During his campaign for the U. S. House last year, Republican Tom Emmer pledged he had learned from the mistakes of his 2010 gubernatorial campaign.
And, with respect paid to the woman he wished to replace, he shied away from the “next Michele Bachmann” label, saying he would be a different kind of representative for the Republican 6th Congressional District.
Nine months into his first term in the House, to both the delight and dismay of Emmer-watchers, he has largely kept those campaign promises.
A former brash state House member who hosted a radio show that Democrats loved to mine for nuggets, Emmer has not been acting like the self-described “bomb-thrower” that earned him a reputation in Minnesota.
“I have learned and I’ve tried to take some of those lessons that I’ve learned in this new venue and so far … it’s paying off,” said Emmer, who plans to run for re- election in 2016.
“If your expectation is that you wanted me to get up and swing at something every day, well, that’s not the way I’m going to operate,” Emmer said, tacitly acknowledging the criticism he’s received from tea party folk and other conservatives.
Emmer, instead, has been fairly quiet, supported Republican leadership and partnered with Democrats often.
Powerful Republicans acknowledged Emmer’s work and rewarded his campaign for a seat on the House Financial Services Committee with that coveted position. Leadership tapped him to chat with other members about supporting Trade Promotion Authority, which narrowly passed this summer, and have reached out in other ways.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Walz posted admiring comments about Emmer’s ability to “knock down the clays” on Twitter after the two appeared at a hunting event this week. Even Gov. Mark Dayton, who defeated Emmer in 2010, said nice things about the freshman Republican when the representative joined him on a gubernatorial trade trip to Mexico.
The Delano Republican, who notes that he has been in the political swirl for only a decade, still holds the belief that less government is better, but he has changed his methods.
“The debt?” he said in response to a question from a business group. “It’s first and foremost in my mind. I think you’re robbing my kids.”
But he also said he does not support a constitutional balanced-budget amendment, which is popular with some fiscal conservatives, because it is mechanically problematic. He would prefer to cap the budget through a method that takes clues from the Swiss debt brake and Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights.
In introducing legislation to give Congress more oversight of financial market regulations, Emmer complained this summer about “an out-of-control federal bureaucracy,” but he avoided partisanship in making his pitch.
On Tuesday, in talking about the tax overhaul he believes is needed, he swerved away from any gratuitous Obama-bashing.
“We were not going to get tax reform that we would like to see under this president. Frankly, let’s not be partisan about it. You’re not going to get it under this Congress,” Emmer said.
The changes in Emmer may not be just in the way he presents himself.
According to an analysis by my colleague David Montgomery, Emmer’s voting record in 2010, when he was a state representative running for governor, was the most conservative in the Minnesota House. In Emmer’s first six months in the U.S. House, his voting record was closer to the center. He was to the right of Democrats but close to the middle among Republicans.
If people in his district have a problem with that, he has given them many chances to tell him so. Along with frequent speeches back in Minnesota — he’ll be at the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance on Monday — he has already had five town hall meetings in his district.
“If you do the right thing for the right reasons, you can always explain what you did,” he said, repeating his office’s mantra. “At the end of the day, we all want the same things. We want good schools, clean air, clean water. We want a better opportunity for ourselves and our kids. That’s the common goal. There are different ways of getting there.”
He paused. Then ended that thought where the discussion began: “I don’t know. I’m still learning. And if I figure it out, I’ll tell you.”
Rachel E. Stassen-Berger’s column appears weekly. Contact her at rstassen-berger@pioneerpress.com or twitter.com/rachelsb.