Calif. Congressman Matsui Dies at 63

washingtonpost.com
Calif. Congressman Matsui Dies at 63

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 2, 2005; 4:37 PM


Robert T. Matsui, 63, the low-key but influential California Democrat who
had represented Sacramento in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1979
and was a major force on trade and Social Security issues, died Saturday at
National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.

He had pneumonia, a complication of a rare stem cell disorder with which he
was diagnosed in recent months.

At his death, Rep. Matsui was the third-ranking Democrat on the powerful
House Ways and Means Committee and among the highest-ranking Asian Americans
in House history. As an infant, he had been interned in a detention camp for
Japanese Americans during World War II and later pushed through a bill
hoping to redress the psychological damage suffered by internees.

During the early 1990s, the congressman was President Bill Clinton's key
ally for getting the North American Free Trade Agreement approved by the
House despite opposition from labor groups who have traditionally supported
Democrats. In 2000, he took a leading role in formulating permanent
normalized trading relations with China, again at Clinton's behest.

"I've always believed that technology and trade were the two engines that
really drive economic growth," he said during the China debate. "If we want
to continue to be the number one nation in the world when it comes to job
creation, when it comes to leading the cutting edge, we have to understand
that these things are important."

In recent years, as the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means subcommittee
on Social Security, he battled against President Bush's proposal to allow
people to direct some of their mandatory Social Security contributions to
private retirement accounts.

Robert Takeo Matsui was born Sept. 17, 1941, in Sacramento, the son of
Japanese immigrants. The next year, he and his family were taken to an
internment camp in Tule Lake, Calif.--a federal reaction to the Japanese
bombing of Pearl Harbor and America's entry in World War II.

Rep. Matsui said that his mother in particular was riven by nightmares for
the rest of her life. Also shamed by the experience, the future congressman
said that as a child he denied it when a schoolteacher asked if he had been
taken to an internment camp.

"The mere fact that I was acknowledging that I was incarcerated would've
raised the specter that . . .perhaps I was a spy, that I was an enemy
alien," he once said. "That still lives with me."

As a congressman, he shepherded legislation in 1988 that formally apologized
for the internment of Japanese Americans and provided token financial
compensation for the survivors.

Rep. Matsui's early ambition was architecture. He switched to law after
reading about the advocate Clarence Darrow and hearing President John F.
Kennedy beckon young Americans to public service.

After graduation from the University of California at Berkeley and the
University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, he
practiced law and was elected to the Sacramento city council in 1971.

He won federal election in 1978, after the retirement of Rep. John E. Moss
(D), whose reelection campaign he had once chaired.

In the House, Rep. Matsui was largely a reliable supporter of Democratic
legislation, with the exception of some trade bills.

Although known for a retiring demeanor, he did make a news splash at a
hearing in 1994 about a Clinton administration plan to cap welfare benefits
and limit payments to women who get pregnant.

"Can you discuss this in a way that I'll be confident that these people will
not be screwed?" he asked an official with the Department of Health and
Human Services.

Two years ago, Rep. Matsui became the controversial choice of Rep. Nancy
Pelosi, the House Democratic leader and a California colleague, to lead the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The decision angered some black Democrats who had hoped Rep. William J.
Jefferson of Louisiana would have a chance at the prestigious position of
DCCC chairman.

While Rep. Matsui was able to recruit new candidates and increase the DCCC's
base of contributors to more than 500,000 from 270,000 in the wake of
campaign finance reform, he was unsuccessful in the effort to regain control
of the House.

He did win his own reelection handily in November.

Survivors include his wife, Doris Okada Matsui, a former Clinton White House
official whom he married in 1966, of Sacramento and Bethesda; a son, Brian
Matsui of Bethesda; and a granddaughter.


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