Last time either house of Congress met in session was Thursday, July 14. Their summer vacation runs through Labor Day weekend—although they don’t call it that. It’s technically a recess, but that sounds a little frivolous as well. The preferred term is “district work period.” Here, for instance, is how Somerville Rep. Michael Capuano started a recent email newsletter to constituents:
The House is currently in the midst of a District Work period. I have been meeting with constituents, attending events and catching up on paperwork.
They’re not taking time off, the phrase is meant to convey, they are merely shifting locations. And for many of them, at least to a large extent, that’s true. Constituent services requests don’t stop when Congress isn’t meeting.
For some, the recess is an opportunity to work neither in Washington or their home district, but in far-flung lands.
Rep. Seth Moulton of Salem was on a plane almost as soon as the House of Representatives went into recess, heading overseas for a weeklong fact-finding mission to the Middle East. Moulton, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, has been critical of the Obama administration’s long-term strategy in the region. With a bipartisan group of lawmakers, Moulton visited Afghanistan, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, and Turkey during the mid-July trip.
Congressional visits to that region have become somewhat familiar during recesses in recent years. Somewhat less common are ones such as the one Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey took in mid-August, to Africa.
Markey, ranking Democrat on a subcommittee looking at that continent’s health policy, filed a bill in advance of that trip designed to expand Internet access and digital literacy in developing countries. (The bill carries an unwieldy title that forms the acronym DIGITAL AGE Act.)
That goal was the focus of a three-day stop in Nigeria. Prior to that, Markey spent two days in Senegal, discussing Ebola response among other issues; and a day in Cabo Verde, learning about that country’s Zika virus outbreak.
Sen. Angus King of Maine went in a very different direction. He took a three-day trip to Greenland, being shown effects of global warming, and examining new and potential Arctic trade routes.
Interest in the former may be universal, but the latter is of particular interest to King’s home state. Bath Iron Works, a Maine company, is awaiting word on a potential multibillion dollar contract to heavy ice-breaking equipment for the Coast Guard to clear those shipping lanes.
Some recess travel doesn’t require a passport, however. Rep. Niki Tsongas, of Lowell, popped over to Dayton, Ohio, a week ago, as part of a bipartisan exchange program of sorts.
Republican Rep. Mike Turner hosted Tsongas, taking her to the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and a GE research center. The next day, Tsongas brought Turner to her district, for a tour of a Raytheon lab and a meeting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—as well as the shoe-component manufacturer in Concord that benefits from a law, pushed by Tsongas, requiring the Defense Department to use footwear made entirely in America.
For many members of Congress, the summer recess is an opportunity to concentrate on their other crucial workload: getting re-elected.
Indeed, the reason the break is extra-long this year is the early start to the official national general-election season. Congress had to shut down in time for the Republican National Convention, which began on July 18—unusually early in the summer, compared with recent presidential election years.
Regardless, members of Congress being challenged for re-election—or seeking other, higher office, or just looking down the road to future campaigns—are eager to get a good chunk of time during election years to show their face around their home district.
All up and down eastern New England, Senators and House members could be seen the last several weeks attending events, cutting ribbons, shoveling ceremonial groundbreaking dirt, and presenting large novelty checks representing grants received from the federal government.
Theoretically, this break should have been especially critical for Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Those three states are among the very few states that have not yet held their state primary elections. Massachusetts has its primary on September 8, and New Hampshire and Rhode Island follow on the 13th.
These past few weeks, then, could have been the final ones in their primary campaigns. In reality, however, none of the incumbents in the three states is seeking a different office; and only one faces a significant primary challenge.
That is New Hampshire Rep. Frank Guinta, who has faced trouble with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) over large campaign contributions he claimed were his own money, but were determined to be his parents’.
The story has even gained fresh legs in recent days, with reports that Guinta now claims the money he refunded to his parents, as part of his FEC agreement, to be part of his personal assets in his financial disclosure forms. In other words, critics charge, Guinta appears to have refunded the money to himself, not to his parents.
Guinta, unsurprisingly, has been using his summer vacation to campaign against Republican challenger Rich Ashooh, who he faces in that upcoming New Hampshire primary.
New Hampshire Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte was also making appearances all over the state, in advance of her own primary that day against three challengers within her party. Clearly, though, Ayotte’s public appearances have had more of an eye toward her expected November showdown with Democrat Maggie Hassan, the current governor.
But on the whole, the area’s delegations to D.C. are coasting toward virtually unchallenged re-election in November. For them, the seven-week summer vacation—pardon me, district work period—has been a relaxed-pace time to take meetings, sit for interviews, spend time with family, and prepare for the last burst of lawmaking coming up after Labor Day. More on those plans later.
