The Los Angeles Times today profiled Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who has become the chief nemesis in Congress of earmarks for universities and other recipients.

For years Representative Flake has tried to delete money for individual earmarks, the controversial, noncompetitive grants inserted by lawmakers into appropriations bills for specific recipients, usually in the legislators’ home districts. Mr. Flake has resumed his quest during this year’s appropriations process, so far with almost no success.

The congressman has poked fun at multiple earmarks for universities, including several this month in a spending bill for agricultural research. One was a $489,000 earmark for the Ruminant Nutrition Consortium, led by South Dakota State University, which studies nutrition for beef cattle, dairy cows, and sheep.

During debate on the bill, Mr. Flake noted that, having grown up on a ranch, he had spent hours watching cattle to make sure their bellies didn’t bloat from digestive disorders. His amendment to strip the earmark was similarly meant, he said, “to relieve a little bloat” in the federal budget. He argued that the earmark, and others like it, short-circuits the competitive process used by the Agriculture Department to award other research grants.

His proposal failed, by a vote of 74 to 355. Continuing the agricultural metaphor, Mr. Flake conceded before the vote that his similar, past efforts had usually met defeat: “I have been beaten like a rented mule here quite a bit.”

However, the Times noted that Mr. Flake notched his first “kill” this year, when the House of Representatives voted to delete a $129,000 earmark for the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree, a nonacademic program in North Carolina that creates jobs for artisans. What’s more, his cause appears to have gained some momentum: Last year his amendments to strike earmarks drew an average of 68 votes. This year the average has risen to 85 votes. —Jeffrey Brainard