Hal Rogers’s Kentucky Kingdom

Abstract

This year marks Harold “Hal” Rogers’s twenty-first consecutive electoral victory in Kentucky’s Fifth Congressional District, making him the secondlongest-serving Republican in Congress. He rode into office on the wave of the Reagan Revolution in 1980, and the governing style he’s employed in the Fifth District—which covers the rural, mountainous, Appalachian region of southeastern Kentucky—can mostly be described as Reaganite: pro–War on Drugs, pro–prison expansion, anti-regulation of extractive industries, and pro-family. The congressman has had to improvise a little over the years in response to changes in the economy and political system, but he’s wellpositioned to do so: as a former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the elite “College of Cardinals” that manages the government’s budget, and the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, he’s one of the most influential men in Washington. Rogers has extraordinary discretion over where and how the government exercises power domestically and overseas, especially within the border regions; he can coerce other lawmakers to support his policies by withholding funding; and, crucially, he can funnel tons of “pork” back to his home district