Fighting to get Congress a voice on an Iran nuclear deal, Sen. Bob Corker found himself in an increasingly familiar spot – in the thick of a difficult situation.
And loving it.
“I do enjoy it because I enjoy us doing things that are going to significantly affect the lives of people that we represent and making sure that any negotiation with Iran ends up with a good, solid deal, if we achieve that,” Corker told McClatchy Thursday. “The way you make a difference here is, obviously, is solving big problems, producing results.”
Corker, R-Tenn., the can-do chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is steadily gaining a reputation as the Senate’s “Mr. Fix-It” by eagerly tackling thorny issues by negotiating toward a bipartisan solution.
The silver-haired, 62-year-old former Chattanooga mayor with the thick Southern drawl had to thread the needle on Iran: negotiate to keep on board Republicans who want to hold President Barack Obama’s feet to the fire, woo skeptical Democrats who thought Republicans only want to sabotage the yet-to-be finalized nuclear pact, and get Obama to stand down from his veto threat to protect his presidential prerogative to make international agreements.
The outcome was a 19-0 vote of approval Tuesday out of the Foreign Relations Committee, retreat from veto talk by Obama and accolades for Corker, a lawmaker who revels in fixing problems and forging deals with colleagues regardless of party affiliation.
“It’s been very impressive to see the rise of Bob Corker,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., no stranger to deal-making himself. “He has a mayor’s disposition to bring people together and solve problems. He understands as a businessman a deal only works when everybody gets something.”
Even the administration, which had strongly opposed the original version of the bill crafted by Corker and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., grew to appreciate Corker’s negotiating skills and motives.
Corker is “somebody who is, I think, engaged in this process in a pretty principled way,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said earlier this month. “And I think he deserves some credit for that. There are not a lot of other members in his conference who have done that, but he has.”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a Foreign Relations Committee member, calls Corker a conservative pragmatist who’s “clear-eyed about the implications of having a Democratic president and a Republican Congress.”
“He’s also concise and clear,” Coons added. “He is a fair negotiating partner.”
Some conservative and tea party groups think Corker is too accommodating. Heritage Action, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, graded Corker at 48 percent on its conservatism scorecard for the 113th Congress and 62 percent over the course of his Senate career.
“On a lot of the important issues for people who want to reduce the size and scope of government, he’s been on the wrong side of the issues, like amnesty,” Heritage Action spokesman Dan Holler said, alluding to Corker’s work on a 2013 Senate bill to revamp the nation’s immigration laws. The measure died in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
Corker bristles at questions about his conservatism.
“I can be a conservative Republican, but I can sit down and find common ground with a liberal Democrat on some issues,” he said. “For people to look at that as somehow compromising principles is ridiculous. But it happens.”
Corker’s congressional colleagues say his willingness to seek common ground harkens to a bygone era on Capitol Hill when it wasn’t unusual for Democrats and Republicans to make deals.
John Geer, a public policy professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, attributes Corker’s approach to Tennessee political roots that have produced consensus-building lawmakers such as the late Howard Baker, a onetime Senate majority leader and once President Ronald Reagan’s White House chief of staff, and current Sen. Lamar Alexander, both Republicans.
“He likes solving problems,” Geer said of Corker. “I think he was probably taken aback by how Washington works, or doesn’t work, so he probably takes particular enjoyment in getting the Senate to work better.”
A businessman who earned millions in construction before entering politics, Corker narrowly won election to the Senate in 2006. Congressional colleagues say he arrived in Washington with a business, results-oriented, attitude and a willingness to work across the aisle to get things done.
He’s played pivotal roles in efforts to revamp financial regulations, overhaul the nation’s immigration laws and bail out a struggling automobile industry. But some of the efforts fizzled, faded away or morphed into something else.
In addition to the immigration bill that died in the House, a 2008 auto bailout bill died in the Senate despite last-ditch efforts by Corker to save it. The industry eventually received government help.
Capitol Hill’s partisan gridlock grated on Corker to the point that he considered calling it quits after one Senate term.
“The last period of time during my first term was like watching paint dry, it really was,” he said. “Just a place where nothing was happening. . . . We had serious, serious discussions about whether I should go forward again, move back into the private sector, or do something else.”
He’s glad he didn’t leave. Last November’s election gave Republicans control of the Senate and elevated Corker to Foreign Relations Committee chairman, giving him the platform and power that he lacked as a freshman.
“It’s a lot different when you’re the chairman of a committee than, when at the time during the auto industry bailout, I was literally sitting in the cameraman’s lap,” he said. “I was the most freshman, junior, whatever-you-want-to-call-me member of the Banking Committee.”