The Roanoker - November/December 2014 - 32

DaviD hungate

Goodlatte's seniority and committee chairmanship gives him a key role in determining the future of
bills on immigration reform, intellectual rights and keeping presidential power in check.

a quiet methodical way. I believe he has a very
substantial influence in the House on some
key issues. People know he is a commonsense
conservative who studies the facts, who knows
everybody and whose basic approach is to try
to bring everyone together to get to a solution."
The fact that most Roanokers don't know
of Goodlatte's massive influence on Capitol
Hill is a testimony not just to his down-toearth personality, friendliness and time spent
in town, but also to his political shrewdness.
Goodlatte has thrived in Virginia's 6th Congressional District through a mix of smarts
and elbow grease.
His constant presence in the Roanoke Valley and greater 6th Congressional District,
which stretches from Roanoke through the
Shenandoah Valley to Warren County, gives
constituents plenty of chances for interaction.

32 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

"I believe you have to work hard to provide leadership to people, and that includes
reaching out to people who may agree with
you on some issues - or many issues - and
communicating and working with them," says
Goodlatte.
as one of a handful of congressmen
who can drive to Washington, D.C., in just a
few hours, Goodlatte makes a habit of always
turning one of the drives - either there or back
- from a four-hour commute into a 10-hour
marathon of meetings with constituents and
groups up and down the 6th District.
"He's always showing up for things," says
fellow Roanoke Valley Congressman Morgan Griffith, who represents the 9th District.
Griffith says his wife Hillary pointed out
Goodlatte's omnipresence through this year's

coverage of the Juneteenth celebration in
Washington Park.
"The front page picture in The Roanoke
Times had two kids eating part of their lunch,"
Griffith says. "Hillary said, 'Take a look again.'
I did, and each one of the kids was wearing a
Goodlatte sticker. He's not facing what you'd
consider a serious challenge this year, but he
or one of his people was there."
Despite his 22-year tenure in an increasingly partisan Congress, it's hard to find someone, other than maybe those on the extreme
left and the extreme right, who personally dislikes Goodlatte. Chalk that up to his general
amiability and willingness to talk issues with
anyone.
That doesn't mean he's a shrinking violet.
Many a would-be challenger has learned firsthand the perils of underestimating Goodlatte
over the years.
"They see Bob, they see the glasses, they
think, 'This is somebody we can push around.'
Once they start getting into the argument, they
quickly find out they don't have the horsepower to compete with him," says David
Suetterlein, chairman of the Roanoke County
Republican Committee. "Some less-informed
individuals decide they're going to yell at him.
He looks at them, nods his head, and when
they finish, he just takes them down. It happens less now than it used to."
Goodlatte has become such a Roanoke fixture that it's a bit of a surprise to learn
he was born and grew up in Massachusetts,
though it explains his raging Red Sox fandom.
The year The Roanoker was founded, 1974,
was pivotal for Goodlatte, too: He graduated
from Bates College in Maine and married his
wife Maryellen, who he had met in student
government at Bates. Who was Goodlatte 40
years ago?
"He's really the same guy I'm married to
now," says Maryellen Goodlatte, principal at
the law firm of Glenn Feldmann Darby &
Goodlatte. "His integrity was hugely appealing to me. He's also funny - you don't see that
as much in the public persona."
After graduation Goodlatte worked over
the summer in a Friendly's restaurant franchise that sat next to the corporate headquarters. The executives who came over for lunch
tried to lure him into a restaurant management career, but Goodlatte already had made
a life-defining decision to attend law school at
The

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