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When Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) visited then-Speaker Dennis Hastert’s (R-Ill.) Washington office several years ago, the former wrestling coach greeted him with a big hug.
“What was that all about?” Young asked.
Hastert told him he thought Young had died, saying, “I was down at the White House and an aide came in and announced you had died of a heart attack.”
The same day, two men walked into Young’s office and began looking around the spacious blue-walled interior. They explained to Young’s wife, Lu, that they were checking out the office space in the wake of her husband’s death.
During an interview with The Hill, Young cited the stories as an important lesson: Politicians have a short shelf life.
The 18-term lawmaker said, “The world doesn’t revolve around you when you are no longer alive or when you are no longer the chairman.”
It was not long ago that many activities in the House revolved around Young. As the chairman of the Resources Committee and later the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, members of Congress and their staffs were well-aware that Young alone made the final decisions on what projects would be included in legislation under his jurisdiction.
But times have changed, and Young is in a very different position today.
Now the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, the 75–year-old lawmaker has been cast by Democrats and some members of his own party as the lead abuser of what they say is the broken system of congressional earmarks. SAFETEA-LU, a bill Young has cited as one of his proudest achievements (the “Lu” is an homage to Young’s wife), has come under scrutiny as a result of his involvement with the so-called “Coconut Road” earmark.
The House and Senate voted in April to support a Department of Justice investigation into the controversial way in which the earmark made it into law.
Back home in Alaska, Young faces his first serious primary challenge since 1992 as his legal fees mount as a result of allegations of illegal campaign donations. He is also reportedly under investigation by the FBI. And to top it all off, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) regularly mocks Young’s earmarks on the presidential campaign trail.
But despite all that, Young appears unfazed.
Throughout the interview, Young appeared strikingly calm and confident, leaning back in a leather armchair surrounded by 36 years of hunting trophies and framed pictures chronicling the nearly four decades he has served in the lower chamber.
His hostility toward the press has been well-chronicled, most notably when he made an obscene gesture at a New York Times reporter who was pressing him on the Coconut Road earmark.Yet Young does not dwell on the idea of getting “fair” treatment — from the media, his congressional colleagues or anyone else.
“You can’t think of being fair and not fair … You can’t and survive,” he said. “If you keep saying, ‘Well, this is not fair,’ you start feeling sorry for yourself, you can’t go forward.”
Young described his transition into the minority as relatively easy. He explained that, given that his first 22 years were spent in the minority, the win in 1994 was more jarring than the loss in 2006.
He doesn’t dwell on his loss of power and acknowledged that fair-weather friends have fallen by the wayside.
“My good friends are still with me and those that are ne’er-do-wells … those that needed me and smiled, and asked me, and received [the request] 90 percent of the time, I knew that they would not be there when I was no longer chairman.
“This is a very cold-blooded business,” he said.
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