Friday House Cleaning: Speaking With The Speaker's Son

Ex-Speaker Hastert son/atty Ethan Hastert (R) announced earlier this week that he'll run against Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL 14) in '10. He was kind enough to join us this week for a Q&A regarding his bid.

Q: You've cited the work you've done campaigning with your dad as experience that'll help you on the trail. What are some moments that stick out to you from those years?

Hastert: You know, most of them are walking parades when it's hot out, walking door to door, and door to door hangers, and walking precints. It's some of the more work-a-day political stuff, but beyond that I remember, basically, almost my entire life going around not only the district, but anywhere. People would recognize my dad and ask him about one thing or another and I would listen to him and watch him interact and basically be there for not only his constituents as their Member, but also as their friend.

Q: You've also worked for ex-VP Dick Cheney. Did you get to interact with him much?

Hastert: A little bit, you know my office was actually over in the EEOB. The vice president's daily office was in the West Wing. But yeah, I interacted with him on a - I wouldn't say a daily basis - but often enough. Part of my job was to prepare his daily briefing book for his schedule for the upcoming day. Basically that amounted to scaring up memos for his various meetings or appointments, and that put me in touch with basically every person on the staff and, as needed, him.

Q: Why do you want to run for Congress?

Hastert: Well, the way it started, I didn't wake up one day and decide I was going to run for Congress - quite the opposite. You know, I watched my dad run in races; I watched my dad represent the district, and, you know, I've been around other elected officially, quite literally, my entire life, and, I watch the sacrifice that they make, not only themselves personally, but their families. And I have a young family. I'm married - my wife's name is Heidi - I have a two and a half year old son Jack. You know, they come first in my life.

But I'll tell you - back in mid-winter, early spring, I was really concerned about, in particular, the spending and borrowing, you know, not just taxing and spending, but spending and borrowing, that was going on in Washington and was a product of our Democratic leadership. And I was quite upset about it, quite frankly. And my view on this is, the best way to curtail the spending is to get a check or balance on the Democrats' power in Washington. Part of that is not to return the Republican Party to a majority in the Congress, to get a healthy minority there, take back some seats. Take back some seats that are clearly Republican districts - the 14th congressional clearly being one of them.

My goal was to send a Republican to Congress from the 14th congressional district. That's not to say that I dislike Foster, Representative [Bill] Foster [D-IL 14], or have anything bad to say about him personally - that's absolutely not the case, by all counts he's a very nice gentleman, very intelligent - but he doesn't, in my estimation, represent the values of the district on various issues. He's not where the majority of the district is - fiscal issues being first and foremost in my mind. He's voted for many of the spending packages where, as far as I can tell, we have no revenue to back them up.

And that's basically, a couple of months ago, where I was. I was looking for somebody from the Republican Party who we could get behind early and avoid an expensive and divisive primary, so that we could go into the general united and send a Republican to Congress from the 14th congressional district of Illinois. What I learned during those discussions was that most of those "800 pound gorillas" in the district were not considering running and nobody I talked to could think of anybody who could become a consensus candidate. So, after several of those discussions, my focus shifted from, well, "who?" to "what about me?" And, for the past couple of months I've been reaching out to local elected officials, local opinion, business, and political leaders in the district, and, you know, basically been having those conversations. And the response that I've been getting is positive, and I'm encouraged and optimistic, and, basically, that's what took me to where I'm at today.

Q: Do you think you'll be able to have a clear shot at the nomination, or do you think you'll face primary opposition?

Hastert: I honestly don't know. You know, it's an open primary. ... The one that I don't know about is state Senator [Chris] Lauzen [R] who ran last time. I've spoken with ['02/'04 SEN candidate/'06 GOV candidate/dairy magnate] Jim Oberweis who also ran, and he's not interested. But, I've also spoken with Senator Lauzen, and I don't know if he's going to run again. I just don't know, I can't speak for him.

Q: What, specifically, is Rep. Foster's fireable offense?

Hastert: You know, it's basically those of the Democratic Congress. It's the fact that they ran on a platform of "change," but look at the change that they've given us - it's basically been a change in quantity, not quality. They've taken the largest of the Republican budget - which was a little over a trillion dollars, this one's a little under three trillion - the largest of the Republican deficits was 435 billion, this deficits around 1.85 trillion - four times, roughly, the largest Republican deficit. If you look at their forecast, they're forecasting to more than double the national debt in eight years.

I remember looking back on the 435 billion dollar deficits and 8.5 trillion national dollar debt and thinking, "That's going to fall on me and my generation to pay off in the future," and I was not happy about that, especially coming from a Republican Party. But, if you look at the debt and the deficits and the budgets that we're getting now, it's not going to be me and my generation, it's going to be my son and his generation, and my son's children and their generation. And I understand that we're in hard economic times, but people - taxpayers, families - everybody understands that they've got to run their households in the black. You can't spend more than you can take in, you can't take on more debt than you can service. It's not the way that the national purse is being managed, and it bothers me, and I think that before we do anything, like healthcare - which, I agree, we need to do something about the state of healthcare in this country - but, you can't take on new entitlement programs until you pay for your current entitlement programs that you have on the books.

Q: You mentioned the deficits GOPers, including your dad, ran up earlier this decade. Do you know any other areas where you disagreed with the GOP the last decade, or where you might disagree with your dad?

Hastert: You know, nothing comes to mind off the top of my head. You know, I'm sure if we had a list and we could tick through them, there'd be several - or none - you know, I couldn't tell you without doing and undertaking the exercise. But, I do think spending is probably the first and foremost in my mind. And you know what? That's not to say that I'm not going to have - if you put my dad and me side to side in the future as every issue came down the pike and said, "Okay, where do you come out and where do you come out?" it's not to say that we'd match-up one hundred percent - quite likely, we would not, but sitting here today without examples, I couldn't tell you.

Q: Pres. Obama is obviously popular in IL-14. He took 55% here in 2008, and even before he was elected, Foster featured him in a TV ad in the closing days of his winning '08 special election. How difficult will it be to run as a GOPer who likely will vote against many of his priorities?

Hastert: I would suspect that the 14th Congressional District would be much like the nation at large - or more so. And that's to say that the president's policies - or the president personally - polls well. He's well liked, but his policies generally, depending upon the policy, are not. They rise and fall on their merits. I have no intention of running against the president in the race, especially from the president's home state.

Quite frankly, I hope the president and current administration succeed and bring us out of our hard economic times. I bring some issue with their approach to doing so, but it's important to this nation that we get our economic feet back under us. But, I do intend to run against the president's policies when I disagree with them, and, you know, to the extent that Representative Foster sees fit to also oppose them, I would applaud him. There are going to be instances where Representative Foster and I agree on the issues. But, where we don't, I'm going to honest about it and I'm going to take him on regardless of whether or not the president supports the issue.

Q: You've spoken previously about the need for a new generation of GOPers to come aboard. Who are some that you see now that fit the bill?

Hastert: You know, the obvious one is - to the south of the 14th - it's [Rep.] Aaron Schock [R-IL 18], who's somewhat of a political rock star. He's the obvious person to point to, but look at guys like Representative [Paul] Ryan [R-WI 01], who's been a quiet conservative - fiscal conservative - voice in the Congress for some time and is emerging as a leader. You know, [Min. Leader] Eric Cantor, for instance, doesn't fit the mold of the "old guard" by any stretch of the imagination. He's relatively young.

You know, we do have a descent bench as Republicans, especially in the House. But, we could do better - we could do better, especially building a deeper, younger, bench locally, encouraging younger people to run. And I tell you, one of the things that I've heard as I've been reaching out to people in the district is that they are - what I've been saying in these articles, I'm not making this up to be self-serving, it's true - people are saying, "We're ready for the next generation of leadership." And I think in the 14th I've been hearing it more so than perhaps in other places because they were somewhat unhappy with the last election in 2008 being so divisive and personal, and they kind of want to move on - and one way to do that is to see different faces and younger people get involved.

Q: Do you think it's helpful to the GOP that Cheney is sort of leading the defense against Obama's foreign policy, or do you think someone from the "next generation" would be a better spokesperson?

Hastert: You know, I'm not going to say that the vice president shouldn't speak out when he sees fit. I think he should I think everybody should when they see something they disagree with and feel strongly about it, they should make their feelings known. You know, my approach to that would be all of the above - I certainly don't want people as insightful and who have served admirably as the vice president to shrink away into the night. I'm glad he's out speaking his mind. But, you know, I'd also like to see some younger people out there doing the same.

Q: Cubs or White Sox?

Hastert: I'm a Cubs guy.

Q: Favorite dessert: Eli's cheesecake or Oberweis ice cream?

Hastert: It's gotta be the ice-cream. It's like mother's milk in the 14th, you know. Growing up, I remember as a kid my gram used to take - before I ever knew who Jim Oberweis was, I was four, five, six year's old - my gram used to drive us to - the only shop I knew of then was in Aurora - we used to go get Oberweis ice-cream. So, some of my most fondest memories are of getting Oberweis ice-cream with my dad's mom.