WASHINGTON — When Tom Coburn retired from the U.S. Senate last year — early — the gruff Oklahoman doctor immediately created an absence in Washington.
An outsider with a scruffy demeanor, occasionally sporting a silver beard or maybe a goatee, he was a vicious critic of waste and insufficiently conservative policy wherever he found it.
He stood on the Senate floor — more than once — and ripped up giant paper credit cards with the national debt printed on them. He upset everyone. He helped pioneer the fiscal conservatism and federalist emphasis of the post-Bush Republican Party, but criticized the plan to defund Obamacare as "dishonest." He put holds on hundreds of bills during his time in the Senate, including a veteran's suicide prevention bill right before he left Congress. He swears that the Senate revoked his ability to practice medicine pro bono while also serving was retribution for blocking bills and calling out other members on earmarks he found egregious. This was the senator who once called Harry Reid an "absolute asshole."
Sen. Jeff Flake is not like this. No one would ever confuse the two men. But the truth is, he might be Coburn's successor on Capitol Hill — at least, he's certainly trying to take on the Oklahoman's legacy.
A tan, tall, blonde man with a blindingly white smile, Flake refuses to curse. The Arizona senator is polite to a fault, easygoing, and according to the senior senator of his state, incredibly handsome.
"If I looked like Jeff Flake, I'd be president of the United States," John McCain said.
The cleancut image belies a Republican unorthodoxy on a number of key issues that's separated him from many of his colleagues. He is for large immigration bills that would eventually allow illegal immigrants to earn citizenship. His work with the Senate's "Gang of Eight" on immigration earned him the scorn of conservative right. He's supportive of approving the president's nominees, including Loretta Lynch for Attorney General. He supports open relations with Cuba and lifting the travel ban there (more than once he's been termed "Obama's ally" on the issue).
But now that Republicans have the majority in Congress, Flake is hoping that he'll be able to go back to being known for the thing that got him to Congress in the first place: federal spending. While he served in the House, the Club For Growth championed Flake, who was something of an earmark hipster — against them before it was cool. He rankled Republicans and Democrats alike during every appropriations season, spending hours on the floor trying to defund other lawmaker's projects funneling money home.
Because of the emphasis, Flake got yelled at, a lot. There was the time Republican Curt Weldon proclaimed he wasn't going to let Flake stand on the floor in" total and complete ignorance and spout off a bunch of gobbledygook" when Flake challenged an earmark in Weldon's Pennsylvania district.
Then there was the time Jose Serrano, a Democrat from the Bronx, was livid that Flake tried to cut $300,000 from the Bronx council of the arts.
"The more you get up on me sir, the more I realize you don't know what you are talking about," he said on the floor.
Despite his hundreds of attempts, Flake was successful in his anti-earmark crusading only once: targeting a North Carolina Republican for a Christmas tree project in his district.
"It was Patrick McHenry's perfect Christmas tree project. And he had angered the Democrats so many times, they wanted to punish them more than they wanted to protect earmarks," he told BuzzFeed News. "You've got to go after both parties, if you want credibility."
While Flake continued to push his House agenda on spending and took up many of Coburn's causes — including doing things like offering Coburn's amendment to the Keystone XL pipeline "to identify and eliminate duplicative green building programs across the federal government", those efforts went largely unnoticed due to the oxygen taken up by looming fiscal deadlines and partisan fights Flake tends to shy away from.
Meanwhile, a bigger platform should be opening — Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised the Senate's return to regular order when it comes to the budget and appropriations. And that's where Flake vows to return to being the kind of pain in the ass he was in the House.
Asked why he hasn't gotten more attention for his work on fiscal issues in the Senate thus far, Flake said there just hasn't been enough of a focus on spending in the Senate.
"It's just difficult when we haven't done appropriations," he said. "When we've had no appropriation bills on the floor and there's really been no focus on discretionary spending so that's the tough part."
Flake's begun a press effort around the topic, issuing a "weekly roasting of egregious federal spending" that's straight out of Coburn's playbook. Coburn's yearly "Wastebook" highlighted similar offenses: money for a 3-D pizza printer, a $297 million "mega-blimp," and money for a "superheroes documentary."
His 2012 Senate race earned him the endorsements of a wide swath of conservative groups and figures like Sarah Palin. But his time in the Senate and goodwill with conservatives has hit a bit of a rough spot as he worked on passing a large immigration bill in the Senate with a bipartisan group (conservative radio host Laura Ingraham said she'd move to Arizona to primary Flake if she had to). And he's had to learn to take some heat back home just by virtue of representing an entire state rather than one very conservative district.
Part of that, too, is that Flake just isn't as flashy or attention grabbing as some of his fellow freshman senators, like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul. He hasn't tried to block legislation, and doesn't believe Republicans can seriously defund Obamacare through appropriations. And it's difficult to get Flake to say a bad word about President Obama.
"I do disagree with him a lot but when I do agree with him I'm not afraid to say it," Flake said.
"You can get some good headlines by being partisan but you'll be a flash in the pan," he added.
But those that have known him longest say Flake's the real deal on spending — and don't think the issues Flake has chosen to take on should shock anyone.
"I don't think he's changed. He talks more about Cuba and immigration reform now but it's been years he's been advocating for those things," said Rep. Matt Salmon, a conservative hardliner in the House who noted that Flake's higher profile in the Senate just draws more attention to some of the positions he's long held.
And there's still this idea that this approach — the occasional breaks with the party's momentum — are the basis for other successes. Before Flake was elected to the House in 2001, he and Salmon visited Capitol Hill. Coburn was the first and most obvious person Flake said he wanted to meet.
"I went in and Matt said, 'This is Jeff Flake,' and Dr. Coburn said, 'Are going to be as big of a 'blankety-blank' as you need to be?'" Flake recalled. (A devout Mormon, Flake says swearing is not one of his vices.)
"You've got to do that, if you want credibility on an issue and that's why Tom Coburn was so effective. You couldn't tell if he had a partisan bone in his body sometimes he was going after who ever did it," Flake added. "People knew and respected him because of that, it wasn't a personal thing."
Coburn, meanwhile, is back in Oklahoma and receiving treatment for prostate cancer. His view on Congress these days is pretty grim: He left Congress in part because of his illness but mostly because he didn't feel like he could really be effective anymore. Frustrated with the process, Coburn said he told McConnell he'd be retiring about a year and a half before he actually announced he would be. He's more focused these days on beating cancer ("I think I'm meaner than cancer," he says) and working with state legislatures "to help them regain their role in fighting the federal government."
But he has some faith that Flake will be able to cause a ruckus. Much like Flake, Coburn said his holds and attempts to defund earmarks and or programs through amendments never really went in anywhere: but that was never the point. And he warned that if Flake is successful at drawing attention to spending in the way he was, he should expect to not have too many friends left in the Senate.
"He's smarter, younger, and better looking than me and he can make a big impact if he wants," Coburn said. "But if Jeff does the most effective job at this he's not going to be very well liked even though he has the most beautiful smile."
"They were to inform the American public about the stupidity about what we were doing," he said. "When you embarrass people for their stupidity, you're going to take a lot of heat for that."
Flake has already begun some of the work Coburn left behind: his staff has already begun pouring through programs in the EPA and the USDA they want to bring attention to. Earmarks may be a thing of the past, but there are plenty of government programs that home-state senators inevitably want to protect.
"They'll come after him with knives," Coburn said.