To understand Peter DeFazio, political scientist Jim Moore suggests looking back to the congressman’s ads when running for the U.S. Senate in 1995

The ads were pointed, acerbic, funny – and didn’t mind hitting his opponent. DeFazio lost that Democratic primary anyway to Ron Wyden, who went on to fill Bob Packwood’s vacant seat in the Senate.

That’s Peter DeFazio of Springfield, an outspoken progressive Democrat as proud of his hard-fought losses as he is of his political victories.

The representative from Oregon’s 4th Congressional District rocked the political landscape this week by announcing he would retire when his 18th term in the U.S. House of Representatives ends in early January 2023.

DeFazio will be 75 and a half years old when he departs as Oregon’s longest-serving member of Congress and the 65th-longest in all of U.S. history. This year he finally saw Congress pass a monumental infrastructure package – although not the one he sought. He also recently underwent back surgery, a condition exacerbated by thousands of hours on airplanes between Oregon and Washington, D.C.

“The last year and a half has been a whirlwind and I’ve gotten a lot of long-awaited goals done,” DeFazio said during a Zoom press conference on Wednesday to discuss his retirement. “I just decided that this is the right time for me. I’m going out at the top.”

DeFazio becomes the 19th House Democrat, and the third committee chair, to forgo re-election next year. A Politico story announcing his departure began: “Rep. Peter DeFazio, the Oregon firebrand who leads the House’s transportation committee, will step down after 36 years in Congress, spelling more bad news for Democrats in 2022 and taking with him an encyclopedic amount of institutional and technical knowledge on infrastructure.”

History and the current political climate strongly suggest that Republicans will regain their U.S. House majority in next year’s election. DeFazio doesn’t buy it. “I think the Republicans are measuring the curtains a little too early,” he said, adding, “Having overconfidence on the other side of the aisle is always good.”

His successor likely will be another Democrat, although Republican Alek Skarlatos is running again and others are likely to enter the race. The sprawling 4th District, which covers the Southern Willamette Valley and Southwest Oregon, will tilt more toward Democrats under the congressional redistricting plan that Democrats in the Oregon Legislature passed this year.

Regardless, Oregon’s congressional influence will plummet.

As Professor Moore of Pacific University points out, seniority is everything in Congress. Wyden joined the Senate in 1996, yet nearly two decades passed before he first chaired the Finance Committee. DeFazio entered the House in 1987 and in 2019 finally moved up to chair the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

At least two newcomers will represent Oregon in Congress next year – DeFazio’s successor and whoever is elected in the state’s new 6^th Congressional District. Incumbent Democrat Kurt Schrader also could face a competitive race in the 5^th District. Meanwhile, Republican Cliff Bentz is in his first year representing the 2^nd District, the state’s largest in geography.

DeFazio’s Oregon reach will last long after his departure, from upcoming transportation, water, sewer and other infrastructure projects to the wilderness areas that he championed.

Meanwhile, woe to those communities that sat on their hands. Oregon’s capital is among them.

Salem has only a pair of traffic bridges across the Willamette River, meaning log trucks and agriculture vehicles join business vehicles, commuters and visitors in traversing downtown congestion en route to their final destinations. A third bridge, at a different location to lessen travel times and move heavy trucks out of the city center, was a priority of city and county leaders for decades.

In 2019, a divided Salem City Council killed the project. Among opponents’ concerns was where the financing would come from. Shortsighted, they ignored DeFazio’s ascendency on the House Transportation Committee and his potential influence.

In contrast, Oregon and Washington officials have resumed talks on the Columbia River Crossing, which would be eligible for funding through the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package that Congress passed. Oregon transportation projects already have gained $1.3 billion from a change in federal law that DeFazio achieved in 2006.

DeFazio noted that he often worked across party lines, with Oregon’s Republican Sens. Mark Hatfield to protect rivers and Packwood to ban exports of raw logs from federal forests. But times have changed.

“Half my career has been in the minority. But in the old days in the minority, particularly in infrastructure, we could work across the aisle,” DeFazio said. “Now the 13 Republicans who had the guts to vote for my infrastructure bill are being threatened with being removed from their committees. They’re getting death threats because infrastructure has become a dirty word because of the Republican leadership, who doesn’t want anything that has President Biden’s name on it to succeed. That’s very, very unfortunate.”

Yes, DeFazio certainly speaks his mind, some of which he eventually will put into a book. But mostly, he’s looking forward to spending time with family, focusing on his health and well-being, being back in Oregon, hiking the wilderness areas he helped create and having time to ride Cycle Oregon again.

“It’s time to pass the torch,” he said. “There will be new challenges for the next representative and things that they’re going to have to fight for, for our state. But I feel good about the legacy I’ve left.”

“Salem’s success at the Legislature in recent years reflects a concerted effort to rebuild Capitol relationships.”