Some of the bad blood between Dennis Hastert and Rahm Emanuel was documented by the Chicago Tribune yesterday:
Oil, water and political fireworks
Sparks can fly when Illinois' Hastert and Emanuel mix
By Mike Dorning
Washington Bureau
December 12, 2005
WASHINGTON -- When Vanity Fair's September issue included a sensational and unproven accusation that House Speaker Dennis Hastert accepted a bribe to sideline a measure criticizing the Turkish government, the irate Republican leader and his staff immediately suspected the handiwork of a political enemy.
The object of their suspicion, according to two close Hastert advisers, is Rahm Emanuel, a Democratic congressman and former Clinton White House operative whose home district lies 14 miles from Hastert's suburban Chicago constituency.
Emanuel denied involvement in the magazine story, but the fact that his was the first name that came to mind in the Hastert camp is a measure of the relationship between two of the more powerful members of Congress. The savvy, sharp-edged rising power among House Democrats and the old-school, camera-wary Republican leader are locked in a blood-sport competition for control of Congress.
Just two years after Emanuel, 46, arrived at the Capitol as a lawmaker, he has become chairman of the national Democratic campaign to regain control of Congress and unseat Hastert, 63, as speaker in the 2006 midterm elections.
Despite mostly cordial public interactions, the two men mix like oil and water. The normally circumspect Hastert has made public digs at Emanuel, calling him "duplicitous." He has needled Emanuel for accumulating wealth as an investment banker after leaving the Clinton White House. Emanuel made more than $16 million in 2 1/2 years.
Emanuel, who is Jewish, in turn denounced Hastert's comments about his wealth as anti-Semitic during an emotional, closed-door meeting last winter with Illinois Democratic members of Congress. The congressman had tears in his eyes as he spoke, according to one person present. The charge of anti-Semitism soon made its way back to Hastert and deeply offended the speaker, according to several close Hastert associates.
Still, in an interview, Emanuel denied any bad feelings: "There is no animosity or tension. He does what he has to do for his party, and I do what I have to do. ... We're both professionals about it."
But he added that it was Hastert and not he who had publicly impugned the other.
"I don't think I have ever made a personal, public attack on the speaker," Emanuel said.
Hastert declined to be interviewed on the subject. His spokesman, Ron Bonjean, instead read a one-sentence statement: "We think he's a skilled political partisan player trained through years of experience in the Clinton administration."
Clinton's request of Hastert
In answering the accusation in Vanity Fair, Bonjean said Hastert withdrew the resolution on Turkey, which condemned the Armenian genocide, at the request of then-President Bill Clinton, who cited foreign policy concerns in a letter to the speaker.
The acrimonious nature of the relationship dates to Hastert's first campaign for Congress in 1986, a bruising race in which Emanuel was a Democratic campaign field organizer. Emanuel's role stuck in Hastert's memory enough that he mentioned it in a memoir published last year.
During the Clinton years, they were again adversaries during the face-offs between the White House and then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, with Hastert a junior member of Gingrich's leadership team and Emanuel a senior political aide to Clinton.
But in 2003, Hastert stood across from Emanuel and swore him in as a new member of Congress. Emanuel would later point to a photo of the moment and joke that it was the last time they were nice to each other.
In the House, a junior member of a minority party rarely has much of a profile. But Emanuel has used the institution as a platform for drawing attention to the Bush administration's vulnerabilities.
Amid public discontent over drug prices, he has pressed legislation to allow the importation of medicine, highlighting the lower cost of prescription drugs in other countries. Shortly before the 2004 presidential election, he wrote Hastert a public letter proposing to honor soldiers killed in Iraq with a display of their photos in the Capitol Rotunda, a demonstration of casualties that clearly would have embarrassed the administration. When the speaker took no action, Emanuel erected a display outside his Capitol office, where it remains.
He is regularly on the House floor at its opening, ready to deliver a one-minute attack on Republican policy. And he has sent open letters to the speaker that, while usually couched as policy proposals, are thinly concealed slaps at GOP governance.
"Those kind of things make the hairs stand up on the back of [Hastert's] neck," said Pete Jeffries, a senior vice president with Hill & Knowlton and Hastert's former communications director. "To see some young buck simply trying to throw political grenades all the time, that simply doesn't wash with him."
It was after receiving one such salvo from Emanuel--on Bush's proposal to divert a portion of Social Security contributions to private investment accounts--that Hastert took a swipe at Emanuel's time as an investment banker.
"I would love to have his experience on how to do it, 'cause he has made a lot of money on those types of things, millions of dollars," Hastert told the Sun-Times in February.
Shortly afterward, during a meeting with other Illinois Democrats in the office of Rep. Jerry Costello, Emanuel angrily gave his reading of the remark. "He might as well have said I'm a rich Jew," he is quoted as saying by one person who was present. Emanuel also complained in other conversations that the comment was anti-Semitic, said another political figure.
As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee since January, Emanuel has overseen press releases attacking individual Republicans in Congress for connections to figures in recent corruption scandals.
And, though they offer no proof, Hastert and his top aides see the hand of someone schooled in the dark arts of a political operative in calls they receive from reporters on potential story lines critical of the speaker.
"We knock down a lot of nonsense that generally we think he's behind," a senior Hastert aide said.
In some ways, it has been easy for Emanuel to goad the speaker because Hastert is unaccustomed to being the target of hardball criticism, said one former Illinois official who has had regular dealings with Hastert.
Show no quarter
"Rahm is a take-no-prisoners kind of guy," the former official said. "He is going to be as hard on Denny as he thinks is worthwhile. Denny's not accustomed to that."
Emanuel's style irritates many Republicans. "When you talk privately to Republicans, he has really gotten under their skin," said Amy Walter, senior editor of the Cook Political Report.
The Illinois congressional delegation has had a long tradition of setting aside partisan differences to concentrate on home-state concerns. In an earlier era, Democratic Rep. Dan Rostenkowski and Republican Rep. Bob Michel would attend Washington Senators games together and share rides back home on the weekends.
Even with Emanuel and Hastert, there have been times of comity. Aides note that they have collaborated effectively on issues related to O'Hare International Airport and on federal funding for hospitals and public transit projects in Emanuel's district, which covers the Northwest Side of Chicago and parts of suburban Cook County.
Others say there is less trust among delegation members.
Republican Rep. Judy Biggert said that Emanuel has "just ratcheted up in Illinois the differences between Republicans and Democrats, and we used to work with each other. There's a little bit more of a discontent in the delegation."
A chief of staff for an Illinois Democrat cited "increased partisanship and polarization."
The quest for federally supported runways, roads and rail lines in Illinois is a rare area of agreement between Hastert and Emanuel, and next year's congressional elections are likely to test their relationship further.
"Can you really imagine two congressmen less alike?" said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. "And in this case, opposites don't attract."
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mdorning@tribune.com
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