Serrano and the Mustache Caucus

A Tea Party activist yelled at Jose E. Serrano and called him “an elitist pig with a cutesy haircut” while in Washington for the Health Care Reform vote last month.

Making fun of congressional coiffures takes partisan debate to a nasty level, but perhaps there is something to be said about how House members choose to trim and how they vote.

Serrano could be mistaken on the street for Tom Selleck. He has sported his thick brown mustache since he was 17 years old, and has stated that he has no intention of shaving it. He wears it well, and it could be a simple fashion statement. Or perhaps his upper lip hair is the badge of membership to a little known voting bloc:

The Mustache Caucus.

There are 30 mustaches in the United States House of Representatives.

In New York, Eliot Engel and Charles Rangel join Serrano in mustachedom. Georgia also has three Congressmen with staches – making the two states tied for first in the ranks of the whiskered.

Out of the 30 mustaches, only two belong to Republicans, (Denny Rehberg of Montana’s salt and pepper Hungarian mustache and Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland’s thin white English lip hair).

In their careers, these mustaches have voted together 87.86% of the time, and the 27 Democratic mustaches have a 93.86% history of voting together, (Eni Faleomavaega, the representative of American Soma, cannot cast votes with his graying walrus-style whiskers).

There are some Beltway heavy hitters in the Mustache Caucus. Henry Waxman – whose chevron mustache balances out his smooth dome – chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee. John Lewis’s young mustache was beaten by police in Selma Alabama and spoke alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington D.C. during the 1960s before sitting on the Ways and Means Committee.

11 other Congressmen have beards or goatees. They are also mostly Democrats, but their less-committal facial hair choices do not bind them together into a bloc as strong as the mustaches.

Serrano is well known as a solid Democratic voter – voting along party lines 93.99% of the time – and he is part of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He has rocked his facial hair for 50 years now, and is clearly a senior member of the Mustache Caucus.

Keep an eye on those whiskers.

List of other mustachioed Congressmen:

Sanford D. Bishop Jr. – Georgia 2^nd D,

G.K. Butterfield – North Carolina 1^st D,

Andre Carson – Indiana 7^{th D,}

Travis Childers – Mississippi 1^{st D} ,

Roscoe Bartlett – Maryland 6^{th  R  ,}

Wm. Lacy Clay – Missouri 1^{st D} ,

Emanuel Cleaver, II – Missouri 5^{th D} ,

James E. Clyburn – South Carolina 6^{th  D} ,

Gerald E. Connolly – Virginia 11^{th D} ,

Henry A. Waxman – California 30^{th  D} ,

John Conyers, Jr. – Michigan 14^{th  D} ,

Elijah E. Cummings – Maryland 7^{th  D ,}

Eliot L. Engel – New York 17^{th D ,}

Eni Faleomavaega – American Samoa D ,

Chaka Fattah – Pennsylvania 2^{nd D ,}

Raul Grijalva – Arizona 7^{th D ,}

Phil Hare – Illinois 17^{th  D ,}

John Lewis – Georgia 5^{th D ,}

George Miller – California 7^{th D ,}

Ed Pastor – Arizona 4^{th D ,}

Donald Payne – New Jersey 10^{th  D ,}

Charles Rangel – New York 15^{th D ,}

Denny Rehberg – Montana R ,

Ciro Rodriguez – Texas 23^{rd D ,}

John T. Salazar – Colorado 3^{rd  D ,}

David Scott – Georgia 3^{rd D ,}

Bobby Scott – Virginia 3^{rd  D ,}

Vic Snyder – Arkansas 2^{nd  D ,}

Harry Teague – Mexico 2^{nd D}