One day after winning the race for Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, state Rep. Jaime Herrera was anticipating a weeklong getaway with her husband, making plans for a soon-to-follow trip to Washington, D.C., and celebrating her 32nd birthday.
Herrera, a Republican, worked on Capitol Hill in 2006 and 2007 before returning home to Clark County to run for the Legislature and knows her way around the nation’s capital.
She knows where she hopes her new D.C. office won’t be: on the relatively inaccessible fifth floor of the Cannon House Office Building.
She knows what committee assignments she’s hoping for: House Energy and Commerce, where she could put her background on health policy to work, and Oversight, where she could help scour the federal budget for spending cuts.
She even knows presumptive House Speaker-elect John Boehner, R-Ohio, who chaired the House Education and Labor Committee while she served on U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ staff in D.C.
“I will tell you (Boehner) ran a tight ship on Education and Labor,” she said. “He took that assignment and worked it hard.”
As a member of the large new Republican freshman class in Congress, Herrera will be on a conference call with Boehner and U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the week after next.
Herrera defeated Democrat Denny Heck with 53 percent of the vote to 47 percent for Heck, according to the latest election results released Wednesday by the Secretary of State. She carried five of the seven counties in the 3rd District, including Clark County. Heck won in Thurston and Pacific counties.
“It’s sinking in,” Herrera said Wednesday. “I’m excited. I have this amazing, tremendous responsibility and it is not something everyone gets a chance to do. It’s going to be some of the most challenging times to govern that this nation has seen.”
Her to-do list also includes finding a place to live in the nation’s capital, locating office space in Vancouver, hiring a staff, and working with U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, and his staff to accomplish a smooth transition of constituent casework. She and her husband, Daniel Beutler, plan to hold onto their rented house in Camas for trips home to the district.
Baird, a Democrat who endorsed Heck, called Herrera on Tuesday night to congratulate her and to tell her he had instructed his staff to help her with the transition.
“I’ll be available to her and her staff as a resource,” said Baird, who is stepping down after 12 years in Congress. “It’s a pretty steep learning curve.”
Baird said he also called Heck.
“I thanked Denny for running. It was a very difficult time for someone to run for office. He ran a hard race. He spoke truth even when it wasn’t necessarily easy.”
Heck, 58 and semi-retired after a long career in politics and the private sector, said Wednesday he needs to recharge before he decides what comes next and before he can gain perspective on his nonstop 11-month campaign for Congress.
“What I’m going to do is get rested up,” he said. “The fair thing to say is, I have zero regrets. I think I’m the better for it. It’s an incredibly enriching experience. It really is filled with moments of poignancy.”
In his concession speech at the Hilton Vancouver Washington on Tuesday night, Heck evoked Lou Gehrig, the legendary New York Yankees first baseman who played in 2,130 consecutive games from 1925 to 1939.
On July 4, 1939., Gehrig stood before 60,000 fans at Yankee Stadium to confirm that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, now called Lou Gehrig’s disease, which causes spinal paralysis, and which would take his life two years later.
“Today I consider myself the luckiest person on the face of the Earth,” Gehrig said then.
Heck said that’s how he feels, too.
Gehrig “recounted all the blessings in his life and that’s what I did last night,” he said. “I have zero reason for complaint.”
