Cummings, opened his remarks with a call for a “new beginning.” The top Democrat on the committee, Maryland Rep. Just a few minutes later, the committee Issa used to lead met for the first time since he handed over the gavel to Chaffetz. ![]() When a reporter approached him in a House hallway to request an interview, he refused and said that the result would be a “hit piece.” Issa declined a request to discuss his plans or past performance. ![]() Issa, who made his fortune manufacturing anti-theft devices for cars, has held 37 patents, according to his office. “He’s very much going to be active and robust in policy and intellectual property issues, which is really in his wheelhouse,” said Kurt Bardella, a former aide to Issa who is now a private media consultant. His new committee assignments - he was also named to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in December - will put him in the middle of compelling issues. And Issa has succeeded before in surprising ways, even as he took on a highly partisan role: He worked with Democrats to oppose anti-piracy measures that opponents said would undermine free speech on the Internet. Issa’s allies say he retains leverage he is a key ally to Silicon Valley, leading a subcommittee that oversees patents. Two factors get in Issa’s way: The Republican Party imposes term limits on its chairmen, and many members of the party philosophically oppose the type of sweeping legislation championed by Waxman and other liberals. Waxman of Beverly Hills, a Democrat who left Congress this year after four decades with a legacy as a legislative titan. He appears unlikely to follow the path of one of his predecessors in the post, former Rep. Issa spent $10 million trying to unseat her in 1998 but failed to win the Republican nomination. Issa, now beginning his eighth term in Congress, finds himself at a crossroads.ĭespite a personal fortune that gives him a huge advantage in elections, there was little clamoring among California Republicans for him to reprise a run for the Senate seat that Democrat Barbara Boxer will relinquish after the 2016 election. “It’s not the ‘Jason Chaffetz Show,’” he said at another point. ![]() “Darrell Issa didn’t do many reports,” Chaffetz told reporters in December, after Republican leaders tapped him, according to Roll Call. When he took over in January, Chaffetz replaced many of Issa’s staff members and engineered the move of portraits of Issa and other former chairmen. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, campaigned to succeed Issa on a promise to run the committee differently. (He served one term as the committee’s top Republican, when Democrats held the majority, and then a pair of two-year terms as its chairman.) Then they thwarted his attempt to secure a rare exception to the limit on how long he could lead the oversight committee. personnel in Benghazi, Libya, by establishing a new committee to focus on the incident. Issa’s influence began to wane last year, when party leaders diverted attention from his high-drama investigation of the deadly 2012 attack against U.S.
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