WASHINGTON-Thomas J. Bliley Jr. never strayed far from home, which for the powerful Republican chairman of the House Commerce Committee is historic Richmond, Va., where the tobacco industry, statues of Confederate heroes and the century-old Bliley funeral home business stand tall.
These days, Bliley is trying to make history in the nation’s capital by overhauling 60-year-old telecommunications laws so that competition replaces regulation in wireless, local telephone, long-distance telephone, broadcasting, cable TV and telecommunications equipment markets.
“I think Judge [Harold] Greene has done a good job, but I think it’s time to move on,” said Bliley, referring to the man who continues to oversee the 1982 consent decree that broke up AT&T-leaving it as the top long-distance carrier-and created seven regional Bell telephone companies to handle local phone service.
Bliley won applause from Republicans and Democrats alike after shepherding telecommunications reform legislation through his committee late last month. Even liberal Democrat Edward Markey of Massachusetts publicly praised Bliley for his evenhandedness before joining four other Democrats to oppose the measure.
“I think the key to this legislation is opening the local loop to competition,” Bliley explained in an interview with RCR, “and I think it will result in better choices for consumers and better prices.”
The problem is Bliley’s telecommunications bill is not the only one in the House. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., is pushing another telecommunications reform bill of secondary standing that, unlike Bliley’s, has a role for the Justice Department.
The Democratic White House is not thrilled about any of the Republican telecommunications bills, hinting at a veto unless consumers and competition are protected, although it does share Hyde’s view that enhanced antitrust oversight is necessary during the transition to competition. It will be up to the House Rules Committee, not to mention Bliley and Hyde, to work out differences before legislation hits the House floor next month.
Another obstacle confronting Bliley is the Senate, which under the GOP is less disciplined than the House and which last year failed under Democratic rule to approve telecommunications legislation that the House passed by an overwhelming margin.
Bliley is a beneficiary rather than a product of the Republican revolution that ended Democratic control of Congress last fall, thanks to a slick campaign worthy of Madison Avenue-called the Contract with America-that pledged to shrink government and return power to the people.
Knowing that is less important than it sounds, but helps explain the conservative Virginian who, though not flashy, distinguishes himself from others with his thinning, neatly combed white hair, wire-rim glasses and trademark bow tie.
Bliley is what Bliley does.
“I think with Bliley, what you see is what you get,” said Robert Stewart, a lobbyist for Pacific Telesis Group, one of seven Baby Bells disgruntled with Bliley’s approach to telecommunications reform.
Most Thursdays, the influential Virginia lawmaker takes a train home to Richmond for a day of district work and a weekend with family and friends.
“In Richmond, he’s just known as Tom Bliley,” says Charles Boesel, Bliley’s press aide. “He is `God, family and country.’ “
That the Bliley name is big back home is not entirely attributable to the family funeral business that goes back to 1874.
Bliley began his political life as a Democrat on the Richmond City Council in 1968 and went on to become mayor from 1970 to 1977, a racially turbulent time of school desegregation and busing. He changed his political affiliation when he ran for Congress for the first time in 1980, believing the country was moving too far left.
Despite the racial turmoil of previous years, according to Boesel, Bliley won a respectable percentage of African American votes during his early congressional campaigns.
His taller-than-average frame moves forward with a slow, steady gait. He knows he’ll eventually get to where he’s going. His gestures and movements are stiff, but apparently more fluid and graceful on the tennis court he’s so fond of.
When he speaks, it’s with a snarling Southern accent. He doesn’t smile much, looking annoyed at times and his sense of humor is typically subtle, sometimes searing. In person, he is quite the gentleman.
After learning lobbyists paid money to people to stand in line for them to gain entry to the Commerce Committee markup of the telecommunications bill on May 25, Bliley jested that House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, will now want to auction seats.
“He knows what he’s going to know about something,” remarked one former Commerce subcommittee staffer, awkwardly yet aptly describing Bliley’s approach to issues.
Other observers say Bliley is deceptively sharp and a quick study, but not necessarily prone to delve into the technical details of every matter.
“He stares you straight in the eye, gives you a stern fatherly look, and tells you `You better resolve it [an industry dispute] or I’ll resolve it for you,’ ” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, in a veiled reference to the wireless resale controversy that top GOP committee members wish would go away but instead has remained alive.
Indeed, Bliley and other committee members’ aversion to pre-empting local zoning regulation of antenna siting forced commercial wireless carriers to adopt a different lobbying strategy to accomplish the same and still be acceptable to federalist-minded GOP lawmakers.
Bliley, 63, is unlike younger rabble-rousers of the GOP for whom dismantling the federal bureaucracy is a religious mission. His conservatism is seasoned and more mature than their’s. He lacks their energy, fervor and boldness; they lack his political experience and skill at negotiating compromises necessary to convert the GOP ideology they share into legislation.
Bliley, for example, had the job of soliciting the sponsorship of Commerce Committee ranking minority member John Dingell, D-Mich., prior to the introduction of telecommunications reform legislation early last month.
House telecommunications subcommittee Chairman Jack Fields, R-Texas, was to get Markey-behind only Dingell in committee Democratic seniority-on board. Dingell signed on as a cosponsor and voted for Bliley’s bill. Markey shunned the bill completely.
Neither a maverick nor a free thinker, Bliley is much more as far as the House Republican leadership is concerned: He is the consummate team player. To help carry out his ambitious legislative agenda, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., handpicked Bliley after last fall’s midterm elections to head the Commerce Committee, even though the older and affable Carlos Moorhead, R-Calif., was in line for the job.
Once there, Bliley had to fight off rabid Republicans who wanted to substantially dilute the committee’s broad oversight of telecommunications, healthcare, Wall Street, energy and other business sectors. The GOP anger, of course, was directed at Dingell who ruled the panel with an iron fist for more than a decade. Bliley implored fellow Republicans not to exact their revenge on him, finally winning their support to keep the panel largely intact.
Dingell, with his hulking presence and booming voice, flaunted power. Bliley- far less animated and dramatic-coolly manages it. And he avoids the media spotlight that frequently shone on his predecessor, who was keen on government and industry investigations.
“He’s got good reasons for what he does and says,” said Thomas Wanley, a long-time aide to former Rep. Philip Sharp, D-Ind., before joining the congressional affairs office of the Personal Communications Industry Association. Wanley characterized Bliley as cautious and thorough, not inclined to “knee-jerk stuff.”
But make no mistake, Bliley i
s in control, and in his own way is every bit as influential as was Dingell. In some ways, more. In fact, Bliley’s management style is reported to have caused friction with other Republican subcommittee heads.
Fields, for instance, was more involved than Bliley in crafting telecommunications legislation and negotiating deals with warring industry groups. Yet Bliley had the final say, reshaping key elements to his liking.
Bliley ordered changes to scale back Federal Communications Commission regulation over time and to require facilities-based competition in local residential and business markets before allowing the seven regional Bell telephone companies into the long-distance arena.
This, of course, has the Baby Bells hopping mad and is bound to rekindle allegations that Bliley is a long-distance sympathizer. (The other big knock against Bliley is that he is not big on regulating cigarette manufacturers because of the Philip Morris Inc. tobacco giant’s presence in the Virginia lawmaker’s neck of the woods. For his part, Bliley smokes a pipe.)
Before redistricting in 1992, AT&T Corp.’s printed circuit board manufacturing plant of 2,100 workers was located in Bliley’s district. Many AT&T employees still live in Bliley’s 7th District.
Common Cause, a lobbying group that advocates campaign finance reform, found that over the past decade, AT&T was the single largest political donor in the telecommunications industry and that Bliley was the top recipient of political action committee money from the long-distance industry.
Yet Bliley is not unique in that respect, being just one of many Commerce Committee members to have received a portion of the almost $20 million doled out by Baby Bells and long-distance firms from 1984 through 1993.
More recently, Bliley has come under fire in the news media for holding stock in companies over which the Commerce Committee has jurisdiction.
“Never have Chairman Bliley’s decisions been motivated on his part for personal gain, and at no time has any appreciable gain occurred because of actions on his part,” said Mike Collins, press secretary for the Commerce Committee. Bliley has turned over his investments to an independent financial advisor.
Despite the criticism, Bliley is respected for who he is, what he does and how he does it.
“He’s a man who stands on principles,” said CTIA’s Wheeler.
He’s the man Gingrich is counting on to get telecommunications reform through the House this summer.
