Staunch conservative Michael Conaway, the most divisive House Agriculture chairman in decades, said on Wednesday that he will retire at the end of 2020. During eight terms in the House, the Republican from west Texas chaired two committees, found an embezzler in the House GOP campaign arm, and briefly oversaw a House investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“This will be my last term,” announced Conaway, 71, in his hometown of Midland, his voice breaking with emotion. During an outdoor news conference, he lamented political polarization in Congress and said one of the high points of his career was acting in 2017 as backup chairman of the House Intelligence Committee investigation of election meddling, “which found no evidence of collusion.” The other highlight, he said, was “obviously getting the farm bill done.”
Conaway, now the Republican leader on the Agriculture Committee, was chairman from 2015 until early this year. An accountant by training, He previously held the thankless job of chairing the House Ethics Committee and was a lower-level member of House Republican leadership. A handful of GOP representatives may vie to succeed him as the top Republican on the committee. Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania ranks second to Conaway on the panel, but seniority is not always the determining factor. A farm lobbyist said Conaway was unusual in pursuing sharply partisan goals on a panel where squabbles tend to be regional rather than political.
Conaway split the usually collegial Agriculture Committee along party lines last year in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to impose broader and stricter work requirements on 7 million food stamp recipients. His package, supported by President Trump, would have required “work-capable” adults aged 18 to 59 to work at least 20 hours a week or spend equivalent time in job training or workfare to receive food stamps. The Senate rejected a similar proposal by a 2-to-1 margin and passed its own bill, with no changes in SNAP rules, 86-11. The House, then controlled by Republicans, passed Conaway’s plan by two votes on its second try. The 2018 elections gave Democrats control of the House and signaled the end of the line for large-scale changes to SNAP.
In the end, Congress passed a status-quo farm bill last December, only two months after the 2014 law expired — an achievement considering that lawmakers are often a year late with farm bills. Hours before President Trump signed the bill into law, the administration said it would act under its own authority to restrict the power of states to waive the usual 90-day limit on food stamps for able-bodied adults who do not work at least 20 hours a week — an approach in line with Conaway’s package.
The $87 billion-a-year farm bill created a new, and stronger, subsidy program for cotton and made nieces, nephews, and cousins eligible for crop subsidies. “Congressman Conaway exercised valuable leadership in bolstering cotton’s safety net because U.S. cotton farmers were being hurt by weak global prices and many were being negatively affected by multiple bad weather events,” said the National Cotton Council on Wednesday.
“We appreciate all of the work he has done for wheat, on the #farmbill18, and for his service to all of agriculture,” said the National Association of Wheat Growers on social media.
A social, fiscal, and religious conservative, Conaway holds a hard-edged belief in pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. He often recounts a childhood in which his father moved the family frequently to follow jobs around the Texas oil fields, using his story as an object lesson in self-reliance rather than acceptance of social assistance.
A Texas native, Conaway served in the Army and then worked for an accounting company, settling in Midland. The brief biography on his House website says Conaway later worked “with George W. Bush as the chief financial officer for Bush Exploration. He developed a lasting friendship with President Bush as they learned together what it takes to run a business.”
Elected to Congress in 2004, Conaway “discovered financial irregularities at the National Republican Congressional Committee” while serving as chairman of its audit committee in 2008, says the Washington Post. “When Conaway pushed then-Treasurer Christopher J. Ward for previous audits, he received a fake report on faux letterhead. It was eventually revealed that Ward had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the House GOP campaign arm.
Conaway is the eighth Republican this year to announce retirement, compared with two Democrats. The House “casualty list” is sometimes viewed as an informal poll on lawmakers on their party’s chances to control the House in the future. Conaway dismissed a question about a common thread among retiring Republicans.
“There are 435 members of Congress. This is one of them,” he said.
Party rules limit Republicans to six years as the chairman or minority leader of a committee. Conaway will run into that limit on the Agriculture Committee at the end of next year. “It’s a great transition point,” he said.
To watch a video of Conaway’s news conference, click here.