David Dreier exit triggers leadership scramble

Rep. David Dreier, one of the last masters of the House rules, announced Wednesday that he will retire at the end of this Congress.

The California Republican’s departure will open up the chairmanship of the Rules Committee, which he has held for nine of the last 13 years, and deprive the House of one of its most recognizable and well-liked members.

Dreier informed his colleagues, and C-SPAN viewers across the nation, at the tail end of a speech delivered from the well of the House.

“I take the unusual step of announcing this from the floor of Congress for two reasons,” Dreier said. “First, this is where my fellow Californians sent me to represent them. Second, I am a proud institutionalist, and I believe that this institution is as great as it has ever been.”

Dreier’s retirement, long expected among political insiders, isn’t expected to affect the partisan balance of the House because his home state’s independent redistricting commission left him without an obvious place to run when it redrew congressional boundaries after the 2010 census.

But it will trigger a scramble in GOP leadership circles.

The two leading candidates to succeed him as chairman of the Rules Committee are Doc Hastings of Washington, who is currently chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, and Pete Sessions of Texas, who is chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Hastings, an ...

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73438.html#ixzz1nsIvdlrS