Foreign Affairs chair announces cancer, retirement

by Matthew Hay Brown

Rep. Tom Lantos, the 79-year-old chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced today that he will not seek reelection in the fall after tests revealed that he has esophageal cancer.

In a Congress that has seen several House Republicans announce retirements, Lantos is the highest-ranking Democrat to stand down. His Northern California seat, which he defended in 2006 with three quarters of the vote, is considered safely Democratic.

The only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, Lantos voted to authorize the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but opposed the troop surge last year and has supported legislation that would require President Bush to begin withdrawing troops. The House Foreign Affairs Committee has held several hearings on Iraq.

“The administration’s myopic policies in Iraq have created a fiasco,” Lantos said in September before hearing testimony from U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus. “Is it any wonder that on the subject of Iraq, more and more Americans have little confidence in this administration? We can not take any of this administration’s assertions on Iraq at face value anymore, and no amount of charts or statistics will improve its credibility.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Lantos’ “experience, interlligence and compassion will be deeply missed.”

"Tom Lantos is one of America’s leading experts on foreign affairs and most effective advocates for human rights both at home and abroad. As the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress, he has used his position to fight for those whose voices have been silenced by hatred and oppression.”

Born in Budapest, Lantos was a teenaged member of the Hungarian resistance in 1944 when he was captured by the Nazis. He escaped from a labor camp, came to the United States after the war and earned a Ph.D. in economics at the University of California. He was elected to Congress in 1980.

"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress," he said today in a statement. "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."

Lantos had been facing a Democratic primary challenge from California state Sen. Jackie Speier, but he retirement may attract others to the race. Rep. Howard Berman, a fellow Californian, is the next senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.