The Toledo Blade set aside their Democrat talking points for a really good
profile piece on Rep. Bob Latta (OH-05). Here is a taste:
WASHINGTON — In the four months he's been on the job, U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green) has cast hundreds of votes, opened three district offices, posed for photos regularly with groups of constituents in front of the Capitol, and signed thousands of letters.
He still hasn't found a place to live.
Mr. Latta gets a little sheepish about the fact that he sleeps on an air mattress in his office in the Longworth Building on Capitol Hill.
"You just want to get as much done as you possibly can. I'm not here to eat. I'm not here to sleep. My job is to work," Mr. Latta said.
"There's only 435 people that get this privilege and honor to hold this job, and I just want to make sure I'm giving 100 percent."
Mr. Latta, 52, was sworn in Dec. 13 after a special election two days earlier to serve the year remaining in the term of the late Rep. Paul Gillmor (R., Tiffin), who died Sept. 5 in a fall in his Arlington, Va., townhouse.
Since then Mr. Latta has plunged with enthusiasm into Congress' busy round of committee meetings, constituent obligations, and voting.
None of this is a big surprise to Mr. Latta, whose father, Delbert Latta, 88, of Bowling Green, held the same seat from 1959 to 1989.
Bob Latta has been appointed to two committees: Agriculture, and Transportation and Infrastructure.
On a typical day, Mr. Latta said, he is up by 5 a.m., exercised, dressed, and at his desk before 6:30 a.m., impatient for the House cafeteria to open an hour later.
With much to do and little time to do it in, and no car, Mr. Latta said he so far has rarely ventured beyond the Capitol Hill complex with its office buildings connected by underground tunnels.
"At one point I realized I hadn't been outside for 56 hours," Mr. Latta said. Now that spring sunshine beckons, he plans to start a morning jog to the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial.
Lots more of the good stuff in this piece.
Read the whole thing here.
