Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

LETTER FROM WASHINGTON:

Unique style will help Berkley adjust to new Congress

Democrat crosses party lines with ease, engages the power brokers on her big issues

Shelley Berkley

Karoun Demirjian

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who has been in the House for almost 12 years, talks with a staff member on Capitol Hill.

Shelley Berkley's victory speech

Rep. Shelley Berkley gives her acceptance speech on election night.

Last week, Democrats in the House banded together to send a message to the president: We don’t want your tax bill.

The nonbinding vote they took was almost unanimous; in fact just one outspoken congresswoman decided to voice her disapproval of the measure with a loud “No.”

“Yeah, it was me,” Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley later said in her chambers, shrugging. “Because we need to do something ... Nevadans need help.”

Berkley has in many ways perfected the art of standing out from the crowd on Capitol Hill: With big hair, a big voice, brightly colored suits and an office full of tchotchkes, she’s a walking embodiment of Las Vegas. Her propensity to somewhat-motheringly cozy up to almost any lawmaker she passes is also atypical in chambers where bipartisan lines are seemingly etched into the wall-to-wall carpeting.

But that sort of approach might be her saving grace as she moves into the minority of the coming Congress.

Berkley will still be the senior representative from Nevada in the House, but with the body swinging Republican and two of the state’s three seats being held by members of the opposite party, her influence will diminish. In the House, majorities are far more dominant than in the Senate — often putting even minority representatives with decades of service at a competitive disadvantage even relative to freshmen in the majority.

For Berkley, however, it will be somewhat of a homecoming. Berkley entered the House of Representatives in 1999, and of the 12 years she’s spent there, only the past four were on the majority side.

But while she preferred being in the majority, that’s not the period she credits for her best work in Congress.

If she could boil down her congressional legacy to one issue, she says, it would be veterans’ issues, specifically, working to bring to Southern Nevada a veterans hospital, which is slated to be fully operational in 2012.

Earmark funding for the hospital trickled in during the Democrats’ first years in the majority, but the licensing and approval happened wholly while she was in the minority, working to persuade a Republican administration to prioritize the 1st Congressional District’s plan.

Berkley wooed the key decision maker, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi, in her signature fashion.

“I saw him in the Capitol walking into an elevator ... and I dragged him right then and there to my office, and proceeded for the next 10 minutes to tell him about the needs of all the veterans in Las Vegas,” Berkley said.

Although she’s vocal about many issues, she appears most eager to go to the mat for those that fit a unique niche of her interests. Most either involve the needs of her district and state — like her work on behalf of veterans, and her various bids to help seniors — or have special significance to Berkley herself, like Israel.

Congress is not always the most effective forum to influence policy on such issues. Going straight to the administration also has its benefits. Berkley says she prides herself on having good relationships with the secretaries where it counts — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, for example, who she’s gotten to know through her service on Ways and Means, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.

Then there are the issues that naturally lend themselves to working across party lines. Her all-encompassing allegiance to Israel has given her common ground with Eric Cantor and a large swath of other Republicans who share her views. Similarly, her involvement with veterans has given her an influential voice on defense, a big priority for the GOP.

“I’ve had tremendous success working across the aisle,” she said. “Whether the coming Congress, given the makeup of it, is going to be as welcoming of my suggestions, I can’t tell you.”

For Berkley though, it might be just as challenging to figure out where she stands in the still-settling Democratic caucus, as her role vis-a-vis Republicans.

House Democrats are in disarray as they head into the minority. While Republicans swing rightward to accommodate the Tea Party, the average composition of the Democratic caucus is expected to swing to the left under the ongoing leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi — mostly because so many centrist Democrats were unseated in close 2010 races.

Berkley isn’t in Pelosi’s inner circle — they had a falling-out long ago over Berkley’s support for Steny Hoyer, the House Democrats’ No. 2 — but she is, by almost every measure of Congressional voting patterns, an out-and-out liberal: She champions the causes of unions, immigrants, gay rights, and spending on social welfare programs such as unemployment, Medicare and Social Security.

But lurking is a pro-business bent.

Like many Democrats, Berkley took pains in the past few weeks to stake out a space amid the tax debate, advocating a compromise much like the one the president laid out, with temporary tax-cut extensions for the wealthy.

Berkley’s position became more pronounced, especially last week, when an estate tax revision she wrote took center stage in the overall tax debate, eliciting cheers from Republicans and splintering Democrats’ support for the legislation.

In the meantime, she’s holding her ground — not so much that she’ll walk away from the tax bill if the estate tax provisions are changed, but not taking pains to fall in line with her party either. It’s an interesting stance in the weeks before she’ll be on the side that’s expected to close ranks against the majority on party-line votes.

“I don’t have the luxury of making political statements that are going to hurt the people I represent,” Berkley said. “I’m not an ideologue. I’m a practical politician.”

As representative of a large share of Las Vegas, Berkley is the voice of a metropolitan area that was recently ranked as having the fifth-worst economy in the world, according to a study by the Brookings Institution and the London School of Economics. She often speaks about Las Vegas’ nation-leading unemployment and foreclosure rates on the House floor, though Berkley’s name has never topped a piece of legislation on those subjects that has made it to a vote.

In 12 years, she hasn’t climbed far enough in rank to have that happen on its own. According to most rankings of congressional influence, Berkley sits in the middle of the Democratic pack.

But Berkley does sit, along with a Republican Nevada counterpart, two-term Rep. Dean Heller, on the influential Ways and Means committee, from which she says she’ll play a role in what promises to be the major issues of the new Congress: health care, taxes, unemployment and entitlements.

Her familiarity with Heller ­— whom she might run against for Senate in 2012 as both are expected to make announcements about rumored candidacies in the coming year — may also be important as cross-aisle politics develop.

Relationships within Nevada’s delegation seem to have cracked somewhat from the tension of personal scandals and election pressures, but Berkley appears to have maintained working relationships with her state colleagues.

“It doesn’t take a genius to do this job. You just have to know your district and your state,” she said. “I don’t think anybody knows Southern Nevada better than I do.”

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy