, has ties to White House chief of staff Andrew Card, who was transportation secretary in the first Bush presidency. Blakey became chairman of the NTSB last September and has been widely praised for her work on the investigation of American Airlines Flight 587, which crashed Nov. 12, killing all 260 on board. A spokesman for Blakey declined to comment. -- Compiled by Times staff writers Mary Jacoby and Bill Adair.
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