U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio calls it quits: Thirty-six years in Congress well spent, with a provocative book to come

After a thir­ty-six year tenure in Con­gress, the longest in Beaver State his­to­ry, Oregon’s Peter DeFazio announced this week that he is retir­ing. The chair­man of the House Com­mit­tee on Trans­porta­tion and Infra­struc­ture is going out on a high note, hav­ing helped craft Con­gress’ infra­struc­ture pack­age and made major con­tri­bu­tions to the Build Back Bet­ter plan passed by the House.

DeFazio, sev­en­ty-four, has served on the trans­porta­tion com­mit­tee from the day he entered Con­gress in 1987 and, in the words of Politi­co, accu­mu­lat­ed an “ency­clo­pe­dic amount of insti­tu­tion­al and tech­ni­cal knowl­edge on infrastructure.”

He’s been much more than an expert.

DeFazio has car­ried on in the pop­ulist tra­di­tion of his pre­de­ces­sor, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Weaver, in a dis­trict that includes Eugene but also farm­ing, log­ging and fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties of South­west Ore­gon from Albany to the Cal­i­for­nia border.

He helped found the Con­gres­sion­al Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus. He has backed cre­ation of wilder­ness areas while rep­re­sent­ing a dis­trict with the high­est tim­ber cut off fed­er­al lands in the “low­er 48” states.

He has shown an inde­pen­dent streak, oppos­ing Pres­i­dent Obama’s $797 bil­lion stim­u­lus plan because it did not com­mit ade­quate resources to infrastructure.

The post of com­mit­tee chair, or rank­ing Demo­c­rat, is like­ly to remain in the North­west. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Rick Larsen, D‑Washington, chairs the avi­a­tion com­mit­tee. He and DeFazio con­duct­ed copi­ous over­sight hear­ings on the dis­as­trous Boe­ing 737-MAX crash­es and lax FAA oversight.

The Boe­ing Everett plant is in Larsen’s district.

You need an iron butt to rep­re­sent Oregon’s Fourth Dis­trict in Congress.

DeFazio has faced, in his words, “the longest com­mute in the low­er forty-eight,” fly­ing to Port­land and then dri­ving more than one hun­dred miles to his Spring­field home. The dis­trict extends south from there. He has spent the equiv­a­lent of 435 forty-hour work weeks on the com­mute, DeFazio told reporters on Wednesday.

DeFazio began as an aide to Weaver, a law­mak­er famous for pre­dict­ing the dis­as­ter of the Wash­ing­ton Pub­lic Pow­er Sup­ply System’s nuclear pro­gram, and the sin­is­ter aspects of the Rajneesh cult after it set­tled in east­ern Ore­gon. DeFazio was a Lane Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er when Weaver retired from Con­gress in 1986.

He proved every bit as feisty as Jim Weaver, albeit more disciplined.

After the Supreme Court’s infa­mous 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing blew away cam­paign spend­ing bar­ri­ers, secre­tive non­prof­it groups start­ed run­ning attack ads against Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress. Some­thing called Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers of Amer­i­ca aired anti-DeFazio spots. It was only iden­ti­fied by a D.C. address and the name of one Jason Miller as treasurer.

DeFazio invit­ed reporters to walk over to Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers’ town­house and smoke out Jason Miller. The door was answered by a ten­ant who claimed no knowl­edge of the group or Jason Miller.

The march made a won­der­ful seg­ment on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

(Jason Miller is a Wash­ing­ton­ian who began work as an aide to Sen­a­tor Slade Gor­ton. He lat­er became a suc­cess­ful right-wing polit­i­cal tac­ti­cian. He emerged, after ini­tial­ly back­ing Ted Cruz, as a top aide to Don­ald Trump. He was can­di­date for White House com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor but side­lined due to a messy pater­ni­ty suit. He reemerged after last November’s elec­tion as spokesman for Trump.)

“It has been the great­est hon­or of my life to serve as con­gress­man for the Fourth Dis­trict of Ore­gon,” said DeFazio, who intends to come home from his lengthy com­mute. He will wit­ness the imple­men­ta­tion of his work on infra­struc­ture, although it will prob­a­bly be a long time before Amer­i­ca ful­ly achieves the “green” trans­for­ma­tion of its trans­porta­tion sys­tem he has long championed.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic-direct­ed redis­trict­ing of Oregon’s con­gres­sion­al bound­aries has made the Fourth Dis­trict more friend­ly to the D’s. Or as DeFazio put it, “My dis­trict has now been improved. It is now winnable by anoth­er Democrat.”

The first Demo­c­rat to announce, Ore­gon Labor Com­mis­sion­er Val Hoyle, offered an acknowl­edg­ment: “Nobody can fill Peter DeFazio’s shoes.”

The Repub­li­cans took a hard run at DeFazio in 2020. Their can­di­date was Alek Skar­latos, one of three young Amer­i­cans who over­pow­ered an armed ter­ror­ist on an Ams­ter­dam-to-Paris train in 2015, and lat­er played them­selves in the movie. DeFazio was out­spent but still pre­vailed, 54% to 46%, an eight point margin.

The voice of Peter DeFazio is leav­ing Con­gress but won’t be silenced. He has a book in him. “I want to write that,” he said Wednes­day. “For years, I gave a speech called, ‘Can Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy sur­vive? Even before Trump, it was pes­simistic. The chal­lenges are even greater now.”