(The following article by Douglas Turner was posted on the Buffalo News website on April 27.)
WASHINGTON — Frustrations with the high-wire life of being a moderate Republican in a hardening right-wing majority took its toll on Rep. Jack F. Quinn of Hamburg, according to friends who were interviewed Monday about why he decided that his sixth term here would be his last.
Chronic back problems and concerns about his father’s health also might have played a role, they thought.
Quinn himself said his father’s long struggle with cancer was not determinative in his decision. But in an interview, the congressman quoted his father, Jack Sr., as telling him over the last weekend:
“This (job of congressman) is getting to be a very tough job to be in. I am glad you made this decision.”
Quinn’s father is a retired railroad worker and a union man. His life and example have had a powerful effect on the son.
Labor leaders called Quinn their “go-to guy” in the majority because he was one of the few Republicans who would listen to their concerns. But because of this, the White House and the Republican majority cut him very little slack.
Quinn is co-chairman of the Congressional Northeast-Midwest Coalition, which represents cold-weather states. As such, he often prodded the White House to stop hoarding a form of aid to help poor families pay their heating bills. He also forged an agreement between the railroads and their employees on retirement funds.
“There is less and less room in the House for a man of Quinn’s centrist ideas,” said Roger Tauss, legislative director of the Transportation Workers of America.
“This is a case of the Republican right eating its young,” Tauss said.
“DeLay leaves no room for disagreements,” Tauss said, referring to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who is referred to as “The Hammer” because of his insistence on rigid party discipline.
A senior Republican source said of Quinn’s decision, “After a while, you get tired of banging your head against the wall (as a moderate), and you ask yourself, “What have I been doing here?’ ”
“He just about peaked here, and could not get much further in this environment,” said the official, who asked not to be identified for fear of GOP reprisals.
The 53-year-old congressman tried to walk the middle road between conservatives such as DeLay and centrists led by Rep. Amo Houghton, R-Corning, who balked at some of the president’s tax-cut proposals. Houghton, too, is retiring at the end of this session.
Rep. Michael N. Castle, R-Del., a close friend of Quinn’s and a leader in the centrist Tuesday Club and Republican Main Street Partnership, said he is disconsolate about Quinn’s retirement.
“This is a sad day for the Congress,” Castle said. “Congress will be a smaller place because of his leaving. He’s not afraid to stand up to anybody.”
Castle said Quinn led a fight within the party to increase funds for Head Start, a federal program for preschoolers. “I know how many votes followed his lead,” Castle said.
Castle rebutted assertions by labor officials that DeLay and other House conservatives threatened to remove Quinn as chairman of the House Railroads Subcommittee because of his centrist votes. But, Castle said, “they may have hinted at it.”
Quinn’s one serious break with labor came two years ago. When President Bush wanted to undercut labor’s job-security rights in the creation of the new Department of Homeland Security, he asked Quinn to sponsor a compromise bill giving federal workers an appeals process if their jobs were cut or changed. “I owe you one,” Quinn quoted Bush as saying after the compromise passed.
The congressman tangled with the American Federation of Government Employees over that bill. But on Monday, AFGE President John Gage said, “Quinn was a great friend to AFGE on many issues from pay to privatization and he will be missed.”
So valuable is Quinn to unions that a senior Democratic Party official suggested that little or no national party funds would be expended to defeat him this year.
In 1998, Republican moderates watched Quinn when their leader pressed them to impeach President Bill Clinton for alleged perjury and other offenses. Quinn, who had been close to the Democratic president and his wife, now-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, said he would vote against impeachment.
But under pressure from conservatives, Quinn switched his vote to impeach, and many GOP centrists, including Castle, followed suit. The resolution carried, 228-206.
However, these shows of loyalty won Quinn little tolerance from Bush or DeLay for his attempts to win funds for modernization of Amtrak. Last year, Quinn pushed for an Amtrak authorization of $1.8 billion. But House appropriations leaders allied with DeLay slashed the funding by two-thirds.
This year, a senior Republican appropriator sent Quinn a letter threatening him and others that he would punish them for supporting Amtrak. Quinn asked House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., for help, but Hastert, in effect, told him that he was on his own. In an interview, Quinn said that he called Hastert on Monday morning to tell him of his decision and that Hastert voiced his disappointment but said he understood.
Neither Hastert nor Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, R-Clarence, tried to talk Quinn out of his decision.
Sarah Chamberlain Resnick, executive director of the Republican Main Street Partnership, said Quinn “has worked to broaden the base of the party by reaching out to nontraditional Republican allies.”
Reynolds said Quinn is not only “my district neighbor by chance, but my friend by choice, and all of Congress will miss him dearly when he’s gone.”