While Republican members of Congress in Northern Virginia held onto their seats, the Democratic House takeover will spell a loss of the committee leadership they had maintained in the GOP-controlled legislature.

Reps. Frank Wolf and Tom Davis are both influential, veteran representatives and are considered leaders within their party.

Wolf, a senior member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, is chairman of its Science, State, Justice and Commerce subcommittee. Davis is chairman of the Committee on Government Reform, an investigative panel.

Both congressmen are now faced with giving up their leadership roles to the Democrats.

This story continues below
Advertisement

The current ranking member of the Government Reform Committee is Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif. The appropriations subcommittee’s ranking member is Alan B. Mollohan, D-W.Va.

“[Wolf and Davis] were in leadership positions ... they will now be in a position mostly to object,” George Mason University political science professor Toni Travis said.

Wolf spokesman Dan Scandling noted the congressman worked in a majority-Democrat House during the 1980s and early 1990s.

“He was pretty darn effective during that time, but he was in the minority,” Scandling said.

The House and Senate elections on Tuesday, which were widely seen as a referendum on the Bush administration and the Iraq War, swept Republicans out of power in the House and may have also tilted the Senate narrowly to the Democrats.

In some part, Wolf and Davis derive political staying power from their powerful positions in Congress.

How the loss of the high-placed chairmanships will affect the future is unclear.

“It might [damage them] in the long term,” said George Washington University public policy professor William Adams. “I don’t think it will do much damage to them in the short term.”

Part of the Washington DC Examiner's 2006 election coverage

wflook@dcexaminer.com