Crawford Eyes House Ag Committee Leadership

Written by: John Herath
Published by: Ag Web

Cong. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) has his sights set on the chairman’s gavel of the House Agriculture Committee. Crawford told the Arkansas Farm Bureau this week he intends to run for chairman of the House Ag Committee when the next Congress is seated in 2021.

That is, of course, if Republicans are able to regain control of the House.

Collin Peterson, a Democrat from Minn., is the current committee chair, having moved up for ranking member last year when control of the House was flipped in the 2018 election. The current ranking member, Mike Conaway (R-Tex.) faces Republican term limits on leadership positions that would keep him from reclaiming the chairman’s gavel if the House were to flip again in 2020.

Crawford has served on the Agriculture Committee since he was first elected to the House in 2010. He was appointed to conference committees for both the 2014 and 2018 farm bills.

Crawford signaled a need for more Southern influence on the committee in his remarks to the Arkansas Farm Bureau.

“There’s certainly a geographic prerogative that I think is important,” Crawford said, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. “There needs to be a counterbalance because [there’s] so much Midwestern representation in the ag world, to be able to balance that out from a mid-South or Southern perspective is important.”

Crawford is up for reelection in 2020.