John Shadegg mum about his political status
February 20th, 2008, 4:57 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Paul Giblin
John Shadegg
Rep. John Shadegg put off an announcement concerning his political future until at least Thursday, according to his press secretary Abby Winter.
Shadegg stunned state and national political observers when he announced on Feb. 11 that he planned to retire at the end of his term in January. Days later, 145 GOP members of the House signed a letter asking him to reconsider his position and to seek re-election.
Shadegg has been reconsidering his decision ever since.
If he was so motivated, he could try to use the unprecedented show of support to leverage some sort of advantage for himself. Perhaps he could get Republicans to commit to certain political policies. Perhaps he could extract a leadership position for himself to help guide those political policies.
Consider the quotage being offered about Shadegg last week.
“In many ways, he is the conscience of conservatives in the House of Representatives,” Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, who helped draft and circulate the letter, told me.
“I would fully expect that if Mr. Shadegg goes forward with his decision to retire, Republicans will elect a capable new representative from that district, but they won’t elect John Shadegg. We need John Shadegg,” Pence said.
“There has never has been a day that I didn’t look up on that board when any vote was called. You could always count on John Shadegg casting a vote that reflects a deep commitment to limited government and conservative values,” he said.
Shadegg likely wasn’t feeling the love from his colleagues when he lost two leadership elections in recent years. Specifically, he lost to Rep. John Boehner of Ohio for the post of Republican leader, and to Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri for Republican whip.
Pence, who ran and lost a leadership election himself last year, said, “I personally know the challenge of a leadership election and the aftermath of that. And, quite frankly, leadership elections turn on a lot of different issues. They are not in any way an estimation of the esteem with which a person is held in Congress. John Shadegg may have lost his past elections for leadership, but in each case, he won the argument.”
Maybe. Republicans have talked a lot about adopting the types of fiscal discipline and reform that Shadegg advocated, but so far, their talk mostly has just been noise.
In the meantime, the hoopla Shadegg created when he announced his retirement hasn’t settled much. At least eight possible GOP candidates have emerged on the scene to fill the possible void in Arizona’s 3rd Congressional Distrist, which takes in central and northern Phoenix, Paradise Valley, Carefree and Cave Creek. At least one of the contenders, former state Rep. Steve May, said he’ll run no matter what Shadegg decides.
The other possible candidates are state Rep. Sam Crump, state Sen. Pamela Gorman, political strategist Wes Gullett, Shadegg’s chief of staff Sean Noble, state Sen. Jim Waring, state Rep. Jim Weiers, and Paradise Valley Mayor Ed Winkler. There could be others.
Stay tuned…
