When we moved from Ohio to Virginia in 1963, one of our new neighbors was a congressman from Ohio.
Delbert Latta represented his northwest Ohio from 1959-89, and one of the things followers of politics might remember him for was the 1981 Gramm-Latta Omnibus Reconciliation Bill, which cleared the way for much of President Reagan’s agenda. He was very conservative, and voted against impeaching President Nixon in 1974.
He does, however, deserve considerable credit for supporting the Civil Rights Bill in 1964 and the Voting Rights Bill in 1965.
He used to go back to his district as often as he could, and his method of getting there was amazing. His district was 500 miles away, and he drove.
Boy, did he drive. I remember him telling my mother he made the trip in four and a half hours.
Yes, you read right. He also stopped for soup in Breezewood, Pa.
It’s amazing what you can do when you have Congressional license plates.
I’ll always remember him for being the first one to take me to see the Capitol in the early summer of 1964. He showed me around, and then because he had work to do, he gave me a gallery pass and left me on my own.
That was the day I met and briefly conversed with two great men, legendary Senator Everett M. Dirksen, and Hubert H. Humphrey, who would become vice president later that year.
I’m long past remembering details. My long-term memory isn’t just Swiss cheese, it’s grated Swiss cheese. But I’ll never forget how I felt on that day, and I’ll remember Delbert Latta as maybe the conservative Republican I respect the most. He lived to be 96, and he saw his son Bob win his former seat in Congress in 2006.
Times change, and Bob is probably more conservative in some ways than his father was. He voted against impeaching Donald Trump last year, just like nearly all the other Republican members of the House. But this past week, when Trump tried to get Congress to challenge the votes from the swing states, more than half of House Republicans supported him.
Bob Latta didn’t. He’s in a very conservative state. In fact, he’s one district over from provocateur Gym Jordan. It certainly would have been easy to go along with the Sedition Caucus.
But he didn’t.
In a statement issued January 6th:
“I believe the President had the right to go to court to contest states where cases of election irregularities were presented. In the dozens of federal and state court cases that were filed on behalf of the President, the President did not prevail. I supported an amicus brief that was very narrow in scope. It asked the United States Supreme Court to answer the question of the Electors Clause in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of whether only the state legislatures could set the rules for choosing the electors in their respective states, as is so clearly stated in the Constitution, or could other state officials or parties do so. The Court did not address the issue, and it will be a simmering problem in presidential elections in the future. As called on by Senator Rob Portman, I support the establishment of a blue ribbon bipartisan panel to investigate the 2020 election and to put those findings into practice into coming elections.
“While I believe these actions were taken appropriately, I have taken a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I take that oath very seriously.
“The Constitution does not grant Congress the authority to overturn elections and overrule state and federal courts. We must preserve the Electoral College as outlined in the Constitution because without it, the entire landscape of electing the president would be irreparably altered for the worse. It is for these reasons that I will cast my vote to uphold the Constitution, and I cannot support the objections.”
Well done, Bob.
Your dad would be proud.