Rep. Henry Waxman of California won backing from a House Democratic leadership panel Wednesday to replace veteran Rep. John Dingell as chairman of the committee with oversight of energy and global warming.
Waxman won a 25-22 vote in the Democratic Steering and Policy panel, which is packed with allies of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a rival of Dingell. The panel also is dominated by more liberal members who are ideologically in tune with Waxman.
But Waxman and Dingell, D-Mich., will still square off on Thursday when rank-and-file Democrats vote. Dingell's allies believe he'll do better among the broader Democratic caucus.
"That Steering and Policy Committee doesn't reflect the makeup of the caucus," said Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., a leader of an effort to keep Dingell in place. "It's heavily weighted with people more likely to be supportive of Henry."
Dingell, 82, has been the committee's top Democrat for 28 years, and is an important ally of automakers and electric utilities. The Energy and Commerce panel is one of the most important in the House, with sweeping jurisdiction over energy, the environment, consumer protection, and health care programs like the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program.
Pelosi did not take sides publicly, but is a home-state ally of Waxman and has tangled with Dingell in the past. She has not pressured members to back Waxman, Doyle said. Two years ago, Pelosi backed Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., over Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., in the race for majority leader. Hoyer won handily.
In 2002, Pelosi supported Dingell's primary campaign opponent. Last year, in a move viewed as undercutting Dingell's committee jurisdiction on the global warming issue, she created a special panel led by liberal Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey to make the case for bigger reductions in greenhouse gases.
Pelosi names 12 members to the panel, but did not speak on behalf of either candidate, said spokesman Brendan Daly.
In 1996, the last time the leadership panel tried to oust a top committee Democrat, Rep. Henry Gonzales of the Banking Committee won a vote of the full caucus, overturning the leadership panel's decision.
Doyle said Wednesday's vote might have gone Dingell's way but for Democratic rules that barred three committee chairmen who support Dingell from voting because they had not officially been reappointed. Another Dingell supporter missed the vote, he said.
Last month, Dingell and Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., released a draft of a global warming bill for reducing greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050. That reduction is in line with what Obama has proposed.
Environmentalists and some liberal Democrats, however, see Dingell as an obstacle to stricter fuel economy standards for cars and trucks and cleaner fuels, as Obama also has advocated. They see in Waxman, whose district includes Beverly Hills, an opportunity to push through a more ambitious environmental agenda now that Democrats have expanded their majorities in Congress and will take over the White House.
Dingell's supporters say his legislation has a better chance of winning support from some Republicans and conservative Democrats, many of them on his 57-member committee, because it slowly reduces emissions to buy time for the technology to develop.
Waxman, 69, is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has spent the past two years taking the Bush administration to task over global warming and muzzling government scientists. It also has investigated the White House's political operation, the use of steroids in sports and, most recently, abuses behind the financial collapse.