[Mb-civic] Pursuing a Fast Track To Party Leadership - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Pursuing a Fast Track To Party Leadership
Blunt Builds Network, Delivers Votes

By Shailagh Murray and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 1, 2005; Page A07

In the fall of 1996, when Roy Blunt of Missouri first ran for Congress, 
he made an auspicious visit to Capitol Hill.

First he stopped in to see Rep. Mel Hancock, the man he hoped to 
replace. Hancock urged Blunt to seek the freshman seat on the 
leadership-heavy Republican Steering Committee. "That puts you in the 
room with everybody here," Blunt recalls Hancock told him.

Then Blunt paid a courtesy call to Rep. Tom DeLay, a Texan who had 
ascended to the number-three-ranking whip job in 10 short years. "I left 
that meeting thinking, this is a great guy to work with," Blunt said in 
an interview yesterday. He consulted with DeLay over the course of his 
campaign and arrived in Washington as the protege of one of the most 
powerful men in town.

Blunt would outpace his onetime mentor by rising from lowly Missouri 
freshman to interim majority leader in just nine years. When DeLay was 
forced to step down as majority leader on Wednesday, after he was 
indicted by an Austin grand jury, Blunt went to House Speaker J. Dennis 
Hastert (R-Ill.) and argued persuasively that he should get the job.

His challenge now -- many lawmakers and aides agree -- is to prove his 
mettle in a higher-profile post while not appearing too ambitious, lest 
he become a threat to DeLay, who has vowed to return to his job when his 
legal problems are resolved.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/30/AR2005093001784.html?nav=hcmodule
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