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Meet Jason Chaffetz

He thinks D.C. autonomy is unconstitutional. He wants to roll back gay
marriage. He'd like to turn Washington into part of Maryland. And if the GOP
wins Congress, he's our new boss on Capitol Hill.

By Dave Weigel on October 1, 2010

A victory party for Eleanor Holmes Norton lacks

something. Let’s call that something “suspense.” It’s
Sept. 14. Technically, she’s fighting for re-nomination
to the non-voting D.C. congressional seat she’s held
since 1990. As usual, she’s facing an opponent whose
name will be forgotten by tomorrow morning. So the
crowd at Busboys and Poets doesn’t need to wait on
the District’s molasses-slow vote-counters before they
begin to celebrate.
They’re counting faster in Delaware. This is where
establishment Republicans backed Rep. Mike Castle
in the race for Joe Biden’s old Senate seat. But as
those results come in, Castle is trailing far-right
political consultant Christine O’Donnell, someone the
state GOP chairman said “couldn’t get elected dog
catcher.” Shortly before 10 p.m., the AP calls the race Photo by Darrow Montgomery
for O’Donnell.
Norton is relaxing with a glass of white wine, chatting with DC Vote Chairman Ilir Zherka, when
she hears the news. She gives him a high five.
“Wow,” she says. “Wow for us!” She’s made a quick political calculation, and realizes Democrats
are likely to hold a key Senate seat—and that much less likely to lose the upper chamber altogether.
But Norton’s expression quickly changes. She frowns. “How awful for him,” she says of Castle.
“I’m worried about these new Republicans. I’m much more worried about them than the
Republicans who are here. The Republicans who are here are very partisan, but it looks like there
are a bunch of people coming in who don’t understand politics at all.”

National Democrats are panicky by nature, and

they’ve been fretting about a Republican takeover of
Congress since late last year. Norton is one of those
rare Democrats who doesn’t talk down her party’s
chances of holding onto power. She’s thought about
it, though. She makes it clear she’s “on offense.” But
she’s worked with Republicans well in the past:
When Newt Gingrich ran the House, Norton says, he
was “one of my best friends,” and “helped me
immeasurably.”
That brings her to Jason Chaffetz.
If Republicans win the House, the first-term
congressman from Utah will run the obscurely named
Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of
(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery) Columbia Subcommittee of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee. Washingtonians
who understand the unusual legal control Congress wields over the District, though, will know him
by a simpler title: the new boss.
Chaffetz’s elevation would represent quite a change. In just under two years here, Chaffetz has
opposed Norton’s bill to give D.C. a congressional vote, opposed her bill to give D.C. more
autonomy, and filed a bill to force a gay marriage referendum on D.C. And in a Republican House,
Chaffetz would have reinforcements, ideological allies who wave the U.S. Constitution like
members of the Red Guard used to wave quotations from Chairman Mao.
According to Chaffetz, poking around in the District’s local affairs and keeping D.C. from getting a
meaningful vote in Congress is precisely what he was sent to Washington to do. He defeated an
incumbent in Utah’s 3rd Congressional District’s Republican primary in 2008 by running to his
right on immigration as well as on the more amorphous issue of faithfulness to the Constitution—a
platform that, for Chaffetz, included opposing a vote for D.C.
“When I got here,” says Chaffetz, speaking in a separate interview, “I introduced myself to
Congresswoman Norton. I told her where was I on this issue. And that’s the last time we talked
about an issue. We haven’t worked on any issue together.”
Norton doesn’t contest that.
“He’s in the minority,” she says. “I talk to the chairmen who get things done. There’s not many
occasions, when you’re in the majority, that you need to reach out to the minority members. The
occasions haven’t prevented themselves.” She allows just a little pessimism. “They will present
themselves if we lose the House.”

The Wilson Building has been so focused on local primaries that another question hasn’t gotten
much attention as November approaches: What changes for D.C. if, or when, the Republican Party
wins control of the House of Representatives?
This isn’t something many locals expected to deal with so soon. The Democratic majority that
swept into power four years ago ended an era of congressional meddling in the District’s affairs.
When that majority grew two years later, D.C. activists watched a novel voting rights bill start to
move toward President Obama’s desk. Old-fashioned efforts by far-flung legislators to override the
city’s gun laws, drug laws, and gay marriage compromise, meanwhile, went nowhere. Medical
marijuana, blocked for over a decade, finally became law. As a sign of goodwill, Democrats
announced they’d apply a municipal smoking ban to the Capitol, the type of law Congress had long
exempted itself from.

Then came the backlash. The recession

the Democrats inherited lasted longer,
and cut deeper, than the country was
ready for. The party’s ambitious agenda
on health care, energy, and taxes hit
major snags. Momentum stalled.
Moderate Democrats, newly anxious
about re-election, joined a GOP effort to
poison Norton’s D.C. vote legislation
via an amendment erasing the city’s gun
laws—a vote that they hoped would
appease constituents who were upset
about liberal votes on things like
stimulus spending. Ultimately, the D.C. "We haven't worked on any issue together," Chaffetz
vote bill was shelved. If Democrats lose says of D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes
the House, as most analysts now expect, Norton(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)
it’ll die.

“District voting rights will be dead for some time,” says Tom Davis, the retired Virginia Republican
from Fairfax County who, in his final years in Congress, ran the D.C. subcommittee, mostly as an
ally of the District (in 2006, he co-sponsored Norton’s bill to give the city a vote in the House).
“This was the two-year period to get that done. It was a short window. The window closed because
the Democrats would have had to swallow gun language they didn’t like. Now they’ll get that
anyway.”
They’ll also get Chaffetz in the job Davis used to have. He confirms that he wants to stay on the
committee, and lead it, if there’s a power shift.
“Absolutely, I want to keep this job,” says Chaffetz. “It’s a great constitutional responsibility. And I
love this city. D.C.’s been good to me. The people have been good to me.”
Chaffetz would come to his perch as a telegenic, well-liked, media-savvy Republican star. Six-feet
tall, trim, and athletic, he looks a decade younger than his 43 years. He’s as adept at eliciting
murmurs of agreement from Glenn Beck and the Christian Broadcasting Network as he is at trading
talking points on CNN. When House Republicans invited Obama to speak to a retreat in Baltimore
in January, Chaffetz was the only freshman given the microphone, and the only member who got
the better of the president, with a more-in-sorrow-than-anger comment about the lack of
transparency in the health care fight. When Stephen Colbert interviewed him—a rite of passage that
can make conservative Republicans look like humorless morons (Georgia’s Lynn Westmoreland has
never lived down his failure to remember the Ten Commandments on air)—Chaffetz charmed him
by triumphing in a leg-wrestling contest.
In fact, Chaffetz charms everybody. Norton calls him “witty,” even as she prays he doesn’t get a
chance to run his committee. D.C.’s shadow representative, Mike Panetta, rhapsodizes about the
attention Chaffetz pays at town-hall meetings—even as he calls him a “meddler who does not let
local decisions stand.” Former At-Large D.C. Councilmember Carol Schwartz, a fellow Republican,
calls him “very controlling” and worries that he’d “roll back the very hard-won progress we’ve
made under Home Rule.”
But no one has a good read on him. Asked what he likes about D.C., Chaffetz talks about the hybrid
bike he takes on long rides, and the restaurants he’s a regular at: “I’ve been to every Five Guys and
Matchbox in the city.”
None of that convinces anyone fretting about Republican rule that they can trust him.
After all, the first thing Washington learned about Chaffetz was that he didn’t want to live here.
When he won his seat in his mostly rural, very conservative district in central and western Utah, the
congressman-elect learned that dozens of his future colleagues saved money by sleeping on cots in
their offices. Inspired, Chaffetz threw down $44.89 at a hometown grocery store and purchased the
folding bed that would take up the least possible space in his new digs.
That $44.89 bought huge amounts of free publicity. He won a nerdy kind of stardom on CNN, when
the network asked him to produce a video and text “freshman year” diary of his life in Obama’s
Washington. Chaffetz was photographed bringing his cot from Utah to Washington, and he filmed a
short YouTube video so supporters could watch him opening it up and putting on his white sheets
and fuzzy blanket. (“That’s a well-made bed right there,” he told his audience.) In one video, he
straddled his cot and explained to viewers why he wanted to scuttle a bill that would give voting
rights in Congress to Washington and add an extra seat for Utah.
“When you’re in Washington, D.C., you’ll see license plates that say ‘Taxation Without
Representation,” says Chaffetz. “I think we all recognize that that is fundamentally flawed. But
what’s paramount in this discussion is the U.S. Constitution, and the Constitution explicitly says
that voting rights are reserved for the”—he quickly formed air quotes with his hands—“several
states.”
The video segment represents everything you need to know about Jason Chaffetz: showmanship,
affability, and a no-negotiation stance on D.C.’s biggest priorities.

Chaffetz was born and raised in Los Gatos, a wealthy, Democratic-voting California suburb near
San Jose. That he didn’t become a Democrat himself is something of a surprise. His father, John,
was briefly married to a woman with the maiden name Kitty Dickson; after they divorced, she
married a young Massachusetts politician named Michael Dukakis. Jason would do some work for
his famous semi-relative’s 1988 presidential campaign. For a while, that was all the political
experience he had.
In high school, Chaffetz made the move from soccer to the football team. Recruited by Brigham
Young University, he moved to Utah, kicking for the school’s perennially overperforming squad.
Here were the first hints of Chaffetz’s future stardom. When he started to make it in politics, his
teammates would recall how, after successful kicks, he would remove his helmet to reveal a perfect
head of hair for the TV cameras.
Chaffetz immersed himself in the culture of the Beehive State. He converted to Mormonism, and
decided to make Utah his home.
Chaffetz’s first job, which he held for a decade, was as a spokesman for a beauty company called
Nu Skin. He underwent a political conversion there. When the company hired former President
Ronald Reagan as a motivational speaker, Chaffetz was assigned to work with Reagan while he
pep-talked Nu Skin employees. Reagan’s politics rubbed off on Chaffetz. Seeing Reagan off at the
airport, he got an autograph and a pair of his new hero’s cuff links. He has called it the experience
that made him a conservative.
When Chaffetz re-entered politics, he was working for Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr., a Republican
with moderate streaks who is now the Obama administration’s ambassador to China. Chaffetz left
Huntsman’s staff to pursue a prize that had long dangled just out of reach of Utah conservatives—
the House seat held by Republican Chris Cannon.
On paper, Cannon had a nearly perfect record. But only nearly. Why, activists wondered, did one of
the country’s most Republican districts put up with a lawmaker who backed comprehensive
immigration reform and supported a plan to give a House vote to D.C.? Sure, it would hand a vote
to Utah, too, giving the state the seat it narrowly missed out on in the 2000 Census. But Chaffetz
called it unconstitutional, and argued that the state didn’t need to compromise.
“It was a political bribe,” Chaffetz says. “We were going to get a new district in 2012 anyway. Why
would we want to dilute our vote?”
At first, Chaffetz looked like the weakest opponent Cannon had ever faced. But Chaffetz picked up
on something new in Utah. He became a sort of proto-Tea Party candidate, building an army of
unpaid volunteers—over a thousand, according to the Provo Daily Herald—and out-hustling
Cannon on a $200,000 budget. Chaffetz crushed Cannon by 20 points.
“The extremists who don’t want to win elections have taken over the party,” Cannon said on
election night, putting the lid on his political career. Shell-shocked, he refused to endorse Chaffetz.
“We don’t want that to happen in Utah. Politics is way too important to leave to the boors.”
Beating Cannon meant Chaffetz was heading to Congress. He cruised to a 38-point win over his
Democratic opponent and became one of the very, very few fresh Republican faces in the 111th
Congress. That was when he bought the cot, inked the CNN deal, and started making trouble for the
District. After his first unhappy exchange with Norton, the voting rights bill started to move through
the House. Chaffetz testified against it.
“Chris Cannon was good on voting rights,” remembers Norton. “It was a shame, when he was sent
home, and he was replaced by someone who was dead-set against us.”
Chaffetz’s stand on voting rights was the one he had campaigned on: If it wasn’t in the Constitution,
he was against it. Democrats didn’t hear him out, but Republicans did. Behind the scenes he worked
on the other members of his delegation, pressing his two-part case: follow the Constitution, wait
four years. It worked. On Feb. 22, his fellow Utah Republican, Sen. Bob Bennett, had told The Salt
Lake Tribune that he’d “probably” vote for cloture. After Chaffetz helped make the once-obscure
measure a conservative cause, he would change his mind.
By May, Bennett would lose the GOP nomination for his own seat to a Tea Party-backed challenger.
In the current political environment, Republicans deviate from the party line at their own peril.
Thanks in part to Chaffetz, D.C. issues are part of that party line.

The 1994 Republican takeover of Congress doesn’t leave many lessons for what might happen to
D.C. if the GOP seizes power again this fall. Sixteen years ago, the GOP was clear about its agenda
for the District. Republicans reacted uneasily to the post-prison return of Marion Barry, elected in
1994 at the same time as the nation sent a GOP Congress to D.C. A year later, appalled at the city’s
budget problems, lawmakers imposed the Financial Control Board, stripping some power from the
mayor’s office.
At the time, the Gingrich revolutionaries had some wild ideas for how government should work,
and they wanted to test them here—where, after all, no one’s constituents had to live with the
results. House Speaker Newt Gingrich was personally invested in turning the city into a laboratory
for school vouchers. Republicans like Georgia’s Bob Barr legislatively forbade the city from even
counting the votes of its medical-marijuana referendum in 1998.
“Republicans should always start with the idea that this is the national capital,” Gingrich tells
Washington City Paper, “and we want to work in a way that makes it a showcase for the world of
what America’s all about. Most of the policies we adopted worked—not just school choice, but
gentrification, tax credits for buying houses in the city. If I was asked by the mayor, I’d be very
interested in doing an assessment of what we could do to help the city.”
If the new breed of Republicans have similarly grand ambitions for the District, they’re keeping
them quiet. Chaffetz, for his part, isn’t joining those who describe D.C. Council Chairman Vincent
Gray’s mayoral primary win as a revival of Marion Barry. “I haven’t had any negative interactions
with Vince Gray,” he says. “It’s nice to go in with a clean slate, and I’ll work together with him.
Where we agree, let’s get things done. Where we disagree, let’s work it out.”
At the same time, he’s quick to issue a warning shot about education, the issue that dominated
national coverage of the local election. “One of my deep concerns is the education of the city,” he
says. “It’s about how to educate kids. It’s not about putting as many people on the payroll as
possible.”
And yes, Chaffetz says, things like local school personnel decisions are Congress’ business. “I know
that Gray and the new government will want as much autonomy as possible, but that’s not in the
Constitution,” he says.
For Chaffetz and his GOP colleagues, a Constitution-driven agenda starts with denying D.C. the
independence that Norton—in this last, frustrating Congress—tried to bring it. She introduced an
autonomy bill that would have ended an onerous provision that’s unique to the District: all local
legislation goes through a 30-day limbo, during which time members of Congress have the ability to
mess with it. (The city’s budget also has to go through Capitol Hill for approval, even though local
tax revenues pay for most of it.)
Chaffetz has already demonstrated a zeal for putting D.C. in its place on matters of governmental
prerogative. In a November 2009 hearing on Norton’s bill, after Mayor Adrian Fenty and Gray gave
presentations on the District’s balanced budgets, Chaffetz spoke to quibble with the wording of their
statements. His problem? The District officials had referred to what “other states” were allowed to
do.
“My concern is that the District of Columbia is not a state,” Chaffetz said, as Fenty and Gray
politely waited for his question. “It’s not a state! It is dealt with differently.”
Chaffetz went on to tell the city’s leaders that their tithed relationship with the federal government
was actually a source of strength. “The city’s working so well, and it’s so financially prudent, and
it’s got such good checks and balances,” he said. “I wish we [in Congress] had some of those
financial controls and discipline.”
This is the philosophical difference between Chaffetz and D.C. that isn’t going to be bridged: He
likes working on D.C. issues, because he’s fascinated by the role Congress has in guiding the city.
Meddling in local laws is, for him, part of the attraction of his committee. Given his politics—and
considering just who a new GOP majority would owe favors to—that could set him up for some
major fights with the local government. For the past four years, conservatives have been thwarted in
efforts to dictate District policy on gay marriage and school vouchers. Come next year, the activists
who lost those fights will expect help from Chaffetz.
Opponents of D.C.’s gay marriage law might be quickest on the trigger. The National Organization
for Marriage tried, and failed, to get the D.C. Council to kill the bill. Next, NOM failed in a lawsuit
to force a referendum. Chaffetz introduced legislation to do that, but it died in the House. In
September’s Democratic primary, NOM-supported candidates were thrashed in Ward 5 and in a
challenge to Norton. But NOM and every other social conservative organization expect to get
another chance if Republicans run the House. Tony Perkins, whose Family Research Council has
teamed up with Beltsville, Md.-based Bishop Harry Jackson on gay marriage, says Republicans
must keep their word and force a referendum in D.C.
“At a minimum,” says Perkins, “we think people should have a right to vote on it. D.C. has done
everything it could to block a vote, and there’s a reason for that, because every single time people
get the right to vote on this, they vote for marriage. Maine overturned the legislature. Maine! Not a
conservative bastion, by any means.”
Gay marriage activists see—as NOM likes to put it in its Hammer Horror TV ads—that a storm
could be coming. “There’s no doubt that Chaffetz would work against us,” says Rick Rosendall, the
political vice president of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance. “But if they tried to impose a
ballot measure on the District, that would be handing us an advantage. There is strong resistance
across the board in D.C., across the spectrum, to congressional interference in our affairs.”

Chaffetz would test that theory if he could, but it’s not clear what he can do now. As far as most
people can tell, the window for a referendum closed last year. Chaffetz’s bill to force one died in
committee. Trying again might be tough, even with a GOP Congress.
“They passed the law and were afraid of a vote,” Chaffetz says. “The Democrats were scared to
death of having a vote, because same-sex marriage has failed 31 times in the states. People vote in
favor of traditional marriage, particularly the African American community. Look: I think it’s a
shame we didn’t have a vote in the United States Congress. I think it’s embarrassing that we didn’t
have a vote in the city. But I don’t know what could be done.”
On vouchers, Chaffetz might have more luck. There’s institutional support in the city for a
resurrection of the program, which he backs. The pro-voucher groups that lost the fight in 2009 are
waiting to see if the next Congress can do them some favors.
“Our feeling is that if Congress changes, significantly, we could get more support for the program,”
says Virginia Walden-Ford, the president of D.C. Parents for School Choice. She chooses her words
carefully—her group is accused often enough of membership in a conservative plot that she doesn’t
want to wave a Republican banner. “My sense is that we have a tough fight ahead, but it would be
important to garner some additional support in Congress. If we flip the Senate, that would be a big
deal.”
For people who don’t think a national legislature ought to be mucking around in the nitty-gritty of
local government, Chaffetz actually has a fix. It just that his solution doesn’t happen to lie along the
D.C. statehood/legal autonomy: In Chaffetz’s idea, most of what we now call Washington, D.C.,
could become Washington, Maryland.
“It’s our nation’s capital and the Constitution deals with it in a unique way,” Chaffetz says.
“Washington, D.C., is not a state. My proposal is stronger than Eleanor Holmes Norton’s proposal,
because I’d like to see it retroceded back into a state.”
Chaffetz says District residents would be happy if their neighborhoods became part of Maryland
while the government buildings around the Mall remained a federal zone. “Not only could they
have two senators,” Chaffetz says, “but they could have a voting member and a state legislature. I
think anything short of full representation won’t be appealing long term. I’m also a realist. Unless
the people of D.C. are supportive of it, unless there’s real bipartisan support, it’s not going to pass.”
Whether the Senate will change hands—something that looks less likely now, as Norton realized on
primary night—is one of three big X factors that could shape D.C.’s future relationship with its
federal overlords. With only one chamber, the GOP would have less power to meddle.
A second factor is just what kind of Republicans arrive and what kind of Democrats survive. The
candidates primed to win competitive races are more conservative—more like Chaffetz—than many
Republicans from Congresses past. There’s a perfect example in Tom Davis’s old district, currently
represented by Democrat Gerry Connolly. If Republican candidate Keith Fimian wins, he’ll be the
first Home Rule-era representative from Northern Virginia to oppose a vote for the District.
“I think our founders are smart people and they wrote the Constitution the way they did,” Fimian
said in a July appearance on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, “and I think it’s good the way it is.” Just in
case anyone missed his point: “Many people that live in the District choose to live there, and they
do so knowing they’re not able to vote.”
The third X factor is Chaffetz’s ambition. Some members of Congress keep mum about their future
plans. Chaffetz doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he wants to unseat Republican incumbent Orrin
Hatch in 2012. At the same Utah GOP convention that tossed out Bennett for being too moderate, a
poll of delegates revealed that a majority would consider replacing Hatch, who gets dinged for the
same alleged apostasy. Another 18 months of Tea Party could make Chaffetz the replacement.
“Let’s say I’m a definite maybe at this point,” he says.
A looming Senate run—especially a run from the right against a powerful incumbent—could make
Chaffetz particularly hard on the District. After all, what better way appeal to Utah conservatives
than to push their agenda on District residents?

Chaffetz’s lonely battles against the D.C. Council didn’t go unnoticed this year. “I find it appalling
that our nation’s capital would sanction gay marriage in any way,” says Gayle Ruzicka, the
president of Utah’s conservative Eagle Forum, who gave Chaffetz crucial help in 2008. “When he
was taking a lead in trying to stop that, we noticed it back here. He was a brand-new freshman in an
important position, and he had the courage to speak out. That doesn’t always happen.”
On the other hand, the Tea Party types who ousted Bennett and feel lukewarm about Hatch may not
match the old-line social conservatives when it comes to beating up on the District. David Kirkham,
one of Utah’s key Tea Party leaders, says Chaffetz’s moves have gotten plenty of ink back home.
But “Don’t Tread On Me” voters might also get turned off by the sight of Chaffetz treading on
others. The same slogan on District license plates also adorns Tea Party banners: “No Taxation
Without Representation.”
Here’s the flip side of the factor that so worries Eleanor Holmes Norton. Those first-time politicians
and Tea Partiers who wind up in Congress have ideas about the Constitution that are simultaneously
simple—obey it!—and complicated. Yes, the Constitution is clear on the rights of District residents.
But how can you remain true to its values if you deny 600,000 taxpaying Americans representation
in the body that sets their taxes? DC Vote has dispatched activists to Tea Party protests; the visitors
are often surprised to learn about the city’s bizarre governing set-up.
“We’re big believers in state’s rights,” says Kirkham. “I don’t think [Chaffetz] would do this, but if
he were to arbitrarily do something against the constitutional guidelines we have or against the will
of the people of Washington, we wouldn’t like that.”
If that sounds confusing, it is. But if Republicans take Congress, get used to it. At least part of the
future of D.C. will depend on the mood on the street in Provo, Utah. And the fight to keep the feds
out of local affairs may come down to persuading the Tea Party that local control shouldn’t end at
the District line.