Posted on 11/20/2005 3:14:35 PM PST by radar101
Rep. Jean Schmidt, Ohio’s newest member of Congress, was in one of the first hearings of her congressional career a couple weeks ago, and the testimony was enough to make her jaw drop.
The governor of Louisiana, under questioning by a transportation subcommittee on energy and water, said she had no idea how much the state had spent responding to Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, meanwhile, asked for federal money for a light rail system for his city.
Afterward, Schmidt mused with an aide about both statements, shaking her head in wonder about what she perceived as a desire to spend without any accountability.
The next day, she’d go to the floor of the House to caution against flagrant spending on the disaster without accountability. “We’re not sitting on Santa’s knee,” she said a week later, still amazed at what she’d heard.
Two months after taking over the seat long held by Rep. Rob Portman, Schmidt, a former Ohio House member and former president of Right to Life for Greater Cincinnati, is not yet inured to Washington spin.
The bureaucratic foibles that are commonplace in the capital both amaze and outrage her. She will call her twin sister, Jennifer Black, in Ohio and tell such stories with a “can you believe this one?” attitude.
But mostly, they make her angry. And Schmidt, 53, is not afraid of a fight.
She got this seat after a bruising 11-person primary and a special election that was closer than expected in one of the reddest districts in Ohio.
But her triumph was a welcome reversal of her last campaign, a state Senate bid that ended in a recount and a 22-vote loss.
Schmidt, of Loveland, cites her three years in the Ohio Legislature as training ground for Congress. During the subcommittee hearing on Louisiana, she knew to ask what Louisiana’s tax and expenditure limit was. But her lack of seniority meant she couldn’t ask questions. So she convinced a colleague to ask the question instead.
“This is like the Ohio Legislature on a bigger scale,” she said. “I liken it to running a half-marathon versus a full marathon.”
The marathon began even before she was sworn in. On Aug. 28, a week before she was to be formally sworn in, a railroad tanker car near Cincinnati leaked toxic styrene, spurring the evacuation of surrounding communities.
Schmidt called upon Ohio colleague Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Cleveland, chairman of a subcommittee on railroad issues, for help. The two met with the president of Rail America the day after Schmidt was sworn in to demand a full report on what happened.
Since then, she has presided over the House several times to moderate the after-hours special orders debates. She has introduced legislation that would force groups that run anonymous political ads to declare themselves after phone banks called to attack her and other Republicans in Congress. She introduced a resolution recommending Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama adopt uniform statewide building codes to mitigate damage in future hurricanes.
She also has spoken on issues as varied as female astronauts to fiscal responsibility to memorializing southern Ohio soldiers who have died in Iraq. She has cosponsored a resolution defending the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, as well as one that would require women seeking an abortion to be told the process would cause pain to the fetus.
“I feel like I have hit the ground running,” she says.
Running and racing have been themes in her life.
She’s one of four children of the late Gus Hoffman, the founder of Hoffman Auto Racing, who started by running sprint cars and midgets and saw a dream realized when he entered a car in the Indy 500 in 1973. The car didn’t race that year, but did the next.
Schmidt, who grew up loving the smell of methanol — “Not ethanol!” she emphasizes, anticipating the error — and the deafening roar of cars whizzing by, became a fixture at the tracks during an era when so few women attended races that tracks often lacked women’s restrooms.
In 1973, the first year women were permitted in the pits at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Schmidt got in. By the late ’70s, she and her sister were fully uniformed scorekeepers for Hoffman Auto Racing — two young women relishing a traditionally man’s world.
“We’re not a liberal family,” said Jennifer Black, Schmidt’s sister. “We’re not a family where women’s lib was promoted. But silently, you can break barriers even when you’re not out there being a bra burner.”
Schmidt broke another barrier after the birth of her daughter Emilie in the late ’70s. Struggling with baby blues and baby weight, she opened a magazine one day with an article about running. Schmidt put on a pair of beat-up sneakers and hit the road, beginning a hobby that would result in her running 58 marathons, so far.
She said in the early years of her running, she’d often wear men’s shorts and shoes because women’s running gear wasn’t commonly available.
She still coaches a junior high cross-country team, arranging practices around her congressional schedule. At one match, she ran into Portman, who’d come to watch one of his children run.
Both running and racing, Schmidt said, prepared her for politics. By watching pit crews work together to put a car on the track, she got an inkling of the team work she’d later need in political campaigns. And by running marathons, she said, she got the drive to follow through.
Two months into her term, she already has prospective opponents for 2006.
State Rep. Tom Brinkman, a Republican from Cincinnati who opposed her in the congressional primary, depicts her as a lock-step Republican vote even when the Republicans are wrong. He’s considering running against her next year.
“Jean Schmidt is a creature of leadership,” he said. “I think that’s going to be her m.o. in D.C. It’s not necessarily something I think the voters would want. They want somebody who’s going to be independent.”
On Oct. 16, Schmidt completed her 58th marathon in Columbus. The run took her past the Ohio Statehouse. She said she thought about her years in the legislature, what they’d taught her, how she might apply the lessons in her new role in Congress. And it made her realize, once again, that she was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“It was,” she said “an emotional rush.”
She was shouted down by Democrats................... http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/article2784.html On October 15th, Congresswoman Jean Schmidt of Ohio's Second District attended and successfully completed a Concealed Handgun License training class held in the Clermont County town of Miamiville, near Cincinnati.
God Bless Jean Schmidt. She sounds like an antidote to that fiasco Nancy Pelosi. Go Jean Go!
---sounds like a fresh breeze through a Congress that sorely needs a few--
Now taking bets on how long before the "moderate Republicans" (sic-sic) refer to Ms. Schmidt as "extremist."
I just hope she doesn't lose her edge after a couple of terms. Go Jean Go. Schmidt happens.
but .. everybody is leaving out the information that the MARINE WHO MADE THE STATEMENT is another congressman.
Why in hell is this being hidden! I'm sick of it.
When the Congressional Record is updated to include Friday's activity, this is where you can find the info:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/crecord/05crpgs.html
Anybody have her email address? I want to drop her a word of encouragement. Although I am not in Ohio (I actually live in the Peoples Republic of New Jersey) I thought she might like to know that people all over are following her career and cheering for her.
The media has distorted and deceived about this statement. She never said that John Murtha was a coward.
Her family's business, Hoffman Racing, had young drivers Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon.
http://www.hoffmanracing.com/about_us.htm
She makes me proud to be a conservetive Buckeye.
My congratulations to the voters of Ohio for electing a Rep. with...gumption.
I know that.
I like her! Watch for the MSN to trash her on a regular basis.
That is alot of miles ...
OVERHOLSER: Oh, I don't think so. I think we've reached a real tipping point about news about the war. And there is a very strong "anything goes" atmosphere here.
But what we saw on the House floor with the junior representative talking about Marines don't cut and run to Murtha, who is a Marine, who could not have made a lot of such a story?
A mite misleading -- like damn near a lie! It was another Marine talking, not the junior representative. Boy, that "Bush derangement syndrome" has got every lefty frazzled.
This is not the only faulty reporting about this that I've noticed.
Little wonder that dislogue between left and right is almost (entirely?) impossible. MSM employees can't report. What good are they?
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