By Edward Epstein, CQ Staff

Rank and file House Democrats differed on whether the ouster of legendary Michigan Democrat John D. Dingell as Energy and Commerce Committee chairman dealt a body blow to the time-honored seniority system, or was merely a one-time insurrection intended to provide momentum for the agenda of President-elect Barack Obama .

“I don’t know that the seniority system is impacted by this,” Rep. Jackie Speier of California said after the Democratic caucus voted, 137-122, to make Henry A. Waxman , another Californian, chairman of the powerful committee that will play a key role in advancing Obama’s agenda on issues including global warming, energy efficiency and health care. “This had more to do with where the caucus is going on policy,” Speier added.

But Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, the House’s senior woman member, disagreed. “This is very troubling to the seniority system,” she said, because the caucus turned aside the long record and institutional knowledge of Dingell, a second-generation congressman who has served in the House since 1955, in favor of a new chairman more attuned to the latest ideological twists and turns.

And for good measure, Kaptur said the victory of Waxman — whose wealthy Los Angeles district includes Beverly Hills — represented the Democratic Party’s further turn away from the country’s heartland and toward the monied coasts.

“Today I weep for the heartland and I weep for a giant among lawmakers who did not deserve this fate,” Kaptur said.

Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel of New York, the House’s fourth-most senior member, went further. “This is the burial of the seniority system,” said Rangel, who warned that other chairmen could be snared by future challenges. “I would be surprised if I was challenged,” he said, “for the same reason that Mr. Dingell was very surprised.”

Ellen O. Tauscher , D-Calif., said she voted for Dingell “because we have a seniority system and as long as we do, it should be honored.”

But Tauscher said she would support changing ending the tradition of making a committee’s most senior majority party member the chairman. She also supports term limits for committee chairmen. Under a rule the Democrats borrowed two years ago from the previous Republican majority, chairmen are limited to six years tenure.

Some Democratic chairmen objected when Democrats adopted the rule in 2007, but they deferred to Speaker Nancy Pelosi ’s desire to avoid a rules fight at the beginning of the Democrats’ control of the House.

“There is much talk about doing away with term limits but nobody has proposed it,” said Brad Sherman of California. He said it would be better to raise the issue later, when Democratic chairmen installed two years ago are facing the loss of their posts.

Speier, who was just elected to her first full House term, said a move to eliminate term limits would probably meet stiff opposition from newer members.

Waxman, first elected to the House in 1974, will move from the chairmanship of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to take Dingell’s gavel. Waxman said he quietly campaigned for the post by echoing Obama’s call for change, not as a leader of a rebellion against seniority. “The prevailing feeling in the caucus was that we need a change for the committee to work with this administration,” he said after the vote.

But Waxman agreed that his victory could mean that he or other chairmen may be challenged more often in the future. “It should not be a grant of property right to be chairman for three decades or more,” he said.