He was first elected to Congress in 1974 by less than 300 votes. Since then he has risen through the ranks, eventually becoming Congress’s king of pork. As the New York Times recently pointed out, he controls the “earmarks” that represent the specific pieces of pork that are attached to most bills. See (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/washington/02murtha.html). He even has a special corner aisle chair in Congress that no one else dares sit in. Nancy Pelosi is his protege. Over the years he has brought tens of millions of dollars to Johnstown and other parts of his district, nearly all tied to military and law enforcement projects (FBI drug clearing house, military high-tech enterprises, etc.). In this extremely depressed region, such pork projects, though serving no social purpose, are seen as good things. In the process, he has made his brother rich, and I have no doubt he has made himself rich as well. Before entering Congress, he ran a local car wash, hardly a gold mine. He certainly has improved his wardrobe over the years in Washington DC.
Johnstown is a very conservative community, despite the long-time power of organized labor there (not much left of this though as the steel mills are for the most part closed). Murtha shrewdly catered to labor, which then used its weight to get him elected time and again. And labor, mired in a Cold War mentality nationally and very much so locally, hardly minded Murtha’s absolutely reactionary support for US imperialism. He himself traded shamelessly on his military record, having served during the Korea war (no combat there though) and volunteering for Vietnam, more than a decade later. He retired as a colonel in the reserves. This played well in Johnstown (one of the Iwo Jima flag raisers, Sergeant Mike Strank—I taught his nephew and namesake---was from the area), where patriotism is next to godliness. A group of us once sat in in Murtha’s local office to oppose his strong support of the Contras in Nicaragua.
Murtha channels the military elite and this is why he has come to oppose Bush. It is hard for me to imagine that the has suddenly gotten a dose of principles (read about some of the things he got defeated in the NYT piece).
He thinks Bush and Cheney and company are “chickenhawks,” and this galls him no end. I am glad he has been opposing the war, but no one should expect anything but business as usual if he becomes House leader. He’s just another ruthless power mad politico, though he does pay attention to the local area with lots of pork. He's no Lyndon Johnson, who despite his lust for power, never forgot his own dire poverty or that of his neighbors. (For a somewhat more sympathetic view of Murtha see <http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1120-20.htm>, written by a former student of mine, Dennis Roddy, now a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette).
I was surprised to see that on Murtha’s official website there are no family references. He does have three kids, including twin sons. The sons were sort of the “good” and “evil” boys. One followed dad into the military, etc., while the other was a well-known burglar in Johnstown. The bad twin used to hole up at my former wife’s parents’ motel, and Murtha’s office would call looking for him. I used ot wonder if all that military shit used to get to him.
Michael Yates