By Emelie Rutherford
A Navy-focused lawmaker ousted in the Nov. 2 elections said he hopes to continue working on shipbuilding matters once he returns to the private sector after the new year.
Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), who will serve his final month as chairman of the House Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces subcommittee in December, said working on military matters was “by far the favorite part” of his job. And now the lawmaker, who often challenged the Navy and shipbuilders on troubled programs, wants to work more closely with those companies.
“No one can actually make an offer until January, but I’m hoping it has something to do with maritime,” Taylor said about his post-congressional career during an interview. “I’m hoping it will have something to do with shipbuilding.”
Taylor, who was first elected to Congress in 1989, lost his reelection bid to Republican Steven Palazzo this month during the elections that swept at least nine House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Democrats out of office and gave Republicans majority control of the House. Palazzo won 52 percent of the vote to Taylor’s 47 percent after a bruising battle in which the challenger, among other things, sought to portray Taylor as too close to outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Taylor has been a member of the Blue Dog Coalition of conservative Democrats and outspoken on matters related to Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 storm that devastated the Gulf Coast and destroyed his Bay St. Louis, Miss., home. Still, he said working on the HASC was the highlight of his time in the House.
“I’m not going to miss the town hall meetings, I’m not going to miss the hate mail, but I really did enjoy my time on the Armed Services Committee,” Taylor said.
He pointed to his effort to secure Mine Resistant Ambush Resistant vehicles for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he said he took satisfaction from “knowing that if you pick up the phone and you call the right admiral, the right general, things get done.”
Taylor, who served in the United States Coast Guard Reserve in the 1970s and 1980s, said before entering Congress he didn’t give the process of actually building ships “much of a second thought.”
“But, over the course of the couple decades, I have absolutely become a shipbuilding nut,” he said.
Taylor and Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), the former ranking member of the Seapower subpanel, traveled to visit many major shipbuilding companies, after which they lamented that U.S. shipbuilders lagged behind foreign competitors.
“We’ve got to get better,” Taylor said last week about the American yards. “You know the government realizes that these yards really only have one customer. And our nation does have a vested interest in modernizing these years, because it’s in our nation’s best longterm interest.”
Thus, he said he hopes “that something like that would come along” for a future job.
Northrop Grumman‘s [NOC] Ingalls shipyard is the biggest employer in the Mississippi 4th congressional district Taylor has represented.
The Los Angeles-based company announced in July it was consolidating its Gulf Coast shipyards at its Mississippi facilities and explore selling off its shipbuilding business.
Campaign finance records show Northrop Grumman was Taylor’s top campaign contributor. Its employees donated $13,450 to the Democrat, but no significant amounts to Republican Palazzo, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Three of the top four HASC Democrats–Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), Vice Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.), and Taylor–lost their reelection battles. The panel’s No. 3 Democrat, Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D- Texas), is in the midst of a recount after initial tallies showed him losing to Republican Blake Farenthold. Six other committee Democrats lost on Nov. 2: Reps. Jim Marshall (Ga.), Carol Shea-Porter (N.H.), Glenn Nye (Va.), Frank Kratovil (Md.), Bobby Bright (Ala.), and Scott Murphy (N.Y.).
Skelton, who lost his reelection bid to Republican Vicky Hartzler, has been in office since 1977. He declined, through a spokesman, to comment on his future plans.