Here are two items of speculation about U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) that are grounded in reality:
Raskin, according to The New York Times, is on the verge of endorsing U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for president.
Raskin told the Times in an interview earlier this week that he has been “drawn in different directions” in the White House race and wanted to make an endorsement that’s both “passionate and strategic.”
Raskin, a former law school professor, said a recent lunch he had with Warren, who is also a former law school professor, and her husband, Bruce Mann, a Harvard law school professor, sealed the deal for him. Warren made “a very eloquent and personal pitch to me,” he said.
“If all she had to her name was senator from Massachusetts, she would not be an ideal candidate,” Raskin said. But he praised her record as a corruption fighter.
“As a candidate of public integrity and honesty in government, she has a very powerful story to tell at a time of boundless Republican corruption and lawlessness,” he said.
Even with her steady rise in the polls, Warren has only eight congressional endorsements so far — five from her home state.
Meanwhile, we’ve done some calculating and we’ve concluded, thanks to an alert reader, that Raskin could be in line for a House chairmanship fairly soon. Consider:
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), the chairwoman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, announced last week that she plans to seek one more term. Assuming she’s reelected, that means she would give up her committee post at the end of 2022.
Next in line on the Science panel would be Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the current chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, who presumably would want to move over to Science. Her district takes in a good bit of Silicon Valley, so it seems like a good fit.
Next in line on the Administration Committee, which oversees federal elections and myriad internal congressional procedures: Raskin, who is currently vice chairman of the panel. That means, if Democrats maintain control of the House, he’d be in line for the gavel in 2023.
It’s a good fit for Raskin, who could use the position to advance one of his pet causes, ranked-choice voting. And it doesn’t hurt for that committee to have a leader whose district borders Washington, D.C.
2023 seems like an eternity. But in Congress, often enough, good things happen to those who wait.
Josh Kurtz
Founding editor
Founding Editor Josh Kurtz is a veteran chronicler of Maryland politics and government. He began covering the State House in 1995 for The Gazette newspapers, and has been writing about state and local politics ever since. He was an editor at Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, for eight years, and for eight years was the editor of E&E Daily, which covers energy and environmental policy on Capitol Hill. For 6 1/2 years Kurtz wrote a weekly column on state politics for Center Maryland and has written for several other Maryland publications as well. Kurtz regularly gives speeches and appears on TV and radio shows to discuss Maryland politics.
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