Longest-Serving Congresswoman Touts Seniority Amid Gerontocracy Fears

• Rep. Marcy Kaptur, 76, is the longest-serving girl within the historical past of the Home of Representatives.
• She faces a tricky re-election towards a controversial GOP opponent amid broader calls for brand new leaders.
• In an interview with Insider in Toledo, Kaptur touted the advantages that her seniority brings to her district.

TOLEDO, Ohio — Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur is going through what seems to be to be the hardest normal election of her practically 40-year lengthy political profession, although she balks on the notion that she’s by no means confronted a tricky race.

“Let me simply say: via my entire profession, there have been so many huge velocity bumps, okay?” the 76-year-old lawmaker instructed Insider throughout an interview in a staffer’s black Jeep following a press convention. 

Kaptur referenced a robust problem she confronted in 2010 from a Tea Social gathering-affiliated candidate who had a history of participating in Nazi re-enactments, in addition to a primary towards fellow Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich following redistricting in 2012.

“So it hasn’t been, like, a easy journey. It has been like this,” she mentioned, waving her arms up and down whereas making engine noises, showing to simulate a airplane experiencing turbulence. “That is what my profession has been like.”

Nonetheless, Kaptur has held on lengthy sufficient to turn out to be the longest-serving woman in the history of the House of Representatives in 2018. If she’s re-elected, she’ll surpass the 40-year report set by former Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland to turn out to be the longest-serving girl in congressional historical past.

It is a milestone that evokes a combination of admiration and exhaustion amongst her detractors, together with her Republican opponent JR Majewski, a right-wing Republican who’s courted controversy by selling the QAnon conspiracy idea and misrepresented his navy service. 

“On the finish of the day, Marcy Kaptur has spent 40 years in workplace, and she or he deserves recognition for that,” Majewski instructed attendees of a meet-and-greet occasion in a Toledo cafe final week. “However that does not imply we’re not going to retire her on November eighth.”

And Kaptur is looking for re-election as the subject of age and tenure in politics is more and more on the minds of voters. Insider lately explored America’s gerontocracy within the “Crimson, White, and Grey” mission, discovering, amongst different issues, that almost one in 4 members of Congress are of their 70s and 80s and that the overwhelming majority of Individuals view the more and more superior age of politicians as an issue.

‘Individuals right here have lots to lose’

Following redistricting this yr, Ohio’s ninth district shifted from a comparatively secure Democratic district that hugged Lake Erie — identified colloquially because the “snake by the lake” — to a Republican-leaning space that encompasses Toledo and a few surrounding rural areas.

However after Majewski was caught exaggerating his navy service, nationwide Republicans withdrew important investments that they had deliberate on his behalf. Nonetheless, he nonetheless might win. And the 42-year-old candidate has sought to make use of his opponent’s prolonged tenure to his benefit.

“Toledo is among the, I’d say most underrepresented, underserved, and under-realized cities in the USA,” mentioned Majewski, itemizing off issues together with crime, financial decline, and a constantly falling inhabitants. “When you think about all of that legacy, there’s one fixed, at the very least for the 40 years I have been round: it is Marcy Kaptur.”

However when requested in regards to the stakes of the race by Insider, Kaptur flipped that critique on its head, pointing to the advantages yielded by her prolonged tenure whilst she agreed that the district was “underrepresented.”

“Our purpose is to win and maintain on to the seniority we now have,” she mentioned. “Our seniority actually issues from the Nice Lakes, as a result of we’re very underrepresented regionally, with any committee, inside any chair, with any — they combine up Ohio with Iowa, as a result of we every have three vowels in our identify.”

Kaptur spoke with Insider following a press convention with native officers touting new federal investments within the Nice Lakes Restoration Initiative, an ongoing environmental enchancment mission within the area, as the results of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Regulation.

Owing to her seniority, Kaptur sits on the highly effective Home Appropriations Committee, the place she chairs the Subcommittee on Power and Water Growth. That offers her way more management than the typical member — particularly a freshman lawmaker, as Majewski could be — over how the federal authorities doles out cash. 

“It is lots for a neighborhood to surrender,” she mentioned. “Individuals right here have lots to lose.”

Even Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan, who has in any other case been vocal in regards to the want for generational change in his social gathering, instructed Insider it is essential for Kaptur to stay in workplace.

“She’s introduced again a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars} to Toledo,” the 10-term congressman mentioned after a city corridor occasion within the metropolis final week. “It will be silly for a neighborhood like this to not have her there.”

‘Individuals have invested in me, so I can spend money on them’

On the similar time, the seniority system — by which all the things from places of work to committee chairmanships are determined by the size of 1’s tenure — is a serious purpose why Congress is skewing older than ever; lawmakers are incentivized to remain for years, even a long time, as their energy grows with every time period.

Some lawmakers wish to change that system. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who ousted the fourth highest-ranking Democrat within the Home in 2018, instructed Insider in September that it is “essential for us to determine maybe a greater manner of figuring out who ought to lead a committee, past who’s been right here longest.”

Requested about requires generational change extra broadly, Kaptur mentioned that “the general public will determine that,” suggesting that there is room for everybody from younger upstarts to extra skilled, even aged, lawmakers. “I feel you want a mix of that within the Congress,” she mentioned.

“I feel I’ve my schools, and I’ve my well being, so these are blessings,” she mentioned. “And I do know a complete lot, and that is been hard-earned, and I put it to work on behalf of my individuals and the nation.”

“I really feel that individuals have invested in me, so I can spend money on them,” she added.

Kaptur was additionally fast to level out that there are quite a lot of lawmakers who’re a lot older than her, together with the 89-year-old Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who’s additionally touting his seniority as he seeks his eighth six-year time period within the Senate.

“Grassley — he is 89!” she exclaimed. “I am not even shut.”

Kaptur is maybe finest identified for sponsoring the invoice to create the World Warfare II Memorial that now sits within the middle of the Nationwide Mall in Washington, DC, 

However she additionally identified that various native initiatives — together with a bridge close to downtown Toledo, a federal courthouse within the metropolis, and a navy set up within the Western a part of the county — might not have come to fruition with out her efforts over the course of a long time.

“I generally simply go by and I’m going, effectively, which may not be there. , you suppose what it was earlier than, versus what it’s now,” she mentioned. “I am simply very gratified that I’ve had the chance to actuate a few of what was in my thoughts after I first began out.”