Washington Post, DC
Oct 19 2007

Hastert to Step Down Soon, Sources Say

By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 19, 2007; Page A19

Former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) plans to resign
before the end of the year, Republican sources said yesterday.

"It’s pretty much a certainty that he is expected to step down before
the end of the year," said a House GOP leadership aide. Hastert
previously announced he will not seek reelection next year.

Hastert’s office would not confirm his departure. "He has
consistently said that he would continue to serve as long as he is
effective, and that is still the case today," said spokesman Brad
Hahn. "There are different discussions taking place, but no decisions
have been made."

Hastert is in his 11th term and served as speaker from 1999 until
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) succeeded him this year. He was the
longest-serving Republican speaker and had the second-longest
continuous term in the post overall, longer than anyone since Thomas
P. "Tip" O’Neill (D-Mass.).

Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) will schedule a special election for early
next year. Hastert’s departure will create an opening on the Energy
and Commerce Committee.

Hastert, a former high school teacher and wrestling coach, was born
in Aurora, Ill., and has spent his life in his district, where
Chicago’s exurbs sprawl into the remaining farmland of downstate
Illinois. He became speaker two months after the November 1998
elections, succeeding Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). He was known as "the
accidental speaker," because he was selected after Gingrich’s
putative successor, Bob Livingston, resigned, and because he never
intended to push for the job. But at the behest of Gingrich, Hastert
announced his candidacy and was chosen in the course of a day.

Over time, the low-key Hastert built a reputation as a
consensus-builder and a smart tactician. One of his strategic
maneuvers came in 2000, when he canceled a House vote on a
controversial resolution that labeled as genocide the mass killings
of Armenians by Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915. Hastert’s move came
at the urging of President Bill Clinton, who feared that the
resolution would damage U.S.-Turkey relations. This week, those same
concerns appear to have doomed a successor to that resolution.