Legislative Learning: The 104th Republican Freshmen in the House

Citation preview

LEGISLATIVE LEARNING

POLITICS AND POLICY IN AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS VOLUME 3 GARLAND REFERENCE LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE VOLUME 1414

POLITICS

AND

POLICY IN AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS

S TEVEN A.SHULL, Series Editor

PRESIDENTS AS CANDIDATES Inside the White House for the Presidential Campaign Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

LEGISLATIVE LEARNING The 104th Republican Freshmen in the House Timothy J.Barnett

REASONABLE DISAGREEMENT Two U.S. Senators and the Choices They Make Karl A.Lamb

L E G I S L AT I V E L E A R N I N G THE 104TH REPUBLICAN FRESHMEN IN THE HOUSE

TIMOTHY J.BARNETT

GARLAND PUBLISHING, INC. A MEMBER OF THE TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP N EW YORK AND LONDON 1999

Published in 1999 by Garland Publishing, Inc. A Member of the Taylor & Francis Group 19 Union Square West New York, NY 10003 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Copyright © 1999 by Timothy J.Barnett

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 0-203-80037-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-80041-9 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-8153-3362-5 (Print Edition)

To Kelli for everything

Contents

List of Tables Series Editor’s Foreword Foreword Preface Acknowledgments

ix xi xiii xv xvii

CHAPTER 1 The Watershed Congress and Theory Development

3

CHAPTER 2 1997: Three Scenes from Act II of the GOP Revolution

11

CHAPTER 3 The Reelection Goal and Ambition Theory: Mayhew and Fenno Revisited

27

CHAPTER 4 The Development of 104th Freshman Class Cohesion

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CHAPTER 5 Perspectives of the 104th GOP Freshmen: An Overview

89

CHAPTER 6 Freshmen and Principles: The Contract as Mission

123

CHAPTER 7 Freshmen and Principals: The Perception of a Mandate

149

CHAPTER 8 The Freshmen as a Political Unit: Limitations and Dimensions

167

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Contents

CHAPTER 9 Leadership and Freshman Class Power Relations in the House

183

CHAPTER 10 Learning by Doing: The Progress of the 104th Class

217

CHAPTER 11 Putting the 104th Freshman Class into Perspective

247

Epilogue Appendix A: Interview List Appendix B: Research Design and Data Acquisition References Index

279 289 293 297 327

List of Tables

TABLE 1 TABLE 2 TABLE 3 TABLE 4 TABLE 5a TABLE 5b TABLE 6 TABLE 7 TABLE 8 TABLE 9 TABLE 10 TABLE 11 TABLE 12 TABLE 13 TABLE 14

Distinct Class Identity Class Cohesion (freshmen perspective) Class Cohesion (leadership perspective) Perception of a Mandate Nature of the Perceived Mandate Most Important Elements of Perceived Mandate Support of Internal Reform Factors Influencing Legislative Decisions of Freshmen Additional Influences upon Freshman Thinking Effect of Reelection Considerations on Freshmen Behavior House Freshmen Class Size, Post-Watergate Period Perceived Surrogacy Value of Staff Opinions Percentage of Vote Won in 1998 Elections by GOP House Class of 1994 Large, Partisan Classes Since 1946: Survival Entering Junior Term Defeated (in 1996), Retired, and Deceased Members of the 104th GOP House Class

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91 92 92 94 95 97 100 101 104 115 116 117 284 285 286

Series Editor’s Foreword

The Garland Series, “Politics and Policy in American Institutions” strives to show the interaction of American political institutions within the context of public policy making. A public policy approach often by definition is all-encompassing. Admittedly, my own interests focus on national policy making but the series will also include works on all levels of government. Indeed, I do not want my own specialties to define the series, therefore, we seek solid scholarship incorporating a wide range of actors, including those outside the usual definition of government actors. The policy concerns, too, are potentially quite broad, with special interests in the policy process and such substantive issue areas as foreign and defense policy, economic and budget policy, health care, social welfare, racial politics, and the environment. The series will publish a considerable range of works, ranging from upper division texts to scholarly monographs, including both hard and soft cover editions. The third book in the series, Tim Barnett’s Legislative Learning: The 104th GOP House Freshmen in the House, is a fascinating study of the Republican take-over of Congress for the first time in 40 years. The Republican class elected in 1994 was quite large (73 members) and, despite many being elected in formerly Democratic districts, 59 members survived election to the 105th Congress. This quite conservative group strongly favored governmental change and acted in concert with an assertive Speaker of the House in Newt Gingrich (R, Ga.). At the same time, owing to an independent sense of mission, mandate and ideologically conservative principle, the class at times impeded the ability of the party leadership in the House to act strategically.

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Series Editor’s Foreword

Barnett’s study uses a wide array of evidence in studying this cohesive group of legislators, including voting records and in-depth interviews. He studies the 104th Republican House freshmen within the context of ambition, principal-agent, and group power theories. He challenges Mayhew’s notion that member election is the most important motivation for legislator behavior. Rather, Barnett argues in favor of Fenn’s argument for the primacy of policymaking goals and finds that agenda setting goals appears to supercede the election motivation. In this sense, the 104th Republican class was quite unusual, perhaps even more reform minded than the “Watergate babies” class of Democrats elected in 1974. A major question was whether its ideological congruence would help transform Republican in the House from an opposition party to a governance party. I am confident that readers will find Barnett’s book an interesting and well written work. This is unusual in that it began as a doctoral dissertation. As such, it is well grounded in the literature and in numerous theories, but it also tells a very interesting story that needs to be told. Barnett’s study has continuing relevance due to the high survival rate among its members, its large size and ideological cohesion, its influence on the formal organization in the House, its strong class identity and its influence in advancing much of the “Contract with America.” Barnett’s combination of scholarship and readability makes Legislative Learning worthy of our attention. Steven A.Shull

Foreword

The election of 1994 afforded congressional scholars a great opportunity—the first Republican Congress in 40 years, ushered in by a boisterous, ideological group of first-term members who seemed to welcome their label as “revolutionaries.” A host of political scientists and journalists rushed to examine the Republican Class of 1994, as they voted en masse for Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America and then helped force a disastrous confrontation with Bill Clinton over closing down large chunks of the federal government. Into this context stepped Tim Barnett, a doctoral student at the University of Kansas. He was fascinated by these newly elected Republicans, and he decided to write his Ph.D. thesis on their evolution over their first two-years-plus in office. As his advisor, I noted the difficulty of obtaining access to these folks, given their less-than overwhelming appreciation of academics. Moreover, a major data-gathering project was scarcely advisable for someone who wanted to get on with his life. Barnett, to his credit, persevered, and we are all the better for his persistence. With immense dedication and considerable skill, he demonstrated how effective he could be in gathering excellent interview data from both members and staff. Even more impressively, he convinced most of the 73 freshman GOP offices to respond to a questionnaire on the attitudes and actions in the 104th Congress. And he organized an immense amount of information into coherent arguments that both help explain the import of the Class of 1994 and offer a distinctive perspective on the value and limitations of the “conditional party government” model as applied to the House of Representatives. Barnett’s original work was well written, and this book retains that strength. Moreover, he allows the Republican revolutionaries,

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Foreword

their staff, and other legislators to have their say—all in a wellorganized, coherent framework. Finally, in the wake of the 1998 election, Barnett can offer the first book-length interpretation of the entire Gingrich era, as seen through the eyes of the 1994 freshmen who proved the core backing for the Speaker. All in all, a promising start for an excellent scholar, who ignored his advisor’s advice, took on a difficult topic, and has produced an excellent book. Burdett Loomis University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas January, 1999

Preface

The 104th Republican House freshman class elected in 1994 is significant in terms of size (73 members), survival into the 105th Congress (59 members), influence, and power. It is the first majoritarian House freshman class for the Republican party in forty years, and the most influential partisan freshman class since the 1974 Democrat “Watergate Babies” class. The 104th GOP House freshman class figures importantly in the internal politics and policy-making of the 104th Congress. Acting in concert with party leadership during much of 1995, the class gave leadership the ability to move quickly on its reform and policy agenda. But, owing to a strong independent sense of mission, mandate, and ideologically conservative principle, the class at times impeded the ability of party leadership to act strategically. Based upon freshman class surveys and interviews, this work seeks to understand the 104th GOP freshmen’s high class identity and group power, as well as the nature and scope of the class’s legislative learning. The research finds that contrary to the Mayhewian thesis, member ambition for reelection is not the best explanation for the legislative behavior of the 104th freshmen. In conjunction with Fennoistic theory, interview findings point to the elevation of a policymaking goal as an explanation for freshman behavior. This goal arises from a mission orientation, and the perception of a public mandate connected with success in a watershed election. The mission and mandate perceptions are strengthened by a commitment to the “Contract with America” as a principled agenda-setting instrument. The class’s relatively high cohesiveness gives it the power to act as a principal in demanding that party leadership be responsive as an agent to class concerns and principles. The class discovers, however, that it is insufficiently skilled in incremental political tactics, and needs legislative learning. The xv

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treatise builds a case that a large, mission-driven and cohesive majoritarian freshman class may significantly affect House politics and policy-making. The research also identifies, organizes, and analyzes the cause of influence and power in the 104th Republican House freshman class.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank my friend and mentor, Professor Burdett Loomis, for insights, support, and good counsel. Naturally, I am indebted to the many members of Congress and senior staffers who cooperated with this research project. A number of these individuals made extra efforts to provide candid assessments of member activities, and detailed discussions of freshmen and staffer perceptions. Also, I am grateful for the encouragement supplied by many friends and loved ones. Above all, Kelli Barnett deserves special thanks for understanding and extraordinary kindness. Finally, a “thank you” to the good people at Garland Publishing, and series editor Steven Shull.

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CHAPTER 1

The Watershed Congress and Theory Development

In November 1994, the Republican party gained control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress for the first time in forty years. This remarkable event captured the attention of the nation, and offered political scientists new conditions under which to reassess the validity of dominant theories and models of legislative behavior and the evolution of the congressional institution (Fenno 1997 1; Sinclair 1997). During the post-World War II era, legislative theory shifted from a sociological foundation to a psychological base. In the sociological model, the social backgrounds of individual members of Congress were thought to offer the best explanation of the actions of members of Congress. By contrast, the psychological model worked from the conception that individuals are less the highly predictable product of their early environment and social status than they are a reflection of their needs, interests, values, perceptions, and goals. This is not to say that the psychological model entirely discounted the sociological model. Instead, it repositioned the sociological model as conditionally helpful but less able to explain, predict, and offer lasting generalizations about legislative behavior than the psychological model. In this context, political scientists such as Mayhew, Fenno, Fiorina, Schlesinger, and Arnold developed goal theory as the avenue within the psychological model that offered the most promise as a means of generalizing about legislative behavior. Goal theory proposes that certain identifiable member ambitions are at the root of legislators’ actions. These ambitions and the behaviors they stimulate contribute a great deal to the evolution of Congress as an institution. Equally,

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Legislative Learning

legislators’ ambition-driven behaviors give American voters impressions about the efficiency, consequence, and tendencies of Congress, and these impressions inform the reactions of voters in choosing new legislators and members of government. Legislative theorists often position goal theory to stand alone as an explanation of congressional activity. Sometimes, however, it is blended with other theories. One of the most popular amalgamations today is the blend between goal theory and a form of institutional theory that proposes a fundamental role for rules, structures, and norms in explaining the evolution of Congress and the actions of members. This blend between goal theory and structuralism is called the new institutionalising and has become the preferred starting point for many behavioralists working from the rational choice paradigm. Earlier forms of institutional theory often used a framework of constitutional considerations to explain the development of Congress. The U.S. Constitution gives each house in Congress the authority to make its own rules and develop its own operational structures (such as standing committees). After the rules, structures, and norms multiplied and congealed, students of Congress increasingly concluded that these considerations explained more about the daily activities of Congress than the underlying constitutional framework and empowerment.1 Less clear was the matter of whether rules designed for institutional efficiency dominated and directed the behaviors of legislators, or whether the ambitions and goals of legislators resulted in rules, structures, and norms designed to facilitate the goals. As time went by, behavioral theorists in the goal theory camp became increasingly interested in determining whether first-order member ambitions were focused on constituent interests and the public welfare, or centered on self-interested careerism, power, prestige, electoral security, and money. Although some observers did not see a necessary trade-off between one or the other set of goals, many students of Congress came to think of the debate as fundamental to the credibility of representative government in a democratic setting. It is important to the goal theory debate to note that until 1995, dominant legislative theories as well as leading empirical findings were untested in any modern House environment except one controlled by the Democratic party. Although the two parties are similar in many ways, there are also significant differences. These differences inform matters of means as well as ends, and processes as well as goals. The continuing Democratic control of the House through 1994 created a

The Watershed Congress and Theory Development

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remarkable vulnerability for much of the work of legislative theorists during the preceding forty years. Thus, the change in the political landscape offered by the 1994 congressional elections offers a muchneeded opportunity for legislative scholars to do important work. Now, theorists and empiricists can hope for a better understanding of whether conclusions about member ambitions and goals will remain constant in a Republican as well as a Democratic context. Noteworthy is the fact that the nation’s fifty state legislatures do not provide adequate surrogate answers to these concerns because conservative Republicans’ views on federalism and related principles of governance promote a different approach for policy-making and oversight in Republicancontrolled state legislatures than in the Congress.2 The Republican takeover of the U.S. House in January 1995 (the 104th Congress) was engineered by ideological conservatives, and resulted in a partial displacement of the influence of moderate Republicans. Thus, if any congressional context can demonstrate unwarranted assumptions in legislative goal theory, the existing context is a prime contender. Modern Democrats have a different view of American government than do Republicans. Democrats tend to believe that good government on the national level involves energy in social programs and the development of a sophisticated bureaucracy that supplies guidance and services that the private sector does not consistently generate in equitable ways (Clinton and Gore 1992). Republicans are attached to a resolute philosophy of private control of property. They place confidence in the idea that unfettered markets offer a needed service in differentiating between levels of motivation, hard work, talent, prudence, and frugality (Gingrich 1995). By comparison to Democrats, most Republicans are relatively unconcerned about what they see as transient social and economic inequities. Their philosophy is that inequities produce their own checks and balances, and that want or envy are better means of motivating people to improve than public charity to which few conditions are attached. Thus, issues of fairness, justice, and the nature of the best means for solving problems are fundamental in the contrast between the Democrat and Republican legislative agendas. There are other differences as well, the starkest contrasts being in areas of regulation of business, finance, individual versus community rights, voting rights, and the proper role of citizens in legislative bodies (Gingrich 1995). The point is that when a nation’s two major political parties have significantly differing views of the proper role of government in shaping and sustaining society, a House

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of Representatives controlled by one party for forty years will demonstrate partisan tendencies that distort the picture of what the institution would be like under rotating or contrasting control (Fenno 1997, 2; Evans and Oleszek 1997). This is especially true in the U.S. House, where the power of the minority party is more circumscribed than in the U.S. Senate, where members can filibuster. RESEARCHING FRESHMAN PERCEPTIONS AND GOALS It can be argued that compromises between the Republican and Democratic philosophies of government produce the best results in a world where people have contrasting interests. James Madison wanted a political environment where zealous factions could check one another’s initiatives. But strong conservatives and liberals do not see themselves as factions whose policy preferences need to be balanced by other factions. They see themselves as saviors who, if empowered, can rescue the nation from the blindness of partisans on the other side. In 1994, a new group of “rescuers” came to the U.S. House—one of the largest and most consequential majoritarian freshman classes ever seen in the House. Although their story has been told by journalists, political scientists have done relatively little as yet to theorize about the class, study class motivations and perceptions, and interpret the findings. Political scientists and observers have looked at matters such as standout personalities within the 104th freshman class, peer loyalities among freshmen, and the class’s conservative tendencies manifest in speech making on the floor (Clymer, 1997b; Evans and Oleszek 1997, 126; Browning 1995). Scholars have also observed that the 104th GOP freshmen developed an extraordinary relationship with House party leadership—a relationship that extensively impacted the development and work of the 104th Congress (Sinclair 1997; Owens 1997). Yet, in the midst of these observations, scholars have yet to develop theory about what made the class such a powerful political unit, or to examine in an organized way the limitations of class cohesion. Missing from existing endeavors is a careful exploration of member perceptions as they inform political ambitions. A scholarly effort to understand these perceptions and ambitions is critical to the assessment of how existing goal theory holds up in a new congressional context with a large group of Republican legislators possessing unusually strong peer relations. The task at hand involves isolating in case study fashion the 104th GOP House freshman class (now the 105th House sophomores) and

The Watershed Congress and Theory Development

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studying the fundamentally controlling perceptions of class members and their senior staffers. Key senior staffers such as chiefs of staff and legislative directors are conceptualized as extensions of members.3 Working from dominant behavioral theory, the objective is to understand the goals of the 104th GOP House freshmen (hereafter called “freshmen”) with regard to legislative service.4 But, one should not stop with goals, for goals only penetrate the surface level of what prompts behavior. The same may be said of attitudes. Goals and attitudes result from perceptions. Perceptions may not be reality, but people act upon them as though they were realities. Legislators’ perceptions of opportunity, constraints, justice, integrity, need, selfworth, and many other such things are what contribute to their development of attitudes and goals. Consequently, by studying the perceptions of a large representative sample of key players in the 104th freshman class, one may make an important contribution to the knowledge of the goals that informed freshmen behavior, as well as the reasons those goals were formulated and pursued. An additional aim of the study is to comprehend how the new Republican government in the U.S. House was affected by the involvement of a fairly radical and highly organized freshman group. To accomplish these aims a determination must be made as to whether the freshman class demonstrated tendencies associated with organized groups, or whether it was just a collection of independent individuals saddled with a label. Thus, the issue of class identity and operating cohesion becomes an important consideration. Also of great importance is the political leverage the class gained because of power-building arrangements with party leadership—arrangements that were initially thought to be mutually beneficial. As a means of introducing the study with an informative story that provides context and insight, a brief overview will be provided of important events affecting the relationship of the 104th freshman class to party leadership that transpired while interviews were being conducted with members of Congress during the spring and early summer of 1997. The 104th freshmen as 105th sophomores (in the Congress beginning January 1997) continued to show a high level of class identity and a moderately high cohesion during the portion of their second House term that could be observed for this study. There was, however, an important fracture that occurred in the class as the narrower majority seat margin of the House Republicans in the 105th Congress empowered Republican moderates to begin threatening to

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make deals with moderate Democrats. In an attempt to prevent this drift toward the center, and to preserve original mission conceptions, a group of about a dozen 105th sophomores (backed by the sympathy of about twenty other classmates) met regularly and formulated resistence to party leadership’s accommodation of moderating policy. Most of the rebels had been among the Speaker’s most stalwart admirers during the early days of the 104th Congress. After a couple of months, this resistence led to the brink of an attempt to topple Newt Gingrich as Speaker. However, the coup plan floundered over worries by Gingrich’s top lieutenants as to whether the GOP House Conference (the caucus of all Republican House members) could agree on a replacement Speaker. The account reveals a good deal about the perceptions and goals of influential members of the class, the perseverance and breakdown of class cohesion, and the determination of many junior members to exert an influence on the activities, strategies, methodologies, and agenda of the House Republican Conference (the body of all House GOP members). There are several points in the story that bear on the treatise. First, policy-making concerns and a mission to turn government toward conservative values are so important to many members of this class that they are willing to take risks not normally associated with junior members or legislative careerists (Koszczuk 1997b). Second, the principal-agent relationship between the rank and file and party leaders is subject to constant redefinition as players vie for power and the protection of prized interests. Third, the commitment to policy-making that helped unite the class in the early months later became a force that diminished class cohesion, especially when leadership was no longer able to convey a conservative mission vision that seemed resonant with the group’s initial goals. Fourth, the coup attempt, as well as its collapse, illustrate the struggle of inexperienced legislators to come to terms with the legislative learning process, especially with respect to the chamber’s demands for incrementalism and compromise (Fenno 1997). It can be argued that the ultraconservative campaign promises made by many of the 104th freshmen to their constituents played a role in constraining their tolerance of flexible policy leadership by Speaker Gingrich. Oddly enough, they felt so obligated to their core supporters and their personal “principles” that they were nearly willing to fall on their policymaking swords rather than to give in to political expediencies brought on by reduced GOP power in the

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chamber and a moderating political climate. Many of the rebels’ peers possessed a keen understanding of the rebels’ motives and, thus, were willing to tolerate their insurrections even though they disagreed with the rebels’ means and some of their ends. Others, especially older members, were thoroughly exasperated. But, as the curtain falls on the coup story in the summer of 1997, many observers believe that some of the radical members of the 104th GOP freshman class are seeing value in closing ranks with the rest of their class and pursuing incremental progress (Doherty and Katz 1998). Hence, although all House peer classes break down with time, it appears this class will weather its most serious bout with factionalization, and continue to be adequately team-spirited in most issue areas to be a political force in the 105th Congress. NOTES 1. The role of the Constitution relative to Congress is often viewed by theorists as fundamental to electoral considerations, the authority of the institution, the general outline of the legislative process, and the balance of power between the Congress, other branches, and the states. 2. Although usually tempered by social policy convictions, the untempered Republican view is that a national legislature in a federated system should be a nerve center for the nation, not a social-policy-making center (Diamond 1992; Berger 1987). The idea is that Congress should provide an environment in which state legislatures have ample opportunity to experiment in making policy that is suitable to the needs and wishes of state residents (Kincaid 1990; Lutz 1992). Granted, time has shown that this view, unless carefully constrained, has dangers—most notably, states becoming economically predatory of one another (Nice 1987). Nevertheless, this view holds that Congress should do little beyond protecting fundamental political freedoms and hospitable environmental considerations (like economic stability) that allow people to compete on a state basis in the exercise of their freedoms (Beer 1993; Skousen 1985). From this perspective, state legislatures are policy-making centers, whereas Congress is a management center focused on protecting the states’ differential policy-making liberties (Elazar 1987). Consequently, Congress must provide oversight to prevent ideological goals from becoming universalized in bureaucratic activities, and to prevent federal agency regulations from supplanting the right of states to regulate on behalf of differentiated goals (Dye 1990). 3. Analysis proceeds on two levels. First, the class is analyzed as a subunit within the U.S. House. Other prominent units in the House are party

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leadership, the House Republican Conference, House Democrats, and ideological groups. An endeavor is made to understand the actions of the 1994 class relative to these other forces. Additional analysis is pursued by looking at individual GOP freshman offices. Ideological divisions between offices are observed, as well as divisions over political means (purists vs. incrementalists). In many respects, members empower their senior staffers to act as their agents, and rely heavily upon their counsel in decision making. Thus, by listening to key staffers one obtains a fuller picture of members and the class. 4. This study does not include the 104th Democrat freshman class because it was small (thirteen members), demonstrated a low level of organization, and exerted relatively little influence. Hook (1995b) writes that the class had “none of the programmatic, ideological unity forged among GOP newcomers.” The decision to study just the majority party freshmen is consistent with scholars’ previous patterns of studying freshman classes in the House (Loomis 1988). Still, Democratic freshman offices were contacted to assess the feasibility and productivity of including this class as a sidebar study. Since the study concerns the majority party freshmen, the term “freshmen” does not refer to Democrat freshmen unless specifically stated. Furthermore, although terms like “104th freshmen” or “105th sophomores” are used when referring to the 104th freshmen in the 105th Congress, the term freshmen is still to be understood as referring to the 104th freshmen unless another group of freshmen (such as the 103rd freshmen) are specified.

CHAPTER 2

1997: Three Scenes from Act II of the GOP Revolution

The freshmen were not in Gingrich’s pocket; he was not able to play the freshmen like one would play pieces on a chessboard. (Senior staffer) The 104th Congress (1995–1996) began with a Republican perception of a public mandate and a Republican House leadership that was confident in its agenda and ability to lead from the center. The 105th Congress began with many House Republicans questioning their earlier mandate perceptions and a Republican leadership increasingly uncertain about its ability to lead without a more effective delegation of power to committee chairs. The result was confusion and malaise among many House Republicans from January through mid-spring, and a falling away by some from the conservative mission orientation that was so pervasive in the 104th Congress. By mid-March some of the most conservative GOP sophomores could no longer keep their frustrations in check. They thought they were seeing increasing evidence that Republican House leadership was compromising the right-wing agenda in order to curry more support from House moderates. Hence, they instigated a series of actions that disrupted House business and put the 105th GOP sophomore class back in the limelight. Three of the actions stand out: a rebellion on a key procedural rule dealing with committee funding (March 1997), an insurrection on a similar rule

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governing a flood relief bill (May 1997), and a coup plan to replace Newt Gingrich as Speaker (July 1997). All of these actions were aimed at forcing the Republican leadership to take note that many junior members were determined that the party maintain the original mission associated with the Contract with America. SCENE ONE: THE COMMITTEE FUNDING RULE REBELLION In an extraordinary three-hour meeting of the GOP Conference on the night of March 20 [1997], Gingrich forced a band of rebels, who had disagreed with the leadership’s handling of funding for congressional committees, to stand up before their colleagues like guilty schoolboys and explain their dissenting votes. Then he told them they should consider leaving the Republican Party and threatened to take away their committee assignments…. Frustration with his direction led 11 conservative members of the party, all but one of them from the Class of 1994, to vote against the rule that would bring to the floor the leadership bill (H Res 91) that authorizes spending by all the standing committees.1 (Koszczuk 1997c)

The aforementioned rule failed 213–210 due largely to the efforts of the right wing of the 105th sophomore group—a group eleven members strong at the core, but influential with thirty to fifty members. Democrats voted with the core rebel Republicans because they did not want to see a rule accepted that would facilitate passage of a resolution including a 48 percent increase in funding for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. This is the committee involved in investigating Democrat fund-raising in the White House. According to the dissenters, about thirty members of the class were firmly on their side in the matter, but since it only took a short dozen to accomplish the purpose, there was no reason for other members to bear any heat. The 104th freshmen campaigned in 1994 on matters like tax cuts, reduction of wasteful government practices, and a slimming down of standing committees that allegedly existed largely to dole out pork in exchange for votes and congressional perks. After the debacle of Gingrich’s failed government shutdown tactics in November and December 1995, conservative members of the class did not want to see him cave in any further to the President’s taxation and spending

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positions. Thus, when Gingrich came up with a new tactic of taking tax cuts off of the table as a temporary tactic of negotiating further with Clinton, strong conservatives envisioned the likelihood of another failed strategy. They interpreted Gingrich’s moderation as “a retreat from…the crown jewel” of the 1994 Contract with America (Koszczuk 1997c). They even told the press that Gingrich’s leadership was in a malaise (Bradley 1997a). After all, this was the class that pushed vigorously for the Congressional Review Act (1996) as a means of providing increased oversight on bureaucratic rule-making. It was also the class where many members wanted to see an “Enumerated Powers Act” that would require each member of Congress to set forth the constitutional justification of any legislation that a member proposed (Keller 1996). One matter that especially exasperated many of the 105 th sophomores was Gingrich’s repeated decisions to discuss new moderate strategies with the media before running them past the class and the Conference for their input (Koszczuk 1997c). These junior members were interested in party government, but only conditional party government (Owens 1997). Some of them claimed that their reason for rebelling on the procedural vote was not so much their dissatisfaction with the committee funding plan as it was a desire to lodge a vote of no confidence in leadership’s recent handling of the party’s agenda and public relations (Bradley 1997c). Furthermore, they claimed to be demonstrating willpower to create a forceful reorientation of the GOP House Conference toward its original moorings (Bradley 1997d). This willfulness angered some of the party’s senior members, who felt that novice legislators should not try to be the Conference’s conscience. When the Speaker called the Republican caucus into private session in March, and called the junior members on the carpet, one is reported to have said, “We’re not going to be intimidated by Newt Gingrich.” The member then defended his vote on the basis of “principle and conscience” (Koszczuk 1997c). The day after the meeting, another rebel claimed that the dissenters belonged to the party of Reagan, and if the Speaker didn’t like it, he should leave the party (ibid.). Later that day, Gingrich worked out a compromise with conservative members—one that postponed general committee funding while providing a resolution to fund the committee investigating the White House. Gingrich had little choice but to make concessions, since the junior House members on the right wing of their party have the

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special support of powerful social policy interest groups (Henneberger and Grey 1997; Grann 1995). Furthermore, most of the rebels are popular in their home districts, where they are often viewed as political heroes for their willingness to stand up to leadership (Bradley 1997b). In fact, the rebels claimed that a few days after their attack on the procedural rule, they were informed by about thirty other members that constituents in these members’ districts were unhappy with them for not voting with the eleven rebels (Bradley 1997c). Communications like these made the rebels feel that support for their frustrations was growing. However, the rebels received mixed reviews from classmates and their staffers regarding how much positive ground was gained for conservatives by the insurrection. (Influential conservative staffer) The group of eleven has stopped a few things, but they are not very effective. They are more effective with the media than with their peers. When they stopped the rule on the committee bill, they got the ear of their party members and Newt, but the funding level only changed $500,000. The increase for the committee basically stood. Newt did, however, hear the message, namely that the party was drifting and needed to get back on track. It may have had some impact. The center moved a little from the left to the right. (Legislative director) When the Gang of Eleven [radical conservatives] takes tough votes, it puts leadership on notice about compromising too much. (104th freshman) On the evening when the Gang of Eleven had to explain their votes, Steve Largent started with a heartfelt talk. As he spoke, many members of the Conference changed their opinions and ended up identifying with the eleven. This process was encouraging because it showed democracy at work. I see a wisdom to what the Founders gave us—a slow, messy process. They wanted real deliberation. (Leadership staffer) Concerning the Gang of Eleven, these guys have principles, but they need to learn how to win. Sometimes it is better to do things incrementally. We feel like we are on the same page with these guys, but we think change takes place at a slower pace.

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Although the committee funding problem did get papered over for a time, and Gingrich did buy some credibility with junior members when he agreed to dig into his own pocket to pay for a large ethics violation fine, bigger difficulties were to come later in the spring (Henry and Bradley 1997). Junior members had tasted their power to interfere with leadership, and they would be tempted to use this power again. The Speaker grew angry and endeavored to keep control, but he was limited by the inability to find an effective way to discipline members who would rather stick by their own preferences than be rewarded by a long career in the House or advancement in the party (Bradley 1997a). The Speaker was also hindered in exerting discipline by reason of the GOP’s narrow seat margin in the House— a margin so narrow that eleven independent-minded members could halt the party’s agenda. The narrow seat margin created yet another worry for Gingrich: Narrow majoritarian margins stimulate the development of power-hungry factions in the majority party, and these factions tend to give opportunity to ambitious lieutenants who curry favor with factions in exchange for support in climbing higher on the leadership ladder. Ostracizing rebel members was not a workable disciplinary measure that leadership could endeavor to enact against these members because they were perfectly content in their own closely networked and loyal subgroups, such as the “New Federalists,” and the “Family Caucus.” Furthermore, the class still had more cohesion than the Speaker had influence over the class, so attempts to create disenfranchisement among peers was not a very workable alternative. (It was, however, explored by leadership [Koszczuk 1997f, 1674]). The class had already demonstrated its ability to rally together, most notably when a committee chair tried to discipline freshman Mark Neumann in 1995. Gingrich was left with few disciplinary tools other than the limited power of intimidation or shaming. Neither tactic held much promise against self-confident members who saw themselves acting on principle. Consequently, Gingrich found himself in a position where he could only lead by inspiring loyalty rather than commanding it. Like the President, Gingrich needed to cultivate the power to persuade. But to accomplish this, he had to find ways to put his own affairs in order. This was not easy to do under the heat of an ethics investigation, tensions with committee chairs, and a series of public gaffes.2

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SCENE TWO: A REBELLION ON A RULE GOVERNING A FLOOD RELIEF BILL The month of May 1997 was not a good month for House Republicans. Republicans were put on the defense with their core constituency in trying to explain their moderating position on the 1998 budget resolution (Hager and Rubin 1997). Matters became even more complicated as Gingrich continued to improvise on the budget plan and take Conference members by surprise (Koszczuk 1997e, 1415). This came across to many members of the GOP Conference as poor management. But the budget was not the only area where leadership missteps created upsets within the ranks. House leadership’s mismanagement of a flood relief bill increased the willingness of many House Republicans to pay attention to the 105th sophomores’ complaints that leadership had lost sight of the original mission. A serious late spring flood in the upper Midwest moved the House to write a relief bill for midwestern farmers and flood victims (Taylor 1997a). (The bill also contained aid for Bosnia and other projects [Bradley 1997e].) But, instead of allowing the flood relief bill to obtain expedited passage, GOP leadership tacked on several riders, one of which would create an “automatic CR” as a budget management tool for the House. The CR (continuing resolution) was designed to provide automatic funding for government agencies at existing levels if a budget negotiation impasse prevented a regular appropriations bill from being signed by the start of the government’s fiscal year. Republican leadership decided that if government shutdowns were bad for their image, then the public would like the idea of a guarantee against shutdowns, but one that would hold Clinton’s feet to the fire in the matter of budget negotiations. The attraction of the automatic CR was that it would give the House Republicans a worst-case scenario of being able to hold the line on spending increases for the parts of the bureaucracy. As a consequence, the importance of the President’s own budget proposal would decline, and he would be under great pressure to come to terms with House Republicans (Taylor 1997a). Republicans understood that Clinton would veto any straightforward bill that could put the Republicans in a position where they could substitute spending freezes in place of government shutdowns to force the Oval Office to cooperate (Taylor 1997b). This is the reason Republican leadership decided to attach the automatic CR as a rider to the flood relief bill. They were hopeful that the President would not risk

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a public outcry by vetoing a bill to provide disaster relief funds. But leadership failed to discern that some members were so distraught over what they saw as a loss of mission focus by leadership that they would undermine leadership at a critical time simply to demonstrate that they saw themselves as principals and expected leadership to act as their agent. Thus, forty-three Republican members rose up against the procedural rule that was to guide debate on the flood relief bill. A number of 105th GOP sophomores were at the center of the insurrection, and they were joined this time by Tom DeLay, majority whip. Some of the members justified their action by arguing that Gingrich had abandoned conservatives on an environmentally sensitive bill the previous week (a dam project in California). Others complained about leadership’s lack of timely communication with members on its tactical plans (Bradley 1997e; Taylor 1997a). This uprising marked the third time that members of the 104th GOP freshman class were at the center of challenges on the floor to the authority of party leadership.3 With the flood relief bill tied up because of Republicans’ internal party problems, the public relations disaster that Republicans hoped to put upon President Clinton soon found its way back to them. The Oval Office’s shrewd management of public relations provided the media with cause to paint the House Republicans as so intent upon blackmailing the President into signing Republican-empowering legislation that House leadership was willing to let thousands of people in North Dakota live in temporary shelters if need be. Although the reality was that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) still had about $1.5 billion in its flood disaster relief funds, the slowness of the agency in accomplishing the relief work created powerful images of hardship that worked in Clinton’s favor (ibid.). In the end, Gingrich had to back down and send the President a flood relief bill without riders. SCENE THREE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NEAR-COUP ATTEMPT Although the Speaker’s problems and tactical errors produced grumbling through the House GOP Conference, nowhere was the disenchantment any greater than among the 105th GOP sophomores (Sinclair 1997;26; Henneberger and Gray 1997). Shortly after their election in 1994 as the first GOP majoritarian freshman class in forty years, they came to envision Gingrich as a genius and superman. The unrealistically high expectations the freshmen held for the

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Speaker made their pain all the greater when his fallibility began shining like the morning sun (Koszczuk 1997b). In this context, key members of Gingrich’s leadership team—Armey, DeLay, and Boehner—began distancing themselves from the Speaker and cultivating their power bases among members. But members could not decide if they had enough confidence to follow any of the existing leaders. Majority Leader Armey had the support of about thirty of the most conservative junior members, but he was also crippled by being viewed as excessively ideological by GOP House moderates. House Conference chair John Boehner was viewed by some members as inept in his central communications role. Majority Whip Tom DeLay was seen by some members of the Conference as excessively independent and hot-headed. Bill Paxon, Gingrich’s appointed chairman of leadership meetings, was viewed by some senior members as too close to the 104th freshmen, and perhaps not fully skilled in strategic planning (Connolly, Broder, and Balz 1997; Koszczuk 1997e; Mercurio 1997; R.Cohen 1997). Thus, many who were frustrated with Gingrich were unsure if a better replacement could be found. Rumblings about a possible coup surfaced before June. In late March 1997, a Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call, printed a story which stated that eleven disaffected House members were beginning to discuss the possibility of starting a revolution against Gingrich unless the Speaker began to provide clear leadership on the party’s conservative agenda before August (Bradley 1997b). A few days later, one House Republican was calling Gingrich “political road kill” due to his inability to be an effective and consistent agent for the party’s rank and file (C.Cook 1997). But it was not until early July that disenchanted 105th sophomores began moving aggressively to employ a parliamentary move to oust Gingrich from the Speakership. The simple majority procedure, known as “a motion to vacate the chair,” had never been used successfully in the House. However, it had been attempted in 1910 when the autocratic rule of GOP Speaker Joe Cannon angered members of both parties. Cannon survived when the motion to vacate the chair was tabled, but his image was greatly damaged and his power of persuasion quickly declined (Koszczuk 1997f). It is unclear whether the proponents of the coup understood fully that the motion to vacate the chair puts the majority party at great risk when the seat count in the chamber is closely divided between two parties. In the 105th Congress, the House Republicans held only a tenseat margin of error. Thus, eleven members siding with the Democrats

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could turn a vote in favor of the Democrats against an otherwise united Republican front (Connolly, Broder, and Balz 1997). The part of the chess game the coup planners had not worked out concerned what to do about replacement leadership if the motion succeeded and the Democrats backed it. Indeed, knowing how the Democrats felt about Gingrich, no one could imagine that any Democrat would not vote for the motion. But what would happen once the Speaker’s chair was vacated and action was taken to select a replacement Speaker? What would happen if the Democrats united around their one crown jewel candidate, while Republicans split between whether to go with Armey or someone less ideological like Paxon? Theoretically, Democrats could gain the Speakership and hold it until Republicans could gain near unanimous agreement on one candidate. It appears that the formulators of the coup attempt concluded that Republicans could find a way to agree on a replacement Speaker if the only alternative to agreement was the loss of the Speakership to the Democrats. After all, they watched Gingrich play high stakes poker with Clinton on the budget, and on the flood relief CR rider, and had seen him calculate how certain people would have little choice but to take certain steps. However, they seemed to overlook the fact that if Gingrich’s plans did not work out the way he expected, their plans might be overthrown as well. The perpetrators of the plan also made several other mistakes. First, they did not know their peer sympathizers’ views on leadership well enough to avoid disclosing their plan to persons who would go directly to leadership and expose the plot. Second, they had not calculated if they had sufficient muscle to proceed with the plan regardless of any position taken by Gingrich’s lieutenants. Third, they assumed for good reasons that Gingrich’s lieutenants would side with them, but they did not consider what might happen to the lieutenants’ support if more than one lieutenant was interested in being nominated for the Speakership (Koszczuk 1997b). In the Washington Post version of the coup events, GOP Conference chair John Boehner learned from several dissidents on the afternoon of July 9 that a resolution had been written to vacate the Speakership, and that the resolution would be offered soon by a largely sophomore group acting under privileged status. Later that afternoon, Boehner went to a regularly scheduled leadership meeting with Gingrich’s other lieutenants—Armey, DeLay, and Paxon. When Boehner told the others about what he had learned, they believed him, since each had been receiving complaints from the rank and file about Gingrich’s recent

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leadership lapses. After assessing the information, Armey decided to send a floor assistant to find out if a privileged motion to vacate the Speakership could be stopped. At the same time, Armey allegedly indicated he would not lift a finger to save Gingrich—a statement he later denied (Connolly, Broder, and Balz 1997). As discussion progressed, Armey is reported to have said he intended to call Judiciary Committee chair Henry Hyde to ask him for a nomination as Speaker. To this remark Boehner is reported to have replied that “he doubted the majority leader could muster the votes” (ibid.). This assessment (or veiled warning) by the GOP Conference chair may have unsettled Armey and made him fear that Boehner might be planning to back Paxon as Gingrich’s replacement. On the afternoon of July 10 one or more of the sophomore dissidents endeavored to recruit nonsophomore Representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn.). Although Shays had vocally supported some of the 105th sophomores’ concerns with leadership failings, his loyalty to Gingrich was high, and he did not appreciate this action. Shays and another representative, Mike Parker (R-Miss.), visited Gingrich around 7:30 P.M. the same evening to tip him off on what they had learned (Koszczuk 1997f). Although Gingrich’s chief of staff was alerted by Armey a couple hours before (through a staffer) that a possible overthrow attempt was in the offing, Gingrich did not suspect Paxon’s involvement in the coup plot. Hence, Gingrich sent the two to Paxon to ask him to find a way to stop the coup plan before it became a coup attempt. After ending the 9:00 P.M. meeting with Shays and Parker, Paxon sought out DeLay, and then Armey. The three decided to meet in Paxon’s office, but without GOP Conference chair Boehner. Meanwhile, about twenty of the rebel dissidents were meeting in 105th sophomore Lindsey Graham’s office trying to decide what to do and how. According to Congressional Quarterly Weekly Reports (CQWR), at about 11:30 P.M. DeLay showed up and told them that if they were planning to use a privileged motion to oust Gingrich, he would support them with his vote, and he thought the other leaders would as well. But, he said they better act fast because word had leaked out (Connolly, Broder, and Balz 1997; Koszczuk 1997f). Toward the end of the dissidents’ meeting, a general expectation formed that DeLay would communicate the seriousness of the matter to the other lieutenants in such a way that these leaders would be able to convince Gingrich to find a graceful way to step aside, thus averting the need to use the motion to vacate the Speakership. (According to

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DeLay’s staff, DeLay was not part of the rebellion, but simply went too far in trying to empathize with the group.) Shortly before 1:30 A.M., DeLay reported to Armey and Paxon that the coup was for real, the number of dissidents involved had grown, and the group’s move was imminent and unstoppable. The three then discussed a possible new leadership slate, with Armey as Speaker, Paxon as majority leader, and DeLay remaining majority whip. But then, Boehner is reported to have followed up on his earlier assessment by announcing that Paxon had more support for the Speakership than Armey. Following this assessment of potential division, the group broke up about 2:30 A.M. When they headed home, they did so without a firm agreement on what to do (Connolly, Broder, and Balz 1997). How the involvement of Gingrich’s lieutenants in the coup plot came unraveled is not perfectly clear, due to each leader giving a slightly different account of personal motivations and events. However, it is apparent that something caused Armey to develop cold feet during the wee morning hours of July 11 (he says he prayed with his wife). The result was his decision the next morning to try to stop the coup and encourage the other leaders to do the same. Perhaps Armey made his decision purely on the basis of loyalty toward Gingrich, or on an assessment of political conditions and party goals. It is also possible that he decided against cooperating after learning that dissidents were less supportive of him than Paxon—the conclusion reached by some of the dissidents (Connolly, Broder, and Balz 1997). Armey’s logic might have largely served his self-interest, or he might have feared that if the House Republicans failed to unite, Democrats could shortly gain an opportunity to take the House’s top office. Whatever the explanation for Armey engaging in “what if scenarios and then pulling the plug on his own involvement, the morning of July 11 found Armey calling Gingrich to his office where he and Gingrich’s other lieutenants endeavored to explain the situation, as well as to pledge their support in stopping the coup plan. Later that day all of the leaders, except Gingrich, met with five representatives from the dissident sophomore group to warn of their decision not to participate in any parliamentary action to vacate the Speakership. During the meeting Armey and DeLay allegedly told the five that their behavior had been immoral and irresponsible. This seemingly misplaced reprimand caused the sophomores to start “laughing at what buffoons the leaders were” (ibid., 1997, 8). Nevertheless, some sort of truce was reached. It appeared for a brief

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time that the damage could be largely contained. But when details of the story were leaked the next week to The Hill (a weekly newspaper covering Congress), the precarious involvement of the Speaker’s top leaders in the coup became apparent. Before long, each of the lieutenants was trying to cover his own tracks at the expense of the others, resulting in a situation where they all looked guilty. In the midst of this, Gingrich endeavored to make the best of a difficult situation by making amends with his leadership group. Perhaps this was a goodwill gesture, or perhaps Gingrich felt safer with an arrangement where the three could retain their status by returning to a state of loyalty (ibid.). When Gingrich’s sole appointee to leadership (Paxon) said, “Maybe I ought to resign,” before Gingrich could even reply, Armey is said to have blurted out “I accept.” But Gingrich did notify Paxon the next day that he was out of leadership (ibid., 1997, 8). At the same time, Gingrich created a new informal inner circle of House leaders that he could use as consultants and as “eyes and ears” in forming a defense perimeter (R.Cohen 1997). Seemingly, Gingrich came out of the coup episode with an improved standing in the GOP Conference. This occurred when House Republicans who were mildly disenchanted with him saw that by rising to his support during the crisis, various benefits would accrue to the party and to themselves—in the latter case in terms of career enhancement and improved access to leadership. Troubles were further quieted following a July 23 closed door GOP meeting that nearly turned into “a group therapy session” (ibid.). According to Connolly, Broder, and Balz (1997, 8), “Members who were not part of the fateful July 10 meeting [of rebels] stepped to the microphone to say they shared the frustrations with the party’s lost sense of purpose, even if they disapproved of the move to dump Gingrich.” Confessions like this moved Gingrich and other leaders to acknowledge deficient leadership and errors of judgment, promoting a greater willingness of the rank and file to follow and support the existing leadership. A consensus then seemed to form that teamwork was needed if the Conference was to avoid an unproductive 105th Congress (Cohen 1997; Koszczuk 1997b). CONCLUSION The Speaker’s difficulties with about twenty members of the 105th sophomore class (plus perhaps an equal number of peer sympathizers) illustrates the perseverance of the 104th freshman class in their policymaking objectives. Although the right flank of the class is not

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representative of the class as a whole in its use of aggressive tactics, it is representative of a willingness of most class members to put a premium on policy-making goals (R.Cohen 1997).4 At least until the coup attempt, most members of the class were on good terms with the rebel wing. This tolerance, and even sympathy, reflects not only strong friendships but the conviction that members of Congress have a right to question leadership’s use of received powers. In other words, the class believes that leadership should remember that the rank and file are the principals and that the leaders are the agents, who have a fiduciary responsibility to those who elected them to positions of privilege and power. These beliefs are not unlike those expressed twenty years before by members of the 94 th Democrat House freshman class. As congressional scholar Burden Loomis points out, the “Watergate Babies” wanted a “consultative leadership,” not one that was overly hierarchical. They were suspicious of leadership at times, so much so that on one occasion a group of them confronted Speaker Albert over sharp differences that had developed (Loomis 1988, 42–43). Most members of the 105th sophomore class believe their principles are quite closely aligned with those of Speaker Gingrich; thus, they felt no need to participate in voting down leadership’s procedural rules or in the coup attempt that came in July. Furthermore, although the Speaker is said to be unhappy with the right wing of the class, his displeasure with them is more for their slowness of learning how the GOP’s narrow seat margin in the House requires that he compromise the conservative agenda than it is with their policy objectives or determination to make a difference.5 For the entire first year of the 104th Congress, Gingrich trained and urged the freshmen to go for whatever they could get in terms of policy and influence; consequently, he knows he must be long-suffering when the more diehard members have difficulty accepting small victories. But, more than this, Gingrich and the 104th freshmen are all learning about growing pains that occur when those under tutelage decide they have adequately matured in judgment to seek out more ways to exercise power (Henneberger and Gray 1997). As one member of the 105th sophomore class remarked after the near-coup incident, “A lot of us came here very idealistic…. We held Newt to a very high standard, and it’s fair to say we did not understand how the process worked, and how some cherished beliefs have to be modified for the sake of advancing some of those ideals” (Koszczuk 1997b, 1752).

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NOTES 1. The 105th sophomores involved in the so-called Gang of Eleven that resisted Speaker Gingrich were Chabot, Coburn, Graham, Largent, Neumann, Salmon, Sanford, Scarborough, and Souder. The interview pool included four of these nine members; also, staff interviews or surveys were obtained from all nine of their offices. Prior to the advent of the Gang of Eleven, there was a so-called Gang of Seven in the 103rd Congress that took an activist position on banking reforms (Sinclair 1997, 10). One congressman explained that as long as there is a narrow majority for House Republicans, there will always be a gang of a dozen or so members, regardless of how its composition varies. But, the Gang of Eleven is more than a circumstantial collection of individuals, since the core members strategically arranged to have offices near one another in a section of the Cannon House Office Building, now called “Buddy Hall” by some. 2. On May 15, 1997, Speaker Gingrich made his first $50,000 payment to the ethics committee as part of a $300,000 penalty settlement plan created by the panel. Gingrich admitted bringing discredit on the House when he set up a tax-exempt organization (GOPAC) that did not adhere adequately to the law concerning spending for political purposes. Furthermore, Gingrich provided misleading information to the panel during their investigation. In addition to the financial penalty, Gingrich received a formal floor reprimand in January. This made him the first Speaker to be disciplined in this fashion. The matter of how Gingrich would pay the penalty became an ethics issue when Robert Dole offered Gingrich a $300,000 loan with no payments for eight years. The final settlement called for Gingrich to borrow only half the amount from Dole, and to pay the balance out of his own resources (Koszczuk 1997d). 3. The first GOP insurrection episode occurred in July 1995, when sixtyone members participated in voting down a procedural rule. The second occurrence was in March 1997, when the Gang of Eleven rebelled on the committee funding rule (Bradley 1997e). 4. Richard Cohen (1997) indicates that the twenty hard core GOP dissidents are supported by another fifty sympathizers. Add to this another fifty members who are on the fence about Gingrich, and the magnitude of the potential uprising becomes clear. 5. As some scholars have observed, relations between the chamber and committees do not stay constant across sessions of Congress (Sinclair 1989; Smith and Deering 1990). Speaker Gingrich felt that with the narrow seat margin held by House Republicans in the 105th Congress, leadership needed to move more policy-making back to committee chairs. With the chairs generally less conservative than the Speaker, Gingrich

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could not reasonably expect to provide as aggressive leadership on behalf of conservative policy as in the 104th Congress. Gingrich expected highly conservative junior members to understand this, but apparently it was lost on some of them.

CHAPTER 3

The Reelection Goal and Ambition Theory Mayhew and Fenno Revisited

This class did not come here just to be in Washington. There is a mentality to get the job done and then go home. (104th class legislator)

Now, some members of the 104th class are falling in love with the idea of being members of Congress. (Exasperated staffer)

THE REELECTION GOAL In 1974 David Mayhew offered what he called “a simple abstract assumption about human motivation” in which he constructed “a vision of United States congressmen as single-minded seekers of reelection” (1974, 5). In this abstraction—used for the purpose of theory building—congressmen are interested in getting reelected and nothing else (13). The theory’s defenders contend that this reelection goal is not a problem for democracy. Some look to James Madison and argue that legislators’ ambitions for office should motivate them to be sensitive to their constituents. From this viewpoint, the theory

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is seen as a pragmatic explanation of the motivations that undergird republican government (Schlesinger 1966; Loomis 1988). Gradually, Mayhew’s conception became a central component in theoretical frameworks used by an increasing number of legislative theorists and behavioralists.1 At the time Mayhew wrote, much of the existent theory concerning legislators and their activities was sociological in nature (Shepsle 1989b). The work of building behavioral theory around legislators’ goals rather than their backgrounds or personal attributes was just getting under way. The increasingly prevalent thinking among political scientists at the time was that by explaining the causes of legislators’ behaviors, professional observers could better understand change and stability in the institution of Congress. Although goal theory eventually wrestled a lot of attention away from sociological theory, it did not have center stage to itself. Other systems of explaining the development of Congress—such as the constraining nature of rules and embedded institutional structure (the “new institutionalism”)—were also gaining adherents (Polsby 1968).2 Of the scholars working on goal theory, Richard Fenno’s contribution to the debate stood out in the attention it garnered. Fenno (1973) conceived of a triad of goals that lay behind legislators’ actions—goals of getting reelected, achieving influence (power) in the chamber, and making good public policy (16).3 Interestingly, Fenno did not offer this conception as a complete theory of legislative behavior. When he introduced it, he offered it as an explanation of the behavior of members of Congress while working in committees.4 But it was only a matter of time until Fenno’s theory of committee member behavior was generalized by legislative theorists to the activities of members of Congress in all their congressional functions. The idea of a triad of legislative goals soon became popularized as an expanded Mayhewian conception. There was admiration in some quarters for Mayhew’s innovation in stating a theory so starkly as to isolate a central issue and stimulate scholarly controversy. But, abstractions do not equally satisfy all persons, especially abstractions suggesting to some minds that democracy’s elected elites are much more concerned with personal status than with their representative functions. Fenno’s theory helped some who were dissatisfied with Mayhew’s implication-laden abstraction by supplying the policymaking goal as an ambition diffusing theoretical refinement of Mayhew’s theory.5 The popularization of Fenno made it possible for scholars who were uncomfortable with the narrowness of the Mayhewian

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abstraction to speak reassuringly of a more broad-based conception of legislative motivation—a conception with some political dignity. This seemed important during the Cold War era. The broader conception rescued the institution of Congress from the image of a legislative body detached from its representative functions and given largely to self-interest—a worry for some observers (Pitkin 1967).6 But not everyone who looked at Fenno’s theory saw it as helping the dignity of Congress. Some observers who were highly skeptical of the democratic responsiveness of Congress to disadvantaged persons felt that without too much effort, Fenno’s theory could be marshaled to support the idea that the reelection goal is all that matters to selfserving legislators. If, as Fenno suggests, legislators wish to have power to exercise, and if they wish to be successful in making good policy, they have to find ways to stay in office. Argued in this manner, the very existence of the power and policy-making goals reinforces the importance of the reelection goal as the means of explaining legislators’ behavior. Indeed, Mayhew made the argument that reelection must be the leading goal of every member of Congress if other aims are to be sustained. Thus, for some, the reelection goal is a high point in explaining the development of Congress, whereas for others it is a matter of some concern. As Loomis (1988, 18) remarks, “Ambition is as American as apple pie, yet we distrust it profoundly.”7 The idea of three competing goals for legislators raises questions. Do legislators seek reelection so they may make good policy? Or, do they try to make good public policy so they will be appreciated and can keep their jobs in Congress? Fenno’s early findings indicated that legislators have varying mixes of motives, and their motives may change as political conditions change. Unfortunately, the yoking of the Mayhewian and Fennoistic theories ended up blurring Fenno’s arguments. Fenno’s conclusions in “Congressmen in Committees” were nuanced, and they incorporated conditional elements in which legislative motives were subject to influences from the political environment. But the nuances fell prey to general impressions. GOAL-ORDERING AS FLUID AND CONSTRAINED In Fenno’s theory, the three competing goals are conditional and bounded by constraints within the political environment. But, what about the timing of constraints? For some legislators, electoral insecurity may spur them to make nearly all decisions—including

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policy decisions—with a continuing eye to reelection consequences (Mann 1978). For other legislators, even though the reelection goal regularly dominates constituency service decisions, it may dominate policymaking decisions only during periods of perceived vulnerability. Hence, the reelection goal may explain policymaking behavior for many members of Congress some of the time but not at other times. This is an important nuance that has not been adequately developed. There has been a tendency among congressional scholars to view legislators as electorally insecure all the time—“running scared” to use Jacobson’s (1987) term. But, even if one accepts the idea of an abiding electoral insecurity for representatives in the U.S. House, there are two ways of looking at the idea of “running scared.” In one view, fear of electoral loss constantly dominates the thinking of representatives and shapes their decisions in committees, in party caucuses, and on the floor. From the other view, members may continually run scared in the sense of trying to do everything possible to pad their electoral margins through constituency services, creditclaiming, fund raising, campaigning, and public posturing. These things can keep representatives’ noses to the grindstone and make them look like slaves to their reelection interests, yet without necessitating any serious compromising of policy goals or preferred style or methods of operating in Congress. The point is that electoral insecurity that affects some forms of legislative behavior does not have to come at a high cost to policymaking goals. Goal-ordering for members of Congress may have an association with party affiliation as well as periodicity (timing) during congressional terms. Although electoral insecurity crosses party lines, legislators’ party affiliation may coincide with certain motivational tendencies. Some research suggests that Republicans are less interested in political careerism in Congress than are Democrats (Fishel 1973).8 It appears that conservative Republicans are more willing than moderate Republicans to risk reelection for the sake of policy ideals (ibid.). These two findings in combination might give the impression that Democrats are less interested in policy than Republicans. But, an interest in political careerism does not necessitate a reduced interest in policymaking. A message that many congressional Democrats took away from their 1994 loss of both chambers of Congress is that they had become somewhat unresponsive to the American public (St. John 1994). Overly engrossed in achieving their policy agenda, they became

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insensitive to a rising public will that wanted moderation of some policies, and some changes in the way Congress operated.9 If legislators commonly have a mix of motivations and goals, the leading ones being conditional and constrained, a legislator may hold the primary goal of making good public policy, but may be willing to compromise this goal at the margins if necessary to win reelection. Where policy goals are conditional, variations in political conditions may produce temporary fluctuations in the energy and allegiance given to everything relevant to the goal except its core. Policy goals put off for awhile, or sacrificed at the margins until times improve, are not the same as policy goals abandoned. Members of Congress who hold policymaking as their conditional primary goal may invest a sort of cyclical policy-making energy in the goal. When high-risk elections approach, the goal is constrained by the environment, as well as any depletion in the robustness of the members’ public popularity. At times a legislator is thinking first about reelection, and at other times making good policy. Sometimes both goals run neck to neck. This is not a neat and tidy picture, but it approximates reality better than simplifications. In some respects it bears relation to the punctuated equilibrium model that Baumgartner and Jones (1993) use to describe periods of stability as well as disruption in the policy development processes of congressional committees. As new challenges arise, the behavior of legislators is modified. REELECTION AND POLICY-MAKING GOALS IN TENSION The present study of the 104th GOP House freshman class suggests that these legislators did not approach decision making as though each decision involved an immediate choice between giving favor to reelection interests or to policy interests.10 Much of the evidence suggests that for all but the last few months of the term, some freshmen thought they could vote their policy preferences without costing themselves reelection. In cases where policy preferences did create foreseeable electoral hazards, many of the freshmen decided to accept the hazards, or only modify their policy stances at the margins. Nevertheless, an excessive concentration on members’ voting behavior misses the point that members of Congress do far more than cast votes. What they do apart from voting may be what they choose to see as important in furthering their reelection interests. This may occur when legislators do not view policy choices as highly

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negotiable, nor as flexible tools to be used on behalf of career interests. It may also occur when legislators reason that by demonstrating competence and integrity, voters who are modestly disenchanted with a legislator’s voting record can be kept on board because of respect for hard work and honesty. Legislators do a great many things by which they seek to build enthusiastic support among supporters and grudging support from fence sitters. They send out newsletters to constituents, hold press conferences, conduct speaking engagements, sit with lobbyists, attend high profile public events, follow up on constituents’ complaints about the bureaucracy, pursue seats on important committees, offer vocal support for constituents’ interests, and show up in home districts when there is a crisis. All of these activities can be managed to increase reelection probabilities without requiring anything more than window-dressing revisions of policy, and maybe even less (Eulau 1985; Bullock 1972; Brady 1988). Thus, the reelection goal may explain a great deal about member behavior without explaining a member’s votes on policy or internal reform, or a member’s relations with party leadership and peers. Although this observation is not generalizable to the whole of the U.S. House, it is a better description of GOP freshman behavior in the 104th Congress than descriptions that are less nuanced or flexible.11 My research shows that with respect to the 104th GOP House freshmen, when the reelection goal and the policymaking goal did come into modest conflict, the general tendency of the freshmen was to place a premium on the policymaking goal over the reelection goal and hope the reelection hazards would fade away as media attention and public scrutiny died down.12 However, when the two interests came into serious conflict—as they did for some GOP House freshmen during the five-month campaign season preceding the 1996 election— policy compromise increased and additional attention was given to the reelection goal. Still, for most of these members of Congress, compromise was limited to the margins of their policy preferences (Salant 1996a). These individuals placed a low premium on political careerism in the 104th Congress, held incrementalism as a legislative tactic in low regard, and placed a high value on the idea of a principled allegiance to policy preferences, especially in matters where public stands had been taken (Koszczuk and Cassata 1996). Early indications from the 105th Congress suggest that this pattern is continuing for a good part of the class; however, an increasing number of members are

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becoming more tolerant of incrementalism and paying more attention to reelection risks in policymaking (Doherty and Katz 1998). This will eventually bring some of the 104th freshmen closer to attitudinal House norms, but others are likely never to be fully “Housebroken.” To the degree that the 104th freshmen might be representative of a new breed of legislator that arises from the type of political climate now in existence, their story calls into question the prevalent conception of the reelection goal as the central explanation of legislative behavior. Admittedly, there is evidence that the 104th GOP House freshmen are not representative of the majority of post-World War II legislators. Furthermore, there are reasons to doubt whether the existing political climate that is hostile to legislative careerism can endure in its present intensity. Thus, the present study helps explain the actions of the U.S. House under special circumstances rather than general conditions. By analogy, this is like exploring Florida under tropical storm conditions rather than in the typical balmy conditions. But how could we claim to understand Florida if we did not understand its storms as well as its sunshine? Consequently, the existence of the 104th GOP freshmen as one of the most influential majoritarian freshman classes in the twentieth century calls for an analysis of how a class like this can affect Congress in general, and the House Republican Conference in particular. To accomplish this task, there is a need to examine member motivations and perceptions as well as behaviors. THE MAYHEW THESIS AND AMBITION THEORY The Mayhew thesis of reelection as the focal goal of members of Congress gradually developed into a set of theories used by behaviorialists and rational choice theorists to model and explain what legislators do within and outside of Congress, and how their goals and actions affect the institution and public policy (Weingast and Marshall, 1988; Mezey 1993).13 Mezey argues, as does Fowler (1993, 19, 28), that the work of scholars such as Morris Fiorina (1989) and Richard Fenno (1978) supplied support to the “reelection goal” theory, resulting in a surge of popularity for this conception that altered the research agenda for congressional scholars. Keith Krehbiel (1991) wrote that the “publication of seminal works in the 1970s by Mayhew, Ferejohn, Fiorina, and others marked the blossoming of a scholarly consensus,” in which the “increasingly orthodox view has been that the U.S. Congress is organized…to fulfill

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individual legislator’s reelection goals” (cited from 1992 paperback edition, p. 247). Two crisscrossing paths of research are evident relative to the Mayhew approach. One path is concerned with matters of candidacy and initial election to office. The other path explores reelection issues, especially legislators’ strategies to further their reelection goal. The two research paths crisscross because they both address the question of how personal ambition helps explain legislators’ behaviors. An example of the amalgamation is evident in the research of Burdett Loomis (1988) on the 94th Democrat House freshman class. Both research paths use the language of “ambition theory,” although researchers working on the reelection path often substitute phrases like “the Mayhew thesis” for the term “ambition.” Ambition theory as it pertains to initial candidacy is largely concerned with determining the reasons some people run for office and others do not; it also seeks to explain why some candidates succeed whereas others fail. Personal ambition is thought to explain much of this, although other factors like the political environment also have effects. Ambition theory as it pertains to the reelection track aims at understanding the causes of legislators’ actions inside and outside the legislature. The Mayhew thesis endeavors to provide a simplified and generalizable explanation by proposing that the reelection goal explains more of legislators’ actions than any other variable. In explaining the reelection motive and the logic of congressional action, Arnold argues that although members of Congress do not seek reelection single-mindedly, reelection is their dominant goal. His position is that “legislators will do nothing to advance their other goals if such activities threaten their principal goal” (1990, 5). He proposes that “whenever legislators are asked to choose between two alternative policies they first ask which alternative would contribute more to their chances for reelection” (60). Fowler and McClure basically concur, and summarize their findings on political ambition by contending that successful candidates for Congress have a “consuming urge to go to Washington and stay there” (1989, 228, 238). In their view, this personal ambition is an essential condition that legislators must express if the voting public is to exert a continuing democratic control over them. In the years that have elapsed since Mayhew proposed the reelection theory, this conception has gathered increasing support, especially from rational choice scholars working on legislative politics. Rational choice theorists hypothesize that calculated self-interest— a form of personal ambition—is the single most important

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explanation of legislators’ attitudes and actions.14 Although many scholars make some provision for other goals secondary to reelection, the reelection goal is considered the central explanation behind legislative decision making. The route the subfield took to arrive at this explanation is quite interesting. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEORY The Sociological Model The evolution of modern theory on legislative behavior began in what is now termed the sociological tradition. Sociologists in the early to middle twentieth century developed ideas regarding how the structure of society explains the emergence and recruiting of legislators. Early theorists imagined that such demographic considerations as inherited financial and social standing played large roles in determining the most likely successful candidates for high public office in normal times. Political ambition was recognized as a driving force behind legislative candidacies, but it was thought to be acquired through socialization processes (Fowler 1993). Although these early studies were largely descriptive and normative, they contributed importantly to the development of more theoretical studies by raising questions that could be answered only by other means (Fiorina and Rohde, 1989). As Fowler (1993) explains, during the 1960s and early 1970s, political scientists became increasingly engaged in trying to find and explain linkages between legislators’ social characteristics and their role orientations (Davidson 1969; Prewitt 1970; Fishel 1973). The difficulty some observers saw in this vein of research is that its descriptive contribution was stronger than its theoretical foundation: It postulated social characteristics as playing causative roles, but failed to establish how these characteristics produced the emergence of successful candidates (Canon 1992). Eventually, the momentum of the sociological model was slowed by the increasing attention some scholars were giving institutional changes such as the increasing popularity of primaries, the decreasing power of political parties during that era, and the increasing professionalization of legislatures. An increased recognition of institutional effects raised doubts about the sufficiency of social characteristics as explanations for candidacies and successful elections (Wahlke et al., 1962).

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The Psychological Model From the 1940s through the 1970s the sociological model faced some competition from a psychological model that endeavored to explain political behavior by analyzing personality traits. Proponents of the model, such as Lasswell (1948), thought personality and subconscious desires could explain why certain people sought public office or aspired to leadership positions in legislatures. But the psychological model floundered on the failure of the psychological variables to show predictive value. It also suffered when other scholars supplied evidence that legislators are not disproportionately given to aberrant personality traits like the Lasswell group proposed (Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman 1981), nor do legislators have a certain type of personality that draws them to public service (Barber 1965). The shortfalls of the sociological and psychological models motivated a large number of political scientists to concentrate on theory development centered on motivations and attitudes rather than the mixtures of variable background factors. Many of these scholars eventually moved toward what was to become the rational choice model, the institutional model, or some amalgamation of both. One might argue that Joseph Schlesinger contributed to the development of the rational choice self-interest conception by reason of his emphasis upon personal ambition. Schlesinger, like Madison, gave a central role to political ambition. Madison mistrusted political ambition, yet argued in Federalist Paper 51 that ambition arrayed against ambition (in a check-and-balance fashion) held the most promise as the mechanism by which republican government could be successfully sustained. Schlesinger followed with the argument that the public retains best control over ambitious legislators, since ambition for public office will keep legislators responsive to the voting public. Interestingly, Schlesinger thought that a theory of ambition could be developed only by paying attention to the specific situations, processes, or structures that stimulate the development of ambitions (1966, 8). In the Schlesinger perspective on ambition, as with Fenno (1986) and Sinclair (1997), the institutional environment and political context matters. A Focus on Rational Political Ambition Schlesinger’s concern was how the institutional environment of local political parties in the states facilitated or constrained ambition among legislative candidates. Other scholars had related interests. For

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example, Mezey (1970) showed how strong local party organizations produced candidates with more political experience. Snowiss (1966) marshaled evidence that politicians who work their way up the political ladder tend to be loyal to party and willing to negotiate pork, whereas legislators with little political experience tend to be more independent of party, as well as being more issue-oriented.15 Early research findings like these suggested that ambition was not a constant, but varied according to the institutional times and circumstances. This theorizing that institutional environment matters with regard to ambition still continues to have influence today under the heading of the “new institutionalism”—new because it hybridizes itself with the formal modeling methods now widely associated with rational actor theory. As Linda Fowler (1993) argues, the role of the institutional environment by itself as an explanation for legislative behavior was demonstrated to be insufficient in a number of studies that established the importance of attitudes in political actors’ actions (Kingdon 1968; Sullivan and O’Connor 1972; and Fishel 1973). Findings along this line added momentum to the move toward explaining candidacy and the activities of seeking reelection or higher office as a strategic calculation of potential benefits and likely costs. Hence, many theorists arrived at the conception of a rational, self-interested political actor whose legislative behavior demonstrates personal ambition. The problem for ambition theory is that in saying politicians’ rational selfinterest explains more of their behavior than anything else, there remains the question of what to do with findings that show how legislators’ progressive ambition (for higher office) is dependent upon a number of highly variable factors—factors that are sociological, psychological, institutional, circumstantial, personal, and even conditionally related to the political times (Schlesinger 1966; Rohde 1979; Brace 1984; Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde 1987).16 Along this vein, Fenno’s conclusion seems relevant that legislators are “both goalseeking and situation-interpreting individuals” (1986, 4). If situational influences matter in explaining legislative behavior, but personal ambition matters more, then any generalization that would explain legislative behavior only in terms of actors’ goals is a strategic simplification and not an actual representation of what is transpiring. Fowler writes that she takes problems like this “as evidence of how difficult it is to construct a comprehensive theory of candidacy.” She continues:

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Legislative Learning Candidates not only are purposive actors in the American system but also are acted on by numerous participants and events in the electoral arena. In this sense, their ambition for office is conceptually analogous to partisan identification among voters—it determines behavior while responding to actions of political elites and to conditions within the economic and social environment.17 (Fowler 1993, 69)

FENNO’S THEORY MODIFIED AND APPLIED TO 104TH GOP FRESHMEN In light of recent research findings, it would seem warranted to theorize that the way politicians interface their political ambition with their other goals may vary with the political times. In some environments, voters may be tolerant of actions by legislators that reveal a great deal of personal political ambition. In other environments voters may be much more sensitive to political ambition, and more willing to support legislators who seem to put policy goals ahead of careerism. Essentially, this is what is argued here. I theorize that political ambition in the form of the reelection goal may be secondary to the good policymaking goal (mission orientation) among an increasing number of newer legislators. I further theorize that newer legislators perceive that recent political conditions are moving voters to penalize excessive displays of personal political ambition, and this perception informs their legislative behavior. FENNO’S MODEL AS A SPRINGBOARD There is a good deal of evidence that 104th GOP House freshmen demonstrated attitudes and behavior not in close accord with existing Mayhewian theory. If this is the case, it raises the question of whether any previously existing theory anticipated a possible displacement of the reelection motive as the central explanation of legislator behavior. This work understands that when Fenno’s 1973 three-goal theory about congressmen in committees is given close inspection, it suggests that in some types of environments the reelection goal, as well as the legislative power goal, will be displaced by a goal of making good public policy. Furthermore, Fenno argues that although a political environment is not determinative of which of the three

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goals will have first priority for a legislator, environment can exert an independent influence on goal pursuit. Fenno argues that “committee decision processes and committee decisions differ from one another because member goals, environmental constraints, and, hence, strategic premises, differ” (280). Fenno goes on to hypothesize three basic goals that all members of Congress hold: Reelection, influence within the House, and good public policy. He suggests that “each congressman has his own mix of priorities and intensities—a mix which may, of course, change over time” (1). Fenno then explains how these goals come about— an explanation that bears directly upon the present work. If every House committee provided an equal opportunity to pursue reelection, influence, and policy, congressmen holding various mixes would appear randomly distributed across all committees. Such is definitely not the case. The opportunity to achieve the three goals varies widely among committees. House members, therefore, match their individual patterns of aspiration to the diverse patterns of opportunity presented by House committees. The matching process usually takes place as a congressman seeks an original assignment or transfer to a committee he believes well suited to his goals. But it may occur when a congressman adjusts his personal aspirations, temporarily or permanently, to fit the opportunities offered by the committee where he happens to be. By a combination of processes, then, House committees come to be characterized, at any point in time, by distinctive, nonrandom distributions of individual member goals. (1–2)

Setting aside issues that pertain mainly to committees, Fenno provides two basic hypotheses in conjunction with his theory of three goals that explain legislators’ behavior. First, he proposes that legislators have differing goal priorities; thus, some legislators will not have reelection as their primary goal. Second, House members may attempt to order their goals in such a way as to provide a good fit with opportunities in the House. In essence, Fenno hypothesizes that legislators may strategically choose a primary goal other than reelection when another goal fits better with whatever they are most motivated to accomplish. If Fenno is correct that legislators may adjust personal aspirations “temporarily or permanently” to fit available opportunities on committees, it is no giant step to

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hypothesize that candidates for the House may do the same in light of what they perceive to be the opportunities that Congress affords. If the House offers opportunity for noncareerists (as well as those who assume this posture), then opportunistic as well as conventional noncareerists will be drawn to the perceived opportunity. Furthermore, if Fenno finds legislators who are primarily policymakers in their aspirations, and finds them during a period in which by general consensus legislative careerism was well tolerated by the public, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that in an environment less tolerant of legislative careerism these policy-oriented legislators will appear in greater numbers. Hence, Fenno’s theory is readily marshaled for the proposition that legislators with lower ambitions in terms of length of service will emerge in higher numbers during conditions in which the public is willing to reward those who advertise the intention to retire from Congress after a few terms. This conception is little different from a supply and demand market model. Fenno found that members of the Appropriations Committee and the Ways and Means Committee spoke overwhelmingly of power, prestige, and influence as their goals for seeking a position on the committee. By contrast, members of the Interior Committee and Post Office Committee explained their choice of these committees as a way to help constituents and thereby ensure their reelection. Yet again, members of the Education and Labor Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee generally emphasized that their choice of these committees reflected their desire to make good public policy in an area of substantial personal interest. Fenno also found that freshman Democrats who sought the Education and Labor Committee were also prone to ask for the Foreign Affairs Committee, something that Fenno interpreted as suggesting a bona fide interest in policy-making above the other two goals. From these observations Fenno generalized that committees will differ in their processes and decision making because the members of various committees tend to differ in the ordering of their goals. Broadening Fenno’s Argument The aim of Fenno in 1973 was to shed light on congressional decision making by providing evidence for the proposition that committees differ because members’ goals and environmental constraints differ. Fenno was not concerned with answering the question of what portion of legislators in the House could be categorized under each goal

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heading. He did endeavor to answer the question of what kind of environment bore most directly upon the decision making of various committees. Basically, he proposed that each committee works in a political environment dominated by one of four contextual influences: The House, the executive branch, clientele groups, and political parties. Fenno stated that “from the viewpoint of the committee member, the likelihood is that not all the elements of his environment will have an equal effect on his ability to achieve his personal goals. And he will be constrained to take into greater account those outsiders [outside his committee] who are more likely to affect his goals than those who are less likely to do so.” (1973, 15) Thus, Fenno has some legislators asking themselves which outsiders have the greatest capacity for effecting the acquisition of influence in the House, whereas other legislators try to discern which actors might most seriously affect their reelection goal or perhaps their policy-making goals. The point is that Fenno hypothesizes that when it comes to contextual effects upon decision making, it is legislators’ perceptions about their most relevant environmental publics that really count. Fenno’s hypothesis is useful to the argument made here that the 104th GOP House freshmen’s perceptions of a public mandate bore upon their decision making not only in terms of policy-making but also with regard to structuring relationships among themselves. There is untilled soil in Fenno’s theory and hypotheses. Typically, Fenno’s work in “Congressmen in Committees” is recruited by other scholars as supportive of Mayhew’s theory. And it is, in terms of members of Congress being ambitious and goal-directed. But several aspects of Fenno’s work have been largely neglected. First, members of Congress differ in their goals, and the differences can be important to understanding the activity of Congress even if the reelection goal explains more of members’ behavior than any other single variable. Second, members may adapt their goals to create a better fit with existing opportunities. Third, members’ perceptions of how their most relevant environments bear upon their goals may constrain their activities. These important ideas lend support to an effort to determine whether political circumstances have contributed to the development of a surge of new legislators whose goals and actions in the House do not accord with what generally accepted theory would suggest. In exploring these ideas, groundwork may be laid for understanding another segment of the evolution of Congress.18

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POLITICAL AMBITION AND THE 104TH FRESHMEN In political dictionaries and encyclopedias, the phrase “political ambition” is absent, even though it is a common term in the work of legislative scholars.19 “Political ambition” is a flexible term, absorbing several ideas associated with the attainment of political success.20 In turn, political success may incorporate reelection, power, good policymaking, or other goals. Commenting on this, Tony Blankley, Newt Gingrich’s press secretary during the 104th Congress, endeavored to differentiate between political ambition in the public service sense and political ambition in the sense of legislative careerism. There is the issue of what is meant by political ambition. A person can have the political ambition to go to Washington, pass term limits, cut back the power of government, send the power back to the people, and then go home. This kind of political ambition must be contrasted with political careerism where the ambition is to gain power, get good committee positions, raise lots of money and get re-elected. If this is what people are talking about, then I think the freshmen were different. And not only the freshmen. There were other members who have stood for what they believe in, and have little interest in advancing themselves. Granted, there is a tendency in life to make oneself comfortable in one’s career. I don’t want to say that the freshmen were the only ones who were different. But, overwhelmingly and disproportionately they were governed by their principles.21

This work understands the term “political ambition” in the context of legislative politics to refer to the idea of legislators’ behavior being governed primarily by the overarching goal of repeated reelections so as to obtain a career with increased personal power and heightened status in the party and chamber. The general conception of political ambition among scholars points to a regular but not exclusive pattern of legislative behavior in which legislators’ foremost decision-making criterion is a calculation of the likely effects of a vote or action upon a legislator’s career prospects, promotion opportunities, or odds of acquiring additional power. Among many of the 104th freshmen, the idea of political ambition is equated with two general types of choices or acts: first, a willful decision to negotiate or vote in such a fashion as to put legislative

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careerism ahead of altruistic conscience in matters where a legislator must act as a trustee of the public interest due to the complexity of the issues,22 and second, a decision to place personal career interests— such as advancement in the party—ahead of a policy or reform agenda publicly declared in the home district as being representative of the legislator’s convictions and principles. In the second instance, the common freshman notion is that the voting public chooses representatives who will act as delegates, not in the sense of a continuous monitoring of public opinion, but in being true to the ideals for which they were chosen. According to one moderate staffer, some members at times feel confusion over whether to be trustees or delegates: “There are some Republicans in the House who feel one way on the issues but are voting the other way because that is what their districts want. One can argue that this is an indication of political ambition, or one can argue that it simply reflects the nature of the representative job.” Sheplse (1988, 471) writes that the “attraction of the legislature to talent and ambition is perhaps the most important factor in maintaining its independence; when it begins to lose this sort of allure, it may well be in trouble.” The perception of this interviewer is that most of the 104th freshmen think of political ambition very differently. They typically see political ambition as a negative—the idea of putting legislative careerism ahead of principles, regardless of whether the principles involve a trustee conception, a delegate idea, or some kind of blended notion of service. (Senior Gingrich aide) I don’t think there has ever been a freshman class where the new members came in so selfconsciously intending not to stay. This liberated the freshmen to a certain extent to vote their conscience rather than expediency. It also gave them a higher moral position from which to talk with other members of Congress. The freshmen seemed to find unity in this perspective.

THE REELECTION GOAL AND THE 104TH FRESHMEN Most members of the 104th GOP freshman class do not fit neatly into the standard picture of political ambition. To a somewhat lesser degree, the same may be said of the 103rd GOP freshman class (elected 1992). If electors were to continue to frequently elect classes with the same convictions as the 104th GOP class exhibited (and

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still exhibits to an important degree), the Congress itself would demonstrate less political ambition in the form of the reelection motive than legislative students have theorized. It is interesting that a sizable portion of the GOP freshmen elected to serve in the 104th Congress chose to keep their families in their home districts, and return on the weekends. Some of them still do. Members of this class do have a policy agenda they wish to see securely in place; however, some wish to get back to their former careers as soon as feasible without slighting the public trust of policy change to which they pledged themselves in 1994. (104th freshman) I’ve worked with a certain freedom because I’ve committed myself to term limits. I’m not worried about my own future. I didn’t ask for a committee chairmanship. I’m not going to give up that which constituents trust I will maintain, especially not for any aspirations I have in Washington. (Experienced House member) The term “citizen legislator” is probably a good description of how the 104th freshmen felt. (Senior staffer) The freshmen saw themselves as Washington outsiders, there to do a job, get it done, and get home. They saw this as their mandate. Fix what is wrong, and then don’t stay around and become part of the problem.

A large segment of the class would rather lose their seats than substantially compromise their supposedly revolutionary principles. By and large, the way this class has operated in both the 104th and 105th Congresses gives the impression that this position is sincerely held by most who make a point of publicly professing it. Members do have policy ambitions, and they want to stay around long enough to make a lasting mark and receive credit for it. But the class in general does not hold repeated reelection as a consuming goal. ANTICAREERISM AS A TACTIC TO ADVANCE BRIEF POLITICAL CAREERS It does appear that some members of the 104th GOP freshman class use rhetoric against repeated reelection as a political tactic to heighten their near-term reelectability in districts where sentiment against congressional

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careerism runs high. Reflecting off-the-record comments by some members and senior staffers, one Republican legislative director observed, “Some of this reflects self-interest, as some members believe they are more electable in the near-term by standing on a pledge that they will not become careerists in Congress.” Regardless of whether the 104th House freshmen were uniformly sincere in campaigning against congressional careerism in their bids for election in 1994, they tended to hang together as a class and take apparently tough votes that threatened their reelection bids after a single term. Or so it appeared to many observers. However, the reality may be slightly different, as indicated by some changes in freshmen outlooks and actions late in the 104th Congress. In the first half of the 104th, many members of the class felt so much assurance that the electorate would support them in cutting government that they cast politically dangerous votes. This was one effect of their perceived public mandate. However, by early in the second session of the 104th Congress, many members of the class began to wonder if they had misread what they thought was a mandate for sweeping policy change. By the midpoint of the second session, this revision of perceptions was well underway among over half the class. This resulted in much of the class moderating their voting stance in the last six months before the 1996 elections. Most members did not, however, move any further from their preferred positions than necessary to give them a fighting chance in their reelection bids. Different than established theory would suggest (Arnold 1990), most did not try to maximize their reelection odds by choosing positions that would minimize opportunities for attacks by their Democrat opponents. The freshmen saw their political function as something that blended delegate and trustee considerations. They were trustees in feeling they knew what was best for the country. They were delegates because they thought they were acting out a public mandate. The idea that they were mandated to be reformers gave them a sense that they could be politically efficacious in acting in a trustee fashion in matters where their perceived policy mandate was vague. This argument for the central importance of a perceived mandate does not cancel the importance of the reelection motive. What it does is reposition near-term reelection as a conditional primary goal, with the condition being that to secure reelection, the policy agenda is compromised only at the margins or in nonessentials. This repositioning of the reelection motive lowers the goal of obtaining continuous reelection over the long-term into the position of a

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secondary goal for some of the freshmen, and to others not a goal at all but a way of life to be avoided. (104th freshman) If I were to characterize the major philosophical difference between the core members of this class and the typical members of other freshman classes the difference is that we value changing government more than we value being here. That is why leadership has a difficult time with our class. So long as I am true to my principles, I don’t care if I get beaten. The thing that is important to me and to many other members of my class is that I do what I said I would do, and that I live by the things I said were important during my campaign. Leadership doesn’t understand. They ask with amazement, “You’re going to vote against this?” The freshmen reply, “Yes, and you can do what you have to do.” The fear of discipline or loss of career opportunity is just not there. (Senior Gingrich aide): Things started changing to a certain extent after 1995. Sometime in the spring of 1996, a fair number of freshmen started thinking about reelection. While they wanted to be citizen politicians, most of them were not prepared to become citizens quite yet. They were prepared to make the hard votes, and if they lost, so be it. But they were also going to struggle ably to avoid being defeated. However, being a willing martyr for a cause is different from standing by a cause and fighting to survive. Most tried to both stand by their cause and fight to survive. If the picture is painted correctly, it will not show the freshmen as all being self-sacrificial idealists. They were idealists but they were not willingly self-sacrificial.

Two qualifications are important to the argument that the 104th freshmen put a premium on policy-making relative to political careerism. First, it is difficult to measure at this time the extent to which a portion of the freshman class may be politically ambitious while hiding that ambition in view of the existing political climate. Some members may think the Republican sentiment against political careerism will cool with time, especially among moderate Republican voters who may wish to keep their experienced legislators in office. Such an evolution in Republican opinion would make it politically feasible after several terms for certain legislators to come out of the closet with retooled positions tolerant of careerism. Second, it is possible

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that some of the freshmen who sincerely oppose political ambition at present will significantly moderate as they grow fond of their new lifestyles. Then, too, some of them may arrive at the conclusion that there is a good deal more that is positive about political careerism than they formerly thought. As one staffer explained, “They may have general agreement among themselves on the budget, but there may be division over careerism as they go forward.” Another worried aloud, “Initially, the 104th freshmen were not careerists; however, as time has passed there has been an attitude change among some of them. Some are beginning to like the job too much.” Another observer remarked, “There were freshmen during the 104th Congress who would simply say, ‘I don’t care if this vote costs me my election back home; it is the right thing to do.’ Nevertheless, some of the freshmen may end up serving for life—things evolve and change.” The environment that predated 1993 was more tolerant of the recognizably self-interested politically ambitious legislator than the environment that took hold in 1993 and continues at present. As Sinclair (1997, 14) says, “I argue that the extraordinary political context of the 104th and how it shaped members’ expectations is the key determinant of Gingrich’s relationship with his members.” Bearing this thought in mind, if we were to enter into an extended period where the existing political context bearing upon legislative ambition continued to predominate, the present research findings would no longer explicate merely the limitations of the existing generalizations or describe behaviors in atypical environments, but would instead establish new generalizations appropriate for the changed times. CONCLUSION The foundations for this research project lie within in the congressional literature. The theoretical work of Mayhew, Fenno, Fiorina, and others provides a framework to study the 104th GOP freshman class in the U.S. House. An empirical backdrop, as well as methodological groundwork, has been established by Burdett Loomis in his research on political ambition and entrepreneurship in the 1974 “Watergate Babies” freshman class. In affirming the reelection ambition of the 104th Republican freshmen, yet repositioning this ambition away from its typical theoretical role as the leading cause of member behavior, the present work identities, examines, and interrelates the other causes of member behavior. Along this line,

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Loomis theorized that freshmen can be simultaneously policyambitious and career-motivated. This work understands perceptions of a public mandate for policy-making and reform to greatly influence the behavior of members of this class, especially with regard to class cohesion. An effort is made to comprehend how a high level of freshman class identity, cohesion, mission (policy ambition), and principles affected internal party politics, leadership relations, and House policy-making in the 104th Congress. NOTES 1. Katz and Sala (1996, 29) remark, “We have argued that most of the widely accepted models of the modern Congress begin with the reelection incentive.” Although others agree, the Mayhew reelection thesis is not without critics. As Bartels (1991, 468) points out, the practical limitations of the Mayhew assumption are apparent in the observation that representatives who win reelection by very comfortable margins are as responsive to constituents as those who barely win. Bartels says, “Either subjective safeness bears no relationship to objective safeness…or…the reelection motive must be thought of as only one—albeit an important— element in a broader array of congressional goals.” 2. Goal-seeking, as a decision-making model, is used narrowly for explaining legislators’ voting patterns; it is also employed more broadly to explain legislative behavior overall. In regard to the matter of voting behavior, Kingdon (1977) places goal-seeking in competition with models based upon cue-taking (Matthews-Stimson 1970), comparative policy dimensions (Clausen 1973), predisposition and past behavior (Cherryholmes and Shapiro 1969; Wildavsky 1964), and consensus among reference groups (Kingdon 1973). The Mayhewian model seeks to broaden the application of the goal-seeking theory beyond matters of voting. 3. One variation of Fenno’s theory is Dodd’s (1985) conception that legislators seek power in order to make good policy. 4. Fenno did not produce Congressmen in Committees (1973) out of thin air. As Fiorina and Rohde (1989) explain, the behavioralempirical thrust of the 1950s and 1960s caused many scholars to engage in studies of committees (Huitt 1954; Jones 1962; Peabody 1963; Manley 1965). Fenno produced several works on committees prior to his 1973 work (1962, 1963), the most important being The Power of the Purse (1966), a study of the Appropriations Committee. Working initially from systems, group, and role theories, Fenno increasingly moved toward the idea of member goals and environmental constraints being essential to the explanation of legislative behavior (Fiorina and

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Rohde 1989, 4–5, 8–9). The consequence of the political environment in committee work is an idea that continues to persist (Maltzman 1995, 655; Aldrich 1994; Hall and Grofman 1990; Gilligan and Krehbiel 1990; Rohde 1994; Sinclair 1993). Although Fenno began by trying to explain legislative behavior with an “inside model” in The Power of the Purse, he broadened his effort by adding environmental constraints as an important consideration seven years later in Congressmen in Committees. Eventually, he tacked on an outside model in explaining the importance of district work in Home Style (1978). Thus, in saying “Fenno” today, students of legislative studies are taking a broad view of the causes of legislative behavior. 5. Scholars have found many ways of saying “Mayhew.” Fiorina (1974) says “Mayhew” in saying that electoral support is what legislators seek to maximize. Shepsle and Weingast (1984) as well as Lowi (1964) say it in saying “pork barrel,” while contending that legislators impart distributive benefits so as to concentrate benefits to voting constituents while spreading costs widely. Wilson (1980, 369) says “Mayhew” when he writes of “clientilistic” politics, as does Ferejohn (1986) when he sees logrolls as institutionally stabilizing actions that further incumbents’ electoral security. 6. The prominence of the self-interest thesis permeates the literature. As an example, Hall and Van Houweling (1995, 121) write, “In sum, we advance a behavioral theory that characterizes members as financially self-interested, institutionally ambitious, and electorally insecure.” This assessment matches much of the rhetoric used by congressional challengers, and reflects upon the reputation of the institution in the eyes of the general public. But, as Loomis observes, it is possible to read the framers so as to conclude that selfishness can lead to the procurement of honor and accomplishment in public life (Loomis 1988, 211). 7. In his book The New American Politician (1988), Burdett Loomis makes the case that political ambition bonds Congress together, especially in terms of entrepreneurial activities and member enterprises (ibid., xx, 231). Studying the 94th Democrat House freshman class, Loomis was able to generalize that the group was “policy ambitious” as well as being ambitious for career growth and maintenance (ibid., 227). 8. According to Ehrenhalt (1991) Democrats want to be the government, whereas Republicans tend to see government as dirty business and what is wrong with America. With this in mind, a variation of Fishel’s (1973) position can be constructed by arguing that the legislative behavior of Democrats is explainable by means of conceptualizing reelection as their constrained leading goal, whereas the legislative behavior of conservative Republicans is explainable by means of conceptualizing policy-making as their conditional leading goal. Some

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might think that this view, if sustainable, is flattering to conservative Republicans. However, an opposite argument can be made. Conservative Republicans may place a higher premium on private business opportunities than on public service. They may not value the idea of good policy any more than Democrats, but in viewing legislative careerism as less desirable than do Democrats, they may gain undeserved benefits from observers’ perceptions that policy is for them a higher goal. 9. “Agenda change can be said to have occurred when new problems are perceived, when new solutions to existing problems are proposed, or when the terms of the debate…change significantly” (Sinclair 1982, 4). 10. In trying to explain how legislators may not continually choose between policy goals and reelection goals, it is possible to argue that the policymaking interest dominates within its sphere, and the reelection interest exerts varying influence within its realms of relevancy—a conceptual arrangement not entirely dissimilar from the one Rohde (1994) uses to show how partisan, informational, and distributive perspectives apply to different domains in Congress. In this conception, the sphere of the reelection goal encompasses everything the legislator does except make votes on policy. 11. The position taken here suggests that legislative theory needs to progress beyond the idea of finding which goal is always the most important. The better objective is to understand the perceptions and conditions that lead to various groups of political actors exhibiting differing mixes of goals and behavioral tendencies (Mezey 1993, 356; Maltzman 1995). An excessive concern for rigid theoretical demarcations can lead to an artificiality that constrains the prospects of adequately interpreting empirical findings (Krehbiel 1991, ch. 2; Miller 1990; Kritzer 1996, 1). As Kingdon (1977) and others have argued, by treating each competitive model “as having a grasp on an important part of reality,” the door is opened to a constructive integration of findings. 12. Miller and Stokes (1963) found that policy preferences and perceptions of constituencies’ preferences do influence representatives’ rollcall behavior. 13. See Peltzman (1976), and Gilligan, Marshall, and Weingast (1989). 14. The fields of economics, evolutionary biology, and psychology all consider self-interest to be the norm of human behavior. This is so wellestablished that many scholars think of altruism quite cynically as simply a variant of self-interest in which psychic gratification of doing good is the primary purpose of generous acts (Monroe 1994; Becker 1976). The idea of altruism, coined by Comte in the 1830s, involves behavior aimed at benefitting others even when the behavior may be at a cost to self. But as Monroe (1994) observes, there is little agreement over what constitutes altruism in situations where motives may be mixed or complex.

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15. Andrews (1979, 51n) provides a fairly standard definition of “pork” as “the practice of seeking expenditures of federal funds to benefit one’s own region or congressional district at the expense of the country as a whole.” 16. Gilmour and Rothstein (1993) observe that 3 percent of House Democrats and 5 percent of House Republicans leave the House each election to seek a seat in the Senate. Thus, although political ambition in terms of long careers appears less prevalent among Republicans than Democrats, the ambition to move to higher office seems greater for Republicans (Kiewiet and Zeng [1993, 939] disagree with this conclusion). One possible explanation for this inconsistency may be that the Senate is more of a Burkean style trustee-oriented chamber than the House. The Burkean model comes closer to the conservative ideal of representation. One Republican staffer explained that this is why his boss wanted to run for the Senate. Of interest with regard to the tendencies of Republicans, some scholars note that wealthier members of the House are more likely to migrate to the Senate than other members (Francis et al., 1994). 17. The brief section on the historical development of theory relies considerably on the excellent account provided by Fowler in her 1993 work “Candidates, Congress, and the American Democracy.” 18. There is a good deal of evidence that Congress as an institution is in a state of evolution (Hibbing 1991; Rieselbach 1995). Changes in Congress are apparent in matters such as powers of party leaders, floor voting, omnibus legislation, the complexity of bill sponsorship, rule changes, the creation of committee positions, and the decline of norms such as long apprenticeship (Polsby 1968, 108; Sinclair 1983; Asher 1973; Loomis 1984; Ehrenhalt 1986; Price 1989). Asher and Weisberg (1978) write, “Change is evolutionary because the congressional agenda is largely recurrent, members most often follow their previous votes on an issue, and congressional personnel and procedures are characterized by a high degree of stability” (391). The basic idea here is of stability interrupted by gradual change (Clausen 1973). Although some scholars, like Dodd, see many changes as largely cyclic, it is difficult to argue against evolutionary change in Congress when nearly everything else in America is changing (Oleszek 1989, 42). 19. The phrase “political ambition” was not listed in the HarperCollins Dictionary of American Government and Politics (Shafritz 1992), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Science (Bogdanor, ed. 1991), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought (Miller, ed. 1991), or A Dictionary of American Conservatism (Filler and Kirk 1988).

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20. Kazee (1994) defines political ambition as a desire to serve in a public office, and “a willingness to incur personal and professional costs to fulfill that desire” (11). On the surface, this definition generates some tension with a basic assumption of ambition theory that candidates for public office rationally weigh the costs and benefits of running for office (Black 1972; Bianco 1984). But, the definition and the assumption are reconciled in the notion that the willingness to incur costs is a strategic calculation (Jacobson and Kernell 1983). Payne (1984, 6–7) sees political ambition arising from a variety of motives, including the desire for public prestige, the desire to make good public policy, emotional needs to be a public servant, and an interest in the competitive nature of the political arts. 21. An argument can be made that policy ambition as contrasted to the careerism ambition has contributed to a disproportionately high share of very conservative representatives in the past several Republican House classes. To construct this argument, one notes that many legislative scholars (Kazee 1994; Abramowitz 1991; Bauer and Hibbing 1989) find campaign, personal, and professional costs are keeping many highly qualified potential candidates from entering congressional races. In Hertzke’s (1994) study of “vanishing candidates” in the congressional district just north of Denver (Boulder), he found that personal and professional costs prevented many potential candidates from converting serious interest in a House seat into actual candidacies for the seat. Furthermore, Hertzke discovered that some highly conservative Republican candidates are so driven by policy ambition that relates to their core ideological values (like opposition to abortion) that they seem to set aside a rational assessment of the potential costs involved. To the degree these observations can be applied more widely, there is a suggestion that highly ideological and politically inexperienced conservative Republicans may be disproportionately present in Republican primaries in comparison to more moderate yet ambitious Republican candidates who place a greater emphasis upon a calculation of election odds and personal costs (Canon 1993; Maisel 1982; Copeland 1994, 147). 22. Miller and Stokes (1963) point out that Edmund Burke “wanted the representative to serve the constituency’s interest but not its will” (45). Working with three models of representation (Burkean, instructeddelegate, and responsible-party), they find that no single form of representation explains the full reality of American legislative politics. Representation often varies by issue domain. Interestingly, Lutz (1980) writes that in the earliest years of American colonial history, representatives to local legislatures were viewed as having the

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responsibility to act as attorneys for their respective electors. The idea incorporated a lot more accountability to do the will of the people than discretionary power to do as the representative thought best.

CHAPTER 4

The Development of 104th Freshman Class Cohesion

It is not possible to understand the interpretative and the governing failures of the new majority party in the 104th Congress without paying attention to the freshman class that made the majority possible. (Richard Fenno, 1997, 22)

CLASS COHESION AS AN INSTRUMENTAL GOAL Class cohesion for the 104th GOP House freshmen is an important indication that the freshmen generally placed a premium on their policy-making goals. Existing theory recognizes that legislators form coalitions to enhance policy-making success (Sinclair 1989). But, the 104th GOP House freshmen went beyond normal conceptions of coalition building. They specifically worked at class cohesion as a means of empowering an ideologically conservative leadership to best accomplish policy goals that it shared with the freshmen. Thus, a discussion of class cohesion approaches the theoretical work of Mayhew, Fenno, and Arnold in their efforts to understand the goals that motivate the actions of members of Congress. In the case of the freshmen, their numbers were such that class cohesion gave them disproportionate power over the policy agenda of the Republican House Conference. Thus, a study of their actions as a

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class helps explain an important part of overall House activity during the 104th Congress. The objective for this chapter is to provide an overview of the three broad causes of 104th GOP House freshman class cohesion: peer commonalities, shared mission, and perceived mandate. Special attention will be given to the issue of commonalities in this chapter, whereas following chapters will develop the mission and mandate themes. Class cohesion is viewed as a result of preelection circumstances, as well as postelection efforts of leadership and freshmen to increase class unity. The freshmen “mission” is conceptualized as an ideologically informed vision and agenda for government reform and policy-making. In the 104th Congress, the “Contract with America” became a vehicle for mission expression—a means by which members could demonstrate a “principled” allegiance to their mission. A mandate is understood as a notion that the public ratifies the campaign platform by giving one party a landmark electoral victory. In the case of the 104th House Republicans, the mandate did not flow from the margin of victory, but from the historic nature of the Republicans breaking forty years of Democratic House rule. CLASS COHESION AND THE CONTEXT OF THE 104TH CONGRESS The 104th Republican Congress with its goal of reducing the role of national government can be contrasted with preceding Democratic Congresses that were oriented toward preserving or expanding the place of national government. This contrast can be reflected back to a debate highlighted in Madison’s, Hamilton’s, and Jay’s Federalist Papers about the pros and cons of the centralization and decentralization of various kinds of government powers. This debate has enlivened political opponents for more than two centuries (Beer 1993; Storing 1981; Elazar 1990). It is a debate that is sometimes invigorated by the election of large freshman classes in the U.S. House. In 1974, a large Democratic freshman class known as the Watergate Babies determined to help Congress find a new balance point for power in the federal system. On the heels of Richard Nixon’s demise, the Congress of the middle and late 1970s enjoyed increased importance. Young, liberal Democrats found they could make a difference in terms of internal reforms and policy initiatives. But Congress ran into a crosscurrent when Americans dampened the political consequence of

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twenty-six years of uninterrupted Democratic control of the House by selecting Ronald Reagan as President in 1980. President Reagan expanded the Chief Executive’s role, and in so doing increased the confrontational nature of congressional/ presidential politics. Reagan also used his coattails to help bring into Congress some young reformation-minded conservatives. However, the Reagan effect was not strong enough to help the Republicans capture the House, nor to control the Senate more than briefly. The Democrats’ continued control of the House in the face of Reagan’s popularity enlarged their assurance that the public would countenance them running the House as they pleased. But, all was not rosy for the House Democrats. They had some serious malcontents in their midst, people who thought they should move toward the political middle (Kusnet 1992). They also had a problem with Republican activists, like Gingrich, who seldom let opportunities go by to pounce on and publicize missteps by House Democrats. In the 1980s, Gingrich put together a coalition of House members who were disenchanted with the relatively nonconfrontational style of House minority leader Bob Michel. Not only did this coalition lob political bombs at leading House Democrats, but with Clinton’s decline in popularity they sat down to do some serious planning on how to advance their plans to capture the House in 1994. Already in motion were their activities of undermining the moderate minority leadership of Michel, and preparing to replace it with a conservative transition team. Gingrich and friends cooperated with conservative and libertarian sympathizers both within and outside of the Washington establishment, and helped tweak the operational centers of the Republican party to put more control in the hands of people opposed to the centralization of power in Washington. Gingrich’s control of GOPAC (the Republican political action committee) empowered him to step up his recruiting and training of conservative Republican candidates for the House. In 1993 plans were formulated for a united national platform that Republican House candidates could run on the next year. The idea was to build the platform on piles driven by public sentiment clearly registered in national political surveys. This was a canny decision because it moved beyond the narrow confines of the Republican agenda and targeted the construction of a platform over issues where Republican interests happened to be in sync with majoritarian interests. The construction of a readily understandable platform aided Gingrich in recruiting

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politically inexperienced members of the business community who were fearful of a loss of power for the private sector. The fact that the majority of these candidates were unsoiled by extensive activity in political institutions increased their confidence that they were fit to reform the system. What transpired may be the most profound upsurge in recent history in candidacies for Congress by organizationally capable persons with relatively little political experience. Many were complete political neophytes (Healey 1994). The welling up of these highly compatible candidates was triggered by the circumstances of the times, the situation in the House, and the activities of the Gingrich-led cohort.1 In spite of the momentum for House Republicans created by the new Gingrich-led movement, few professional observers of Congress gave the Republicans much of a chance of winning the House. Generally, this was the case even in the last few weeks before the 1994 congressional elections (Rohde 1992; Maisel 1992; Elving 1994, 2991; Hook 1995b).2 Some pundits reflected on the Republicans’ mishandling of an opportunity to win the House in 1984 when President Reagan swept forty-nine states. Others noted that Republicans have a harder time recruiting quality candidates than do Democrats. (Republicans also have more difficulty retaining their members in office [Krasno 1994, 165; Peters 1990, 293–94].) Also recognized was the struggle of the party to recruit some of its best state-level legislators for congressional service, this owing to a Republican bias that the most important policy decisions should be made on the state level (Maisel 1992, 164). Another concern was the difficulty of recruiting quality congressional candidates in seemingly unwinnable districts (Kazee 1994, 167). For the Republicans, many of the districts they needed to win had been longtime Democratic strongholds. Complicating this problem was the fact that the cost of campaigning for the House had risen sixfold from 1975 to 1994 (Stanley and Niemi 1995, 196), with the gleaning of every additional vote becoming more costly in real dollar terms (Abramowitz 1991). This cost trend created a special problem for Republicans, since service in a minority party does not provide the spread of benefits over costs that are enjoyed by members of the majority party. Of special concern to many Republicans in 1994 was the fact that the party was fielding largely inexperienced challengers for House seats. It was not lost on some observers that in the preceding fifty years, inexperienced challengers had been only one-fourth as likely

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to beat incumbents as experienced challengers (Epstein and Zemsky 1995).3 Yet, when the votes were counted, inexperience did not seem to matter. Of those who won their races, less than half had any electoral experience (similar to the 1974 Watergate Babies [Loomis 1988, 33]), less than one-fourth had experience in state legislatures, and under 10 percent had experience in the majority party of a state legislature (Fenno 1997, 25). The outlook in 1994 for Republicans taking control of the House in 1994 was cloudy, but the clouds were silver-lined. The national economy was in good condition, so Republicans could not expect the public to vote against Democrats on this issue (Smith 1984; Edwards, Mitchell, and Welch 1995). However, the popularity of Congress had been in a long state of erosion (Bowman and Ladd 1994), and Democrats had no place to shift responsibility for the actions of Congress (Asher and Barr 1994, 36). This bode well for candidates who could run against incumbents. The public was restless and vexed by reports of congressional scandals, inefficiency, and waste. Clinton’s health-care plan had run amuck (Cloud 1995), the Clintons were feeling heat from allegations of impropriety, and the President’s popularity quotient was at a dismal level (Cook 1994; Rieselbach 1995). The media had grown impatient with the President’s artful explanations, and was equally exasperated with styles of governance in Congress that seemed inconsistent with ideas of fair play. In this context, the strengthening of national party organizations in the 1980s and 1990s (Herrnson 1986;1992; Wielhouwer and Lockerbie 1994) enabled Republicans to nationalize the congressional campaign and effectively capitalize upon the Democrats’ vulnerabilities in 1994 (Thurber 1995). Nationalization of the campaign was important for the Republicans so that the general problems of the Democratic Congress could be positioned to cast a shadow across individual members (Cook 1994a). Also, the President’s problems were becoming increasingly convertible into issues affecting Democrat incumbents on the local level—the guilt-by-association strategy that weakens incumbents and attracts strong challengers (Cox and Katz 1996).4 The combination of an improving national environment for Republicans (Jacobson and Kernell 1990) coupled with improving local considerations for GOP challengers (Krasno and Green 1988; Kazee 1994) produced a two-fronted competitiveness for Republicans that they had not enjoyed in some years (Brown and Woods 1991). The political competitiveness of the Republican challenge gave more

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meaning to their policy-making goals, especially when it became evident that Republicans were no longer content to be the permanent minority party in Congress. Thus, as the 1994 election was nearing, Gingrich and Armey could conclude that in spite of the political inexperience of many of the GOP challengers, the party was fielding a slate of contenders that enjoyed better prospects than what Republicans had seen in some time (Drew 1996). It can be argued that the major causes of high class identity and cohesion for the 104th GOP freshmen have roots in conditions predisposing American voters to select a rather homogeneous group of Republican candidates for the House in 1994. These circumstances included an unpopular President; a scandal-ridden and seemingly selfabsorbed Congress; a sense among conservatives of widespread social malaise; a widespread frustration with large deficits in federal budgets; worry about socialized medicine and a resultant diminution of choice for some people; and concerns about public policy in matters like Social Security programs, welfare programs, and federal taxation (Cloud 1995). These circumstances—some might say problems—set the stage for any group form of entrepreneurship that could lay claim to adequacy in dealing with the addressable problems (Cook 1994). Due to the planning and energy of the Gingrich coalition, this entrepreneurship was revealed in a national proposition. Republicans proposed that if given majority control of the House they would have the power and political will to solve the problems under the House’s control, and bring the rest of the supposedly relevant issues to a vote. Many voters were largely unaware of the details of this “Contract with America,” but were aware of the underlying position of the Republicans that Washington needed to be reformed.5 As President Clinton’s standing in the polls continued to erode, Republicans were energized in promoting their philosophies of government reform and policy change.6 Only a few days before the 1994 elections, Congressional Quarterly Weekly reported that most political science scholars doubted that conditions were ripe for a political realignment in the House (Gettinger 1994). Supposedly, a “cataclysmic event” would be needed to give the Republicans a majority—something like a war or economic collapse. But, the Republican win was a cataclysmic event in its own right. Not only did Republicans win the House for the first time in forty years, but they took majoritarian positions in the Senate and statehouses as well. In the Senate, Republicans went from forty-five seats to fiftythree seats, and gained representation in all regions of the country.

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They swept all nine open seats (including three of their own), beat two Democrat incumbents, and gained a party switcher (Senator Shelby) the day after the election (Duncan 1994). The win created the first allRepublican Senate freshman class since the Senate began holding popular elections in 1914 (ibid.). In statehouse contests, Republicans went from just nineteen governorships in 1994 to thirty in 1995. After the election, Republicans controlled governorships in eight of the nine most populous states, as well as holding a majority of the statehouses in each of the four major geographic regions (Groppe 1994; Babson 1994). Nevertheless, nothing could compare to the watershed GOP victory in the House. According to departing Democratic National Committee chairman David Wilhelm, history was made (Kaplan and Gruenwald 1994). Indeed, Republicans held a majority of southern congressional districts for the first time since Reconstruction ended in the 1870s (ibid.). Immediately after the 1994 election, Republicans held 231 seats— a gain of 53 seats, with more to come. Additionally, Democrats had to bear the blow of seeing the party’s House Speaker, Thomas Foley (Wash.) become the first sitting Speaker in over 130 years to lose reelection. Furthermore, several other high-status Democrats lost their seats (Rostenkowski, Brooks, Smith, and Glickman). No Republican incumbent in the House was defeated in 1994, but nearly half of all Democrat freshmen lost their bids for reelection (seventeen of thirtyfive). Republicans made major gains in the South, West, and Midwest, with House Democrats keeping their losses modest only in the East. Republicans picked up three or more House seats in California, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Washington. Republicans in the South were aided by redistricting considerations as well as Clinton’s decline in popularity (ibid.). Congressional Quarterly observed that a number of the Republican challengers had money advantages, support systems in churches, and high levels of preelection name recognition (ibid.).7 Many of the Republican candidates ran in districts where George Bush won in 1988 (Cook 1994). Clinton’s troubles allowed GOP candidates to win back many of these sometimes Republican voters. At a deeper level, the 1994 congressional elections were not about political personalities, but about voters who wanted to call majoritarian incumbents to account and end politics as usual. This sentiment favored Republicans who could not claim control of either chamber in Congress or many of the nation’s statehouses (ibid.).

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In sum, the argument is this: The recent history of the House created an environment in which a group of determined conservative activists found ways to leverage power on behalf of their goals. The insurgents put into motion strategic plans that made plausible the unification and temporary control of a large influx of new Republican House members at the time of the Democrat party’s greatest vulnerability. The cohesiveness of the class resulted not only in the empowerment of the class, but for a time an expansion of power for those who helped organize the class (the Gingrich leadership team). The dual empowerment of House leadership and the 104th GOP freshman class made it possible for both groups to aggressively pursue a shared policy agenda. THE THREE MAIN CAUSES OF CLASS COHESION The present work theorizes that a high level of class identity and cohesion for the 104th GOP freshmen rests on three pillars: first, background factors common to the freshmen, including a powerful bonding between members due to common ground prior to candidacy and widespread shared experiences during the 1994 congressional campaign, as well as leadership-stimulated experiences that led to member camaraderie among junior members during the first 100 days of the 104th Congress; second, a sense of mission, principle, and adequacy heightened by the Contract with America, and third, a perceived mandate arising from the Republicans’ historic win of the House. These causes of class cohesion are given in developmental (sequential) order rather than being ranked in order of importance. The three causes work together synergistically and create effective (but not monolithic) operational cohesion for the class. In breaking out these three causes of class cohesion, an acknowledgment is made as to the existence of other causes, but they are assigned to support roles. Secondary causes will be discussed where appropriate. One is the sense of the historical significance of the class imparted to the class by various political actors and the media. The other component is the nature and extent of group organizations in which freshmen played prominent roles. Peer Group Commonalities As a Cause of Cohesion The shared political inexperience and business background of the 104th GOP House candidates is an important factor in explaining

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the high level of class identity and cohesion that would develop among them at the outset of the 104th Congress. Members of this class were able to relate to one another not only socially but in their political naivete. Granted, there were members of the class with high levels of political experience, but these individuals were generally careful not to promote themselves or their policy goals on the basis of superior political experience. Beginning with the September 1994 Contractsigning event in Washington, D.C., and continuing beyond the period of new member orientation activities (including the Heritage Foundation retreat), a great deal of social and ideological bonding took place. Gingrich arranged for the freshmen to spend a good deal of time together in learning activities. Between these episodes, the freshmen would convene in small groups to talk shop or to give spouses opportunities to become friends. Added to these bonding experiences was the headiness of shared victory and unprecedented freshmen power, along with the hellishness of the forced march during the first 100 days. Camaraderie during these episodes produced something approaching family relationships among many of the freshmen. Furthermore, since 90 percent (sixty-five of seventy-three) of the new GOP freshmen came from districts previously represented by Democrats, they thought their victories carried similar meanings (Fenno 1997, 23). This portion of the explanation of high class cohesion is labeled member bonding because of commonalities. According to Congressional Quarterly Weekly Reports, approximately half of the 104th GOP freshmen had never been elected to office in a political setting, and only one-fourth had experience as legislators (Dunham 1996; DeParle 1996; Hall 1996). The political neophytes and near-neophytes, as well as some of the others, were drawn together by a widely shared conviction that the nation needed to be rescued from impeding doom. For some time, Newt Gingrich and companions had been preaching that the nation’s capital was the enemy of most things good and sensible. If the nation were to be saved from its plight, a group of political reformers needed to go to Washington and overhaul the system. According to Gingrich, what was needed was a sizable influx of outsiders who had not been infected by the diseases of professional politics (Drew 1996). Gingrich wanted to seek sweeping policy reformation; he and his lieutenants did not prize candidates who had mastered the art of negotiation. Gingrich was not in a negotiation frame of mind. He sought stalwarts, idealists, and people of convictions who would hold a line with him and force

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the issues. So, under a banner of “common sense politics”—a banner that was to become a party mantra in the House—Gingrich encouraged and facilitated the candidacies of Republicans who shared the “we’re on a mission” sentiment. A Sense of Mission As a Cause of Cohesion The sense of near-sacred mission to turn Congress toward conservative ideals and to rescue the nation from a supposedly errant path is an indispensable component in the explanation of class cohesion. As explained by a Gingrich aide, the inexperience of the new Republican congressional candidates in 1994 allowed the selfimage of knights in shining armor, untarnished and riding above the pettiness of the political fray. Coming from business backgrounds, often where they controlled their own organizations, they felt no need to compromise except where they saw fit. Their self-conceptualization was that they, a principled people, were coming to Washington to free the land from its unprincipled caretakers. They were certain they had adequate strength of character to keep their promises to constituents where others had broken promises. They were convinced they had an adequate understanding of the issues, and a grasp of conservative solutions to problems big and small. They saw themselves and their leadership sufficiently organized and cohesive to accomplish their ends. They saw themselves refusing to play the game of bargaining favors with interests groups contrary to the general best interests of society (Parker 1996). They would not go politically native in Washington and become part of the problem like the Democrats who preceded them. Or, so they felt. This sense of mission, principle, and adequacy was strengthened with the catalyst of the Contract. The Contract declared a mission, set forth the party’s principles, and proclaimed the adequacy of the Republican plan if Republicans gained political ascendency in the House. The Contract took these considerations out of the realm of imagination and put them in writing allowing the freshmen to ruminate on their common ground. Thus, the sense of mission, principle, and adequacy is arguably rooted in the circumstances of the nation as well as the shared background and perceptions of the candidates. This sense of mission was intensified by the declarations of the Republican Contract.

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A Perceived Public Mandate As a Cause of Cohesion The third pillar of class cohesion is that of a perceived political mandate. In the words of some members of the class, this mandate flowed from a crucible of a turning-point election that produced the first Republican majority in the House in forty years.8 Based upon substantial evidence, this is the most important consideration in explaining the high level of class identity and cohesion among Republican freshmen in the 104th Congress. But it takes a little explaining to make clear the reasons a perceived mandate worked to heighten class cohesion. The Contract with America and the corresponding objectives of the Gingrich group galvanized political opposition and turned dozens of local races into national contests (Merry, 1994, 3207). Many of the candidates that the Gingrich group prepped and promoted were perceptive enough to understand they did not have the political stature that lends itself to winning congressional races. Furthermore, many of the freshmen were confronted with vigorous opposition that enjoyed substantial soft money support from union and other interests. Hence, when the Republicans won the House, the magnitude of what had transpired overwhelmed not only the new GOP freshmen but many experienced members of Congress—Democrat and Republican alike. The Gingrich group lost no time arguing that an impending political apocalypse had been converted into the mother of all political watersheds. The Republican euphoria that ensued knew no boundaries. There was a sense that history had just been made, and more was about to be unleashed. All of this overwhelmed the senses and sensibility of Republicans, especially those without much political experience. The Contract declared that it would be the expression of a mandate if Republicans were given ascendency in the House by the American public. When Republicans won the House, they found themselves believing in all kinds of political mandates, especially when the national press began asking whether President Clinton retained political relevancy. The GOP freshmen thought that the election results confirmed they were on a mission of critical importance, and that a public mandate ratified the mission. Supposedly, the public understood the general mission of the Republicans to purge corruption from Capitol Hill, and to replace Democratic inadequacies and errors with principled operations and productive policy. The perceived electoral mandate

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was held by Republicans to reinforce the legitimacy of the mission as set forth in the Contract as well as in individual campaigns. One problem faced by conservative Republicans was that some parts of the Republican party were not interested in dramatic policy change. After all, the brand of conservatism that many old-school conservatives believe in is tempered change and reform wrought incrementally. Conservatives of this stripe are prone to think that liberals undertake radical change. These “rock-the-boat-gently” conservatives were disproportionately represented in the more senior members of the Republican House conference. Gingrich knew that with continuation of the existent committee system, these Republicans could substantially slow the radical reforms that he had been promoting to junior members. Consequently, even before gaining the Speakership, Gingrich convinced the junior members—incoming freshmen as well as sophomores—that some of the mature bulls would have to be put out to pasture or circumvented if the mission were to be accomplished. To do this, as well as to make progress on his brand of conservative legislation, Gingrich needed a cohesive bloc of freshman class votes. The party in the chamber had to be disassembled and recast before it could accomplish the mission promised to the American public. From the perspective of freshman class members who Gingrich sold on this program, this reassembly of the House Republican Conference seemed essential if they were going to remain credible in enacting their supposed mandate. They feared that disunity on their part might cripple Gingrich, and result in a party in the chamber insufficiently radical to keep campaign promises and uphold the principles underlying the Contract. Thus, the perception of a multifaceted mandate—even though hindsight suggests it was a misunderstood mandate—was a critical factor in causing the freshmen to purposefully build and maintain class cohesion. CLASS COHESION IN THE EYES OF ITS MEMBERS AND STAFFERS Why did the 104th GOP freshmen stick together so well for so long? As one staffer in a leadership office commented, the 103rd Democratic Congress deserves some of the credit. The 103rd “raised taxes and refused to deal with welfare problems. It was these circumstances— the political atmosphere—that helped draw such compatible Republican candidates into the 1994 congressional elections.”

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Assessments like this suggest that background considerations are partially responsible for attracting like-minded Republicans to the House. One moderate senior member referred to the dramatic differences between the 104th Congress and earlier Congresses and argued that “when we have Congress under the control of one party for so long there is an abuse of power.” Perceptions of the abuse of power bring into contention challengers who feel free from such political taints—people who believe they can credibly present themselves to the public as being principled enough to largely avoid the misuse of power after gaining discretionary authority. To an unusual degree, these were professional people with business backgrounds outside the legal profession. Like businesspeople, they were goal-oriented and goal-focused. But as one politically experienced freshman commented, “they talked little about reelection or the dynamics of the political process,” in part because most of them knew little about the political ropes. There was a conviction among some Republicans that not only did circumstances shape the pool of Republican candidates who ran and won in 1994 but that regulatory pressures (like those affecting small business owners) may have exerted more of a selection force than party leadership. Representative Mark Sanford, a real estate investor with strong concerns about the effects of fiscal policy upon economic vitality, was among those who suggested this view. Others, like Representative George Nethercutt and former 104th GOP freshman Randy Tate affirmed it. (Representative Nethercutt) A lot of the members of the class came out of the business community. Many of us had run businesses of our own whether we were self-employed lawyers, doctors, contractors or whatever. We had the opinion that the way Congress treated government operations was different than the way people in private business do business. So, we came with a sense of responsibility and accountability that we wanted to transfer to government. In short, we had a common bond as a class, not only because we felt the same way, but because we were the first class in forty years that led to a new majority. (Representative Tate) The 104th freshman class was made up of people who had not only signed the backside of paychecks but as employers had also signed the front side. They were less willing to bend when leadership told them to go a certain

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Legislative Learning way. The freshmen would say, “No, this is what the people at home told us to do, so we are going to go their way.” And we usually prevailed.

The circumstances of the times drew compatible people into the 104th freshman class. Generally, they were not political tacticians or diplomats. And members of the class, like Funderburk, noted that proportionately there were fewer lawyers than usual. An experienced aide remarked, “Reagan and others were tactical in their speeches, but not this class. Members of the 104th would often come out and say exactly what they thought. This had the benefit of making their agenda clear, but the disadvantage of reducing negotiation leeway and bargaining room.” At times this frankness reduced comity between the Republicans and Democrats, as well as between newer and more experienced members of the House Republican conference (Koszczuk and Cassata 1996). But, the bluntness also kept the class’s goals from becoming blurred. Candidates with a Mission The political environment in 1993 and 1994 did more than draw merely compatible Republican candidates: It drew people with a sense of mission. The interview data shows this sense of mission to be powerful and persistent. This feeling of mission was expressed in personal convictions, in policy objectives, and especially in the idea that the nation needed to be turned from perceived fiscal irresponsibility. Recognition of the sense of mission was not confined to conservatives. One moderate freshman said, “The great majority of the freshman class came out here to change the way this city did business. This class ran with a conscious feeling in their heart that they needed to take the small window of opportunity in this century to prevent a great depression, and this was a political force of nature that brought people together.” A senior staffer for a freshman put it even more vividly: “If you are an airplane pilot there comes a point in time when you must pull your airplane out of a steep dive. If you don’t pull up, you crash. My boss felt that America was in a dive, and unless we obtained new pilots who were willing to get the plane’s nose up, the nation would face great risk of collapse. My boss also believes the actions of the 104th Congress and the freshman class averted a national disaster.” This comment helps explain the perception of adequacy that accompanied the sense of mission. The

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freshmen really believed that they possessed the needed answers, and that their force as a cohesive class was of such consequence that in combination with visionary House leadership they could install changes that America simply could not do without. The sense of mission in the 104th GOP freshman class came up repeatedly in member comments. It is one of the defining elements of class identity, and part of the glue that held the class together. As explained by a freshman, “The day that we came up in September 1994 to sign the Contract, I got to know many of my colleagues. The signing of the Contract helped cement for the newcomers a special relationship and mission. Any of the representatives will tell you an uncommon bonding took place. We came with a mission to improve the nation for our children and grandchildren. The bond remains even though we are on different committees.” Another freshman not reelected in 1996 remarked that many of the members thought they were “populist,” and that they were on a special mission to do a better job of representing the will of the people. They thought that this “will” had been suppressed and blocked for many years. This legislator argued that in the past, many people sought a seat in Congress because they were looking for a career. But, by contrast, members of the 104th class were on a mission to get a job done, to accomplish objectives, and then to get back to the real world. One representative with a great deal of political experience explained the mission phenomenon this way: “People who come to Congress after Watergate-like events—and perhaps Clinton’s unpopular Health Care Plan qualifies as such an event—are more likely to have a purist attitude on political reform. They think they are elected for very specific reasons, to correct certain things.” They feel like knights in shining armor on a glorious mission of righting wrongs. In 1994 the focal point of things gone wrong was Washington, D.C.9 This perception, with its associated attitudes, permeated the Republican freshmen. One press secretary described it this way: “The one overriding conviction of the 104th freshmen was the true belief that they presented the opportunity for a new beginning for the House. They saw themselves changing the way Washington worked by reducing government, initiating major tax reform, and getting a balanced budget. They perceived the New Deal Plan to be bankrupt, and thought they saw society teetering on the brink of collapse. They imagined themselves as being important to reclaiming the American Dream.”10 This assessment was echoed by Democrats, with one saying that the

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freshmen’s view of Washington as evil made them more insulated and idealistic than other freshman groups, and hence, an army that Gingrich could move. The expressions of 104th freshmen certainly contributed to this impression. Twenty years of having to put up with the absurdity of federal mandates moved me to run for Congress…. To me, Washington was a city that did little but talk…. Not knowing that the Republicans would win the majority, I was hoping to win a seat just so I could make the Democrats on the Hill very, very uncomfortable. On election night I realized that I could help bring change. (Second freshman) One of my concerns as a citizen who had never been active in politics before was that I did not see Washington fixing the right problems, especially fiscal problems. Congress was ignoring real problems in leadership, morals and ethics. I was looking at the future and my grandchildren, and saying, “If we don’t participate, if someone doesn’t stand up we’re not going to be able to change things.”

The Contract As a Tool to Meld Agendas The modern Congress has not lacked much in ambition to fix problems. The difficulty is how to bring the problem solvers together in such a way that they can find agreement as to which problems to fix and how. In this regard, the Contract with America provided a great deal of assistance. It is not as though junior Republican members of the House would have been pursuing radically different agendas without the Contract, but the Contract did serve to fence in the party’s path more tightly than if conservative political philosophy written large was the primary guideline. One of Gingrich’s aides explained it this way: In March, 1994, key Republicans in the Gingrich circle met in Salisbury, Maryland, to put together the plan for the Contract with America. They aimed at a positive document that would reflect party consensus, and produced a document that all but a few of the incumbent Republicans signed. The document itself did not produce the consensus: It was the circumstances of the political environment that led to the Contract, and the Contract simply heightened the consensus. The new Republican candidates who ran for the House in 1994 did so because of political circumstances, the existence of

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the Contract with its organized approach, and the recruiting efforts of leadership. Some of these candidates were not the preferred picks of their local or state Republican party organizations, but were on Gingrich’s list because they fit well with his reformation objectives.11 There is a certain tension in the foregoing argument that was repeatedly injected into analysis of the role of the Contract in class unity. Some members went to pains to develop the idea that the freshmen, in spite of their relative inexperience in things political, were not empty canisters waiting to be filled by Gingrich’s Contract with America philosophy. Hence, it was argued that the Contract was not what motivated or informed class members but their own independent precampaign analysis of what was right and wrong with America. One fairly conservative freshman said this: I don’t think the Contract had anything to do with the people who ran. I think the Contract was a focal point that people could use to build a campaign; it was also useful for nationalizing an election. I was one of six or seven freshmen who did not sign the Contract. Why? Because my contract is with the people of my district. This is my philosophical position. I don’t owe Washington anything. My loyalty can’t be to the Republican party. The Contract was the tool that helped win the election, but it was not the tool that helped recruit the candidates. It was the problems that the Contract aimed to address that made the freshmen run for office.

Although there is general agreement that the Contract increased the unity of the class, there is less agreement on just how expansive a role the Contract played in helping Gingrich recruit and develop candidates in 1994. One important observation repeatedly made is that the existence of the Contract helped meld the freshman class because it gave them a sense of interdependent obligation as well as an explicit agenda to discuss while building personal relationships. A staffer with an education in the legal field described it this way: “The thing that made the 104th GOP class unique is that the freshmen came together before being elected, and did so through the Contract process.” He went on to argue that the freshmen saw themselves as a contracted unit, forged through an agreement they signed. The conceptual underpinnings of this agreement held them together, and helped them focus on getting certain achievements as a class. The agreement meant

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that the class had a mission, and was not composed of atomistic individuals. The result was a historic class. Unity Forged by Shared Experiences The idea of the freshmen being melded together in an ore-refining kind of crucible was an analogy that interviewees provided on several occasions, especially with regard to the demands of the 1994 campaign and the stresses of the first 100 days of House activity. The freshmen, many of them with little political experience, felt overwhelmed by their campaign experiences. They also felt drawn together not only by the evolution of local contests into national ones, but by the additional consequence of individual victories in light of the successful Republican conquest of the House. As one member stated, “The House class had a united focus and fervor that was created by the crucible of the election. The crucible was different in 1996; it was not nearly as focused on intensity, agenda and policy.” Upon the heels of their elections, the new Republican freshmen found themselves in Washington for freshmen orientation exercises and experiences. What happened next is widely agreed upon by the members. As one said, “I cannot adequately explain, but when seventy-three people win their races and become part of history in establishing the first Republican majority in the House in forty years, it creates relationships that are unusual in consequence. Another freshmen stated, “I first started meeting my classmates in the transition team. Then, we were all brought together as part of an orientation period. I noticed a couple things right away. People were committed to the concept of smaller government, as well as restoration of the family and moral values in the community. There was also a sense of integrity in keeping your word to the voters. ‘Promises made, promises kept’ became the motto of our class.” This story was echoed by conservatives and moderates alike, especially the part about a common bond in the concept of smaller government. In place of the normal bipartisan freshmen orientation at Harvard University, the Gingrich cohort arranged for a special Republican orientation hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. As one experienced GOP legislator commented: “The freshmen had the opportunity before being sworn in to spend time together, which just isn’t ususal. Leadership put together a lot of activities for them.” The small Democratic freshman class of thirteen members

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saw this development as unhelpful to positive fraternization between the two groups, and a contributing factor to the later sensed breakdown of comity in the chamber between junior members of opposing parties.12 Some Democrats alleged that the Republican orientation was an induction into the Republican party rather than into the Congress. But freshman Republicans tended to give a much more positive interpretation to this part of the orientation process. (104th freshman) Class cohesion started the first time the class got together in late November, 1994, in the Armed Services Committee Room. The meeting was organized by the freshmen. Everyone went around the room and introduced themselves, then each person spoke briefly about who they were, how they got back there, and why they were there. Almost every speaker said he or she wanted to be different than members who had come before. Everyone wanted to do exactly what they said on the campaign trail they would do. In this way it was a united class from the start. We had a common goal, and we had the Contract with America. But, more than the Contract, it was the issues in the Contract that pulled members together. We also had a common bond in being the first majority freshman class for the Republican party since 1954. Another factor was that most people had very little political experience before they got there. The orientation period with the Heritage Foundation was another factor that contributed to the development of the class. An orientation at the Harvard JFK School of Government in many ways would have just perpetuated the same approaches and the same indoctrination that every class had experienced previously. The Heritage/Empower America orientation period provided the opportunity for members of the class to really get to know one another before being faced with legislative pressures on the floor. After the election we were able to spend nearly three weeks in Washington. My wife became acquainted with other members’ spouses, and we became a very close class. Then, from that orientation we went right into the 104th Congress. (A Senior Gingrich aide) The freshman class orientation was useful. We switched from Harvard to the Heritage Foundation because we were increasingly tired of having our members come in only to be told how the establishment works. We wanted to avoid that. Newt used to jokingly say that he wanted to get the Contract passed before the new members met the lobbyists and

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Legislative Learning the whole Washington crowd. I think we did have a different kind of orientation. But my guess is that the mood of most of the freshmen and non-freshmen who were re-elected was really singular after the 1994 election. Had they gone over to Harvard, they would have just hooted at the people.

Members Pulled Together by the Euphoria of Victory During the orientation period and the first 100 days, there was a sense of euphoria in the Republican camp that evidently defies description. According to several staffers there was so much energy on the loose that staying up late and working until midnight on a continued basis was not a great problem.13 One staffer who had been around awhile said the House seemed reborn, and the members seemed possessed with an excitement and momentum that is difficult to stop. By all accounts, it was a heady time—a time in which perceptions of a public mandate grew on nearly a daily basis. Not everyone in the Republican Congress thought this was healthy. One Republican legislator commented that the junior members in the House became too enthralled with class importance, and spent too much time dwelling on the momentous nature of the election. This, allegedly, blinded some freshmen to the realities of governing with a bipartisan spirit. But, setting aside the euphoria’s effect on governance, there is little doubt that it contributed to a higher sense of class cohesion and identity than would have existed with a less dramatic election victory. One experienced press secretary commented that the incredible level of euphoria in the first 100 days soon developed into almost “a religious fervor.” He observed “a belief among the freshman class that they wielded more power and had greater purpose than classes that had come before.” Sentiments like these were echoed by others. (Chief of staff) When the freshman class came into office there was such euphoria that it is hard to do it justice with mere description. Recently, one member said, “We’re trying to get back that old Contract with America feeling.” It was so different. It began, in part, when the freshmen did their orientation with the Heritage Foundation rather than the Harvard School…. In the early going there was a great feeling that things could get done. When Sam Brownback brought up term limits for the

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Speaker, there was a groundswell of support, and Gingrich had little choice but to back term limits for himself. (104th freshman) There was an influx of people who had never held public office or even run for a legislative seat. The pins that Dick Chrysler had made up said it all: We were “The Majority Makers.” We were well aware of the instant celebrity status that the circumstances of our election conferred. This gave us momentum and influence in our role in the conference. We wanted to learn; at the same time we were not shy about exerting our considerable influence. Pushing the envelope was how we saw our job.

The height of the euphoria was increased by the shock of the Republican capture of the House and by the unparalleled attention the media gave to the changes happening in the Congress. Among the Republicans, it was commonly admitted that the press played an important role in giving the new Republican class a high public profile and a full sense of their accomplishments. But there is more to what happened than simply effects generated by the national media with its bullhorn. Before the media could make its voice heard, shock waves were already developing in the community of political professionals. The ramifications of a Republican majority in the House after forty years simply rocked the minds of many people. One Gingrich insider had this to say: On election day, I called someone to find out what the exit polls looked like at 1:30 P.M., and was told that the exit poll company was not putting out the data yet. They thought something was wrong with the numbers since the Republicans were doing so well. It was so completely unexpected that they could not believe it even when they were seeing it. The surprise of it all created an impact. So, Washington reacted to the freshmen. Not only were the freshmen having a sense that they were part of history, but the history was made bigger in all of our minds by Washington’s reaction to us. It was an unprecedented level of attention that a new Speaker received, and an unprecedented amount of attention that a freshman class obtained.

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Unity through Class Organization For a House class that was about to receive a tremendous amount of media attention, its internal process of organizing itself was amazingly simple. The nature of the way the class chose its officers for one-year terms and proceeded about its business may suggest something about a low level of competition for political status within the class. Not that there were no exceptions—apparently there were a few. But, generally, the members of this class seemed far more concerned at the outset about what the class would do as a political unit than what individual members might gain in terms of reputation. A couple of the more politically experienced members of the freshman class described the initial organizing meeting like this: I’m a student of comparative government, and I was fascinated as I watched how the freshman class organized itself. In was like in the beginning—God creating something out of nothing, or whatever. Here were all these people with nothing happening, just standing there, seventy-three of them. Silence prevailed. Who was going to be the first person to stand up and say, “I want to be the leader.” There was not even a person to call the group to order. We were in the Judiciary Committee Hearing Room. I think it was Sue Myrick who just stood up and said, “Well, we’ve got to do something.” At that point Roger Wicker stood up and said in his urbane, Mississippi way, “I will preside if you want me to, but I don’t want to be class president.” It was like the Leninist Revolution, or something. But, obviously all that changed, and Roger Wicker ended up running for class president, and being the class president. But he was not symbolic of the class. On the day when the freshmen first met, there were some who were maneuvering for power. Dick Chrysler maneuvering to become class president; Linda Smith countering that move, and Roger Wicker, who didn’t even want the class presidency getting it. That in itself speaks highly of the freshman class.

One senior staffer who was in a position to know certain particulars said that Wicker did not actually want the presidency. Another freshman, Zack Wamp, wanted him to have it because Wamp was very concerned that the conservative revolution stay on track, and feared that the personally ambitious members of the class might undermine the revolution for the sake of their own goals. So Wamp

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created a short list of seemingly nonambitious members who had proven political skills. After spending some time with Wicker, he decided Wicker had integrity as well as political savvy. Consequently, Wamp stood at the door of the freshman meeting and said, “I’m Zack Wamp, and I would like you to vote for my friend Roger Wicker.” Apparently, this campaign approach sat better with most of the freshmen than the more direct approach taken by a couple other members. In comparison to the House Republicans, the House Democrats had a small class: just thirteen members. The plan they formulated for class organization was to rotate the class presidency between all of the interested members. This was a class that did not do much as a cohesive political unit; thus, the class presidency was largely a symbolic award. The rotation plan may have been nothing more than an expression of shared goodwill. Then again, there is the possibility that a rotation plan allows each member a chance to gain status in the member’s home district. If voters read that their representative was a class president during the 104th Congress, they are not going to think to inquire how many other members of the class were class presidents. Another interesting contrast in the matter of a party’s class organization comes from the account of a Republican House member who entered the House in the 1980s. Concerning her class’s formal organization she said, “I was a bit amused by the competition for the various class offices. They had contested races for who was going to be president or vice president. It was like being back in high school.” Freshman Concord Forged During the Boot-Camp Period The apparent lack of widespread competitive individual ambition among members of the 104th freshman class was interpreted by some members as an indication that their class was more like a cooperative unit than a collection of atomistic political entrepreneurs. The initial sense of cohesion they felt was to be refined and strengthened by the “hellish schedule” of the first 100 days. Although descriptions of this three-month period range from “glorious and exciting” to “an unbelievably grueling march,” there was a consensus that the freshmen grew closer together as a result of this legislative “boot camp.” The tribulations of the period produced “real bonding.” Some of the members came off of the campaign trail “totally exhausted,” only to be directed into an extensive orientation process, and then swept into “the legislative whirlwind of the first 100 days.”

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The pressures of the first 100 days did not result simply from the floor schedule, although it was more intense than any in recent memory. According to one chief of staff, “The Republican Conference cranked out so much literature and so many position papers that after awhile the advice and perspectives could no longer be digested.” The members felt overwhelmed not only by information from party leadership, but from the instant long line of constituents and lobbyists who wanted their ear. Many of the freshmen and some of their staffers were new to politics, and the necessary learning curve complicated the struggle to get organized. Some freshmen staffers admitted that they fell down badly on public relations work during this period, and it hurt their causes later on. The party tried to help each office with a comprehensive manual for office operation and internal organization put out by Dick Armey’s office called “Hit the Ground Running,” but too many of the freshmen and their staffers felt too busy running to take time to master the manual. Class meetings were frequent and well attended during the first few months, as were the meetings of a number of other Republican groups on the Hill—groups that were revitalized by party majority status and the influx of new members. Republican freshmen typically overcommitted themselves and became involved in too many groups. Freshmen were also busy developing and sending “Dear Colleague” electronic mail to one another in attempts to heighten their level of strategic organization.14 For many freshmen, e-mail became a way to circumvent the power of committees as privileged information resource centers (Weisman 1997b, 2936; Krehbiel 1991). Some of the freshmen thought the hectic pace drew them closer together. What some did not anticipate was how their developing relationship with Gingrich would contribute to their class bonding in the early months, but later undermine it. Class Identity Fostered by Leadership By 1994 Gingrich had developed a trained eye for the advantages of the limelight. He strategically made sure that the consequence of his “majority maker” freshman class was ever in the minds of both foe and friend. The freshmen were people whom Gingrich knew felt a strong sense of obligation to him—not that most of them were very quick to admit it beyond the first six months. Furthermore, with few exceptions at the outset, Gingrich’s strategic skills in political matters

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were held in very high regard by the freshmen. Gingrich knew this, and endeavored to take full advantage of the situation. Some members of the media were premature in conjecturing that Gingrich had the freshmen in his pocket. However, the relationship between the freshmen and Gingrich started developing complexity quickly. Both sides needed the other to achieve certain goals. Somehow, Gingrich and the freshmen became an extraordinary team, while at the same time finding themselves in an adversarial position to each other in various situations. Both sides felt empathy and respect for the other, yet both were willing to use the other, if necessary, to service certain ideals. Gingrich and the freshmen joined hands to pit themselves against other powers in the House Republican conference, yet separated when Gingrich put party first, and many of the freshmen put their principles ahead of party. Gingrich’s general approach to decision making contributed to consensus and cohesion among freshmen, as well as a sense that their views were important. By listening to what his troops wanted, especially early in the 104th Congress, Gingrich may have averted situations where member frustrations might have led to self-willed entrepreneurial policy binges. There was a problem, however, namely that at times Gingrich failed to cultivate agreement before forging ahead on his own. As the 104th Congress progressed, the Speaker became increasingly prone to pulling maneuvers that would take his own people by surprise. This is one of the factors that contributed to a decay of unity among House Republicans over time, and a building of exasperation among about seventy freshmen office press secretaries who had the burden of trying to repair the public relations damage that was sometimes incurred. However, in the early going it was not that way. One Gingrich aide had this to say about consensus building: We spent a lot of time working on the common vision in 1994 and through the year 1995. Newt sort of believed in a Japanese model of management rather than an American model. The American model is hierarchical: The boss says, “Do this, and if you don’t like it, quit.” The Japanese model involves getting everyone in a room, and then building consensus by something like a Demming’s quality approach. Newt studied the work of Demming. So we had a lot of meetings where we didn’t stop the meetings until we had a consensus. The consensus was always premised on, “What is our vision, our projects, our

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Legislative Learning strategy?” When we had agreement we moved forward as a group. However, I don’t think we had that at the end of 1995.

Not only did Gingrich make most of his freshmen’s wish to esteem him by listening closely to them, he also promoted a large number into positions of influence in ways that defied the norms of the chamber. One experienced Republican recalled, “When I came to Congress, there were only seventeen Republican members in my freshman class. We were in the minority, and the general expectation was that we should be seen but not heard. By contrast, there were freshman members of the 104th class that chaired subcommittees.” A chief of staff for a freshman confirmed this, but in a more positive way: “A few Republicans who had been in the House in earlier times shared the opinion that freshmen should keep their heads down and their mouths shut for their first term in office. But, this is not what Newt Gingrich wanted. He urged the freshmen to be vocal and active from the start. Credit needs to be given to Gingrich for fostering a more open and inclusive atmosphere.” The Speaker’s Need for a Cohesive Freshman Class Gingrich expected no walk in the park in the 104th Congress. After several years of tactical maneuvering among House Republicans, he knew there was resistance against what he wanted to do, as well as support. Consequently, he was very strategic in his promotion of junior members who shared his ideological vision. He thought he had to reduce the power of Republican centrists in the House in order to propel his reform agenda forward in a timely manner. Interestingly, two years later Gingrich was trying to shift power back to moderates and sustain the House Republican majority after discovering that the American public was not as squarely behind the conservative agenda as he previously thought. Nevertheless, as one well-positioned observer recalled, during the 103rd Congress Gingrich and the Gang of Four (his lieutenants) were working against most things that moderate minority leader Bob Michel was trying to do. “They undermined and gained power for themselves by setting up a subleadership group that was making important decisions away from the official meetings.” Although some may disagree with the assessment that follows, several very well-placed observers thought Gingrich used the freshmen when it served his purposes. Interestingly, they all thought Gingrich was justified in so doing, in that his tactics worked for the overall

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good of the Republican mission as they saw it. One commentator went a little further than the others. Gingrich wanted to make sure that all the offices were staffed, but not necessarily that all the staffs were running smoothly. The Gingrich people kept the freshmen in orientation sessions, took them to Baltimore, kept them in briefings here in Washington around the clock so as to keep them from having time to find and bring on experienced staff. So, the freshmen brought on a lot of campaign staff who were unfamiliar with what goes on here [i.e., people more easily led by the Gingrich operation]. Gingrich put his stamp on this place quickly. In my opinion, it was absolutely the right thing to do. He and the other members of the GOP House leadership group are true believers in smaller government. They fought for years for these things. But they were a minority of the minority party. I think they would have feared allowing the members of the freshman class to develop their individual political personalities slowly. Perhaps they feared finding out that many of the freshmen might not be hard-core conservatives. Maybe they feared that some freshmen campaigned on certain things because it was politically expedient.

A Class Independent of Party Leadership One of the more politically experienced moderate members of the 1994 Republican class expressed a sense of awe at how much clout and control the junior members of the House Republican Conference transferred to Gingrich, apparently in their naivete. Speaking expressly of the freshmen, he observed that they “did a tremendous amount of work to help Newt Gingrich consolidate his power, yet did not fully comprehend they had done it.” Not all of the supposedly “naive” agreed with this assessment. Some alleged that their empowerment of Gingrich was strategic—the open-eyed choice of centralized party power in the House as a lesser evil in trying to position the party in the House to fulfill its pledges to the public. Others argued that the freshmen only ratified or formalized the power that Gingrich had already acquired by reason of two causes: First, Gingrich was empowered by Democratic errors that could be overturned only by means of a temporary centralization of power in the opposition party. Second, Gingrich was strengthened by the simple

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fact that he and his friends masterminded the revolution that brought the Republicans into the majority in the House. (A Senior Republican) The election of 1994 hinged on one clear development: The American public understood that the Democrats were in control of the Congress and the White House, and that the Republicans had not had this kind of power for years. Previously, divided government was the norm. But, any party that rules the House for forty years is going to have problems. What was going on with the House bank eventually got a lot of press. So did many other scandals. There were serious problems and a lack of professionalism. All of this information eventually got out. When it did, there was no way the Democrats could dodge responsibility. (Senior staffer) The 104 th Republican freshmen did not consciously cede power to party leadership. The leadership was at a tremendous advantage from the outset, since leaders derive power by bringing a party’s members together. Since the Contract brought the members together, the Contract empowered the leadership. During the first 100 days, leadership brought things to the floor knowing they had the votes to pass their bills, and knowing they did not have to concede to small points from members of their own caucus. This set the tone. After the 100 days expired, leadership was tremendously powerful. At this point it became difficult for the rank and file to get some of that power back.

A crucial point regarding competition for power among Republicans in the House is that many of the freshmen did not see themselves transferring power to the Speaker as much as they saw themselves empowering themselves and their own revolution by putting the Speaker in a better place to help their cause. They knew that a stronger Speaker could not ignore them except at his own jeopardy. A bloc of seventy-three votes—about one-third of the House Republican Conference—is nothing for leadership to trifle with. Realizing this, and understanding that Gingrich viewed them as his protégé, they prepared to assist him in reforming their party in the chamber. A leader among the freshmen described the situation quite colorfully. During the 104th Congress, we had a strong and conservative leadership in the House. We also had two classes—the 104th

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and 103rd—that were both for cutting government and lowering taxes. These classes reflected a revolt by voters against what they saw as the Clinton administration’s orientation toward higher taxes and bigger government. There was also a group of Republican chairmen who had been cultured in the old Republican school under Bob Michel—people with a “go along and get along” attitude. Their approach was to pass most of what the Democrats wanted, but with 15 percent less spending. By contrast, the new leadership and new members of the 104th Congress had a clear departure from that way of operation. But somehow we had to get past our committee chairmen. To do this, we sometimes employed a pincer movement where the leadership would signal to us a willingness to do something that a particular chairman was not enthused about. We would then move aggressively, and do so with the complicity of the leadership. We knew they could not say what they wanted done. It was a wink and a nod system in which they would indicate that if the freshmen wanted to go after something they wouldn’t oppose us. That is how we got stuff past committee chairmen who normally hold most of the power in the system.

CONCLUSION In the case of the 104th GOP freshmen, a high level of class cohesion reflects the premium the freshmen put on their policy goals. The freshmen used class cohesion as an instrument to increase the power of leadership to turn the Republican Conference in a conservative direction. The high level of purposeful cohesion in the freshman class supports the argument that members of Congress who prize policymaking will find ways to maximize policy formulation opportunities (see Chapter Three). In Fenno’s study (1973), optimization took place as members of Congress sought out seats on committees where there were greater opportunities for policy-making than for career enhancement. In the present study, policy-oriented freshmen members of the 104th Congress sought to optimize policymaking opportunities by seeking to enhance class cohesion and the resulting negotiation power. There is evidence that high cohesion was the result of circumstances as well as purposeful action. Background considerations were among the important considerations contributing to unity, and included member bonding because of commonalities and shared experiences,

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as well as the facilitation of member relations by party leadership. Cohesion was also enhanced by a sense of mission, principle, and adequacy, each intensified by the Contract. Finally, a perceived public mandate gave the class a sense of unity of purpose. The willingness of most members of the class to put a shared agenda ahead of individualistic aspirations gave the class an ability to dramatically influence the House Republican Conference, and to a lesser degree shape the outcome of chamber proceedings and policy-making. NOTES 1. According to Jacoby (1995), findings on personal ideology over the past twenty years are highly suggestive “that the nature of a political stimulus affects the extent to which citizens apply liberal-conservative ideas to that stimulus” (316). Since some issues by their nature evoke more consistently ideological responses than other issues, changing environments alter not only the issues but also the level of ideology widely exhibited (Carmines and Stimson 1980). These arguments suggest that political environment may affect the degree to which people think ideologically. This fits with the picture of a political environment stimulating the emergence of the kind of ideologically motivated Republican House candidates that Gingrich sought. 2. In congressional elections, broad-brush prediction of macro results is roughly feasible based upon economic and political conditions (Markus 1988; Oppenheimer, Stimson, and Waterman 1986). But, prediction is far from perfect as evidenced in the 1994 election when Republicans won the House contrary to most predictions, including ones made only a couple months before the election. The idea that the outcome of presidential elections is fairly predictable at the start of the campaign season suggests to some observers that campaigns do not matter much, especially when nearly two-thirds of voters make up their minds concerning presidential candidates by end of the party conventions (Frankovic 1985; Asher 1992; Finkel 1993). On the other hand, others argue that if campaigns matter to a third of voters, then campaigns do matter (Salmore and Salmore 1985; Holbrook 1994), especially on the congressional level in races that are close. The relevance of campaigns is also helped by three ideas: First, voters are increasingly putting candidate traits ahead of partisan ideology (Norrander 1986; Bartels 1987; Abramowitz 1989). Second, the trend toward weakening partisanship makes it easier for voters to change their vote plans based upon campaign information (Allsop and Weisberg 1988; Wattenberg 1990). Third, parties are increasingly energetic in using mass media outlets in campaigns (Herrnson 1

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3. Until 1994, political amateurs in congressional elections have possessed only a slim chance (5.6%) of winning an open congressional seat, and even less chance (1.5%) of defeating incumbents (Ferejohn 1977; Canon 1993), especially ones who are attentive to their constituents (Fiorina 1989). The difficulty of winning as an amateur is the greatest for underfinanced novices who run primarily to gain experience or to make a political statement (Jacobson 1978; Abramowitz 1989). As Jacobson and Kernell (1983) observe, experienced politicians with career ambitions in Congress calculate their chances of winning before running. It is too simplistic, however, to imagine that all political amateurs have little chance of winning, especially when parties are awakening to the importance of teaching new candidates the ropes (Herrnson 1988). By dividing political amateurs into two groups, as does Canon (1993), one can see that ambitious amateurs are four times more likely to defeat an incumbent than experience-seeking candidates. Ambitious amateurs are like experienced politicians in that they tend to make strategic calculations of incumbents’ vulnerabilities and the likely effects of the political climate (ibid.). This appears to be the case for many of the 104th GOP freshmen who chose to run in 1994 because they were convinced they could effectively capitalize upon their outsider status in an environment of public displeasure with the majority Democrats. 4. Not only did Clinton have a public perception problem to deal with in 1994, but the effects of the 1991 House check-kiting scandal (overdraft check writing on the House bank) were still being felt, especially by Democrats. Although many House members whose reputations were tarnished by bad check disclosures resigned in 1992, the Democrat party itself carried the burden of the revelation that among those who wrote fifty bad checks or more, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was sixty-four to seventeen (Jacobson and Dimock 1994, 605). Voters were still asking “why” as the 1994 elections approached. 5. A prominent trend in recent public opinion research does not deny the classic premise that mass publics have minimal political information and attention, but concludes that minimal coherence and reasonableness of political judgments is not an unavoidable outcome (Sniderman 1993). However, other recent research on presidential elections suggests that the behavior of individual voters and the electorate as a whole is consequentially affected by a lack of full political information (MacKuen 1984; Zaller 1992; Bartels 1996), with incumbents generally benefitting when voters are uncertain about the issues (Bartels 1986; Burnham 1975). 6. Rieselbach (1995) defines reform as “intentional efforts to reshape institutional structures and processes,” whereas “change” is a broader idea in which institutional patterns may be affected by inadvertent forces as well as intended alterations. Typically, reforms in Congress have sought to increase responsibility, responsiveness, and accountability (ibid.). But, increases in

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responsibility can come at a cost to responsiveness, and vice versa, resulting in reform agendas that are often aimed at correcting imbalances created by previous reforms. The fragmenting reforms of the 1970s and 1980s increased the ability of Congress to be responsive, but lowered its ability to act responsibly. 7. A couple members of the 104th GOP freshman class were aided by their claim of recent roots in the Democratic party (Jones, Whitfield). Freshmen with high-profile backgrounds apart from state or local politics included a former ambassador (Funderburk), several doctors and dentists (Weldon, Coburn, Ganske, and Norwood), a couple football players (Largent and Watts), a winery owner (Radanovich), an entertainer (Bono), a TV sports anchor (Hayworth), and a casino executive (Ensign). 8. The 1994 loss of both chambers of Congress (and fifty-two House seats) dealt a blow to President Clinton. It was the most serious midterm loss suffered by an incumbent President since Truman lost fifty-five Democratic seats in 1946. Furthermore, at the state and local levels, Republicans’ gains were great enough to put them on an even basis with Democrats for the first time in sixty years (Thurber 1995). Interestingly, voter surveys showed that independents’ rejection of Democrats in Congress was not the same as an endorsement of the Republican agenda (St. John 1994). 9. Rohde, Ornstein, and Peabody (1985) wrote of “institutional patriotism” that was a norm that they found in the Senate in their 1957– 1974 study. Senators were reluctant to say anything damaging about the institution, because the institution was their means of goal achievement. By contrast, the 104th GOP freshmen came into office declaring that the institution was corrupt and needed reform. 10. The freshmen were to eventually discover that many of their early impressions were incorrect. They did not comprehend the powers the President could wield in causing the public to focus on the points of the budget that he saw as important. They did not anticipate how difficult it would be for Democrats to compromise on some points due to constituency group ties (Gilmour 1992). They would have done well to recall that President George Bush’s battle with the Democrat Congress over the 1991 budget lasted nearly ten months, and displayed “tortuous partisan brawling” (Thurber 1992). 11. In the case of the Indiana representatives (Souder, McIntosh, and Hostettler), none was backed by their state party machines in 1994, nor recruited in a true sense by Gingrich. A grassroots movement got these three Hoosiers into office, as it did Tiahrt (Kans.), Metcalf (Wash.), and Scarborough (Fla.). Interestingly, these individuals have been among the class members most independent of party leadership.

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12. As Uslaner (1993) noted, Congress mirrors broad changes in society, and those changes involve a decline of comity where ideological convictions are strongly held. The result is increased difficulty in pursuing collective action, a conclusion that accords with the findings of other political scientists (Asher 1973; Sinclair 1989). Americans do not have a high level of trust in Congress, and this is reflected in the lack of trust each party feels toward the other. However, there has been some controversy over this view. Polsby (1968, 119–120) identified a number of incidents of physical violence across the span of many Congresses, and Schneier (1988) thought he found some norms such as reciprocity, apprenticeship, and specialization to be continuing unabated—a view that would carry forward the early research of Matthews (1960) and Huitt (1961). However, the incidents Polsby cites are not reflective of a norm, and Schneier’s argument for consistency in norms was shown by Rohde (1988) to be mistaken. Fenno (1997, 17–18) thinks that extended one-party rule contributes to lower comity than would otherwise exist. 13. Regarding the long hours worked by the members and staffers of the 104th Congress, the scope of the Republican agenda, and the strength of their will to do something about it, is reflected in the 1,839 hours the 104th House was in session in 1995. This number compares with a House average of 1,175 hours in session during the preceding nine years (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 1997, 3025). 14. It was 1993 before the U.S. House moved to a widespread availability of office-to-office e-mail (Casey 1996). Thus, technology contributed to the ability of the 1994 GOP House freshmen to network and organize themselves more highly than previous classes.

CHAPTER 5

Perspectives of the 104th GOP Freshmen An Overview

The new Republican majority that the 1994 elections produced was unusually ideologically homogeneous, and believed itself to be mandated to make far-reaching policy change. (Barbara Sinclair, 1997, 14)

AN INTRODUCTION TO SURVEY FINDINGS In the spring of 1997, all of the offices of the fifty-nine 104th GOP House freshmen surviving into the 105th Congress were contacted by mail and by phone, and invited to participate in a ten-question dissertation research survey on the 104th class. Offices that hesitated to participate were encouraged to do so by in-person visits during the period that interviews were being conducted in March and May. In the end, forty-seven of the fifty-nine offices completed the survey instrument. This 80 percent participation rate is very satisfying, and reduces concerns about the representativeness of the sample. (See Appendix B.) Further gratifying is the fact that in most cases the survey was completed by the chief of staff or legislative director, not a middle-ranked assistant. Sometimes a member of Congress wanted to complete the form personally. Generally, the survey was dropped off at the interview appointment, and picked it up during the next of

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couple days. Some of the surveys were returned by mail, and all were completed during the spring and early summer of 1997. The survey instrument addresses matters of class identity, cohesion, the mandate perception, internal reform, decision making, influences upon the class, and the surrogacy value of staff opinions.1 Survey respondents’ answers provide support to my argument concerning the importance of the mandate perception and class cohesion to the policy mission of the 104th freshman class. Beginning with the matter of class identity, each of the survey questions is discussed in this chapter. The appendices provide a list of interviewees and a discussion of survey methodology. CLASS IDENTITY It is important to ascertain whether a House freshman class has an identity of its own, or whether its members are rolled into the more broad conception of “junior members.” This issue, although seemingly minor, is quite important when it comes to constructing an interview pool. If 104th GOP House freshmen organize themselves as readily with ideologically compatible members of the two preceding classes as they do with members of their own class, then to understand the actions of the freshman class, one needs to interview a good number of members in other classes. Although interviews were pursued with House members outside the 104th GOP House freshman class, most of the interviewing effort was concentrated on the class once it became clear that the class truly did have its own identity, and that it organized itself as a class for political purposes during the 104th Congress. Although the answer as revealed by the survey question on class identity (Table 1) provides an unmistakable conclusion about the class’s view of itself, it took interview data to reveal why the class was such an identifiable entity.

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TABLE 1: Distinct Class Identity

An argument exists that since over half of the House GOP in the 104th Congress consisted of members of the most recent three classes, that the 104th freshman class is little more than a subset of a larger conservative movement. Junior members in general were behind the success of Gingrich’s drive for the Speakership, but it was 104th freshmen (as 105th sophomores) who were responsible for the initiative to remove him from office in the summer of 1997. During interview efforts, an endeavor was made to assess whether there were any significant differences between the dominant ideological movement in the House and the ideology of the 104th freshman class as a class. Little was found in the way of ideological differences between the 104th freshmen and other junior members, but the interview evidence does suggest the policy-goal runs deeper among the 104th freshmen than among other GOP members, especially in contrast to the reelection goal. Part of this may be attributable to a lower appreciation of the value of incrementalism by new members who have not yet had time to see how consequential the incremental approach can be over time. CLASS COHESION In an attempt to obtain a quantifiable expression of how class unity was perceived among class members, survey respondents were asked to provide a personal assessment. Respondents were also asked to indicate how they thought party leadership viewed class cohesion. The goal was to check perceptions from two angles: an inside-thebox and an outside-the-box technique. Although there was not a large difference between the responses (Tables 2 and 3), there was a modest tendency among respondents to portray Republican leadership as holding a higher view of class unity than did the class itself.

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TABLE 2: Class Cohesion (freshman perspective)

TABLE 3: Class Cohesion (leadership perspective)

The two survey questions about class cohesion produce similar results. Survey participants think the class and the leadership both have the opinion that class cohesiveness is very high. This is an important finding because it helps minimize the risk that some respondents might view class members as having unrealistically high views of class cohesion. In essence survey participants are being asked to look at class cohesion from two perspectives: the newly arrived insiders’ perspective and the well-positioned, veteran outsiders’ perspective (i.e., GOP leadership). The fact that the perspectives are discerned to coincide adds credibility to the general finding.3 Party leaders and their senior staffers were not asked to participate in the survey. Nevertheless, a number of important staffers in all of the leadership offices were interviewed. The assessments of class unity provided by leadership staffers were very similar to the ones provided by general members of the class. The same holds with regard to the assessments of staffers and members not belonging to the 104th GOP House freshman class.

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There are two significant differences in the wording between the questions in Tables 2 and 3. The one difference, as discussed, concerns class views in contrast to perceived leadership views. The second difference regards duration of class cohesion. The question in Table 2 inquires about early class unity, whereas the question in Table 3 inquires about enduring class unity. The difference in wording gives participants the opportunity to reveal any sense of a dramatic decline in class cohesion as the 104th Congress wore on. Although there is interview evidence to support some breakdown in class unity over time, the reduction was not dramatic enough to secure an indication in the survey questions. Indeed, House watchers observed that seventy-one of seventy-three freshmen supported 94 percent of the thirty-three bills associated with the Contract with America (Moen 1995), and only ten of the seventy-three freshmen demonstrated slippage in their party unity scores by the end of the 104th Congress (Salant 1996b). One of the most consequential considerations regarding the cohesion of the 104th freshman class is that many members (especially moderate conservatives) discounted their own preferences so as to build class cohesion and more effectively further fundamental policy goals linked to the Contract with America. Thus, cohesion was purposeful and not merely circumstantial. (Senior staffer) Moderate conservatives are moving in a conservative direction, but the conservatives want to go further in that direction than we do. Being team players, we often choose to go beyond where we would like to go. (Conservative 104th freshman) The events of 1995 show that there are differences within the 104th class…. Members of our class realize that to make policy changes our class must remain together…. In 1996 when we ran into political difficulties, the moderates came to the rest of the class and said, “Hey, we’ve been good team players, and we need some help in our districts—we need some things that are slightly different than what the class has announced is its agenda.” So we worked with them. Previously, I didn’t realize they had been subjugating their individual views for the good of the common reform movement.

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THE MANDATE PERCEPTION One of the most important tasks needing attention in a study of an influential freshman class concerns the assessment of the perceptions that drive members’ goals. This work argues for a theory where the perception of a public mandate is at the center of the behavioral choices made by 104th GOP House freshmen. In the question posed to survey respondents regarding mandate perceptions, the term “mandate” is defined so as to narrow the range of conceptions at issue (Table 4). TABLE 4: Perception of a Mandate

The idea of a “coherent” mandate is important to avoid confusion about any vague expression by the public for change. The idea of a “public directive” is to make sure that the mandate is thought of as a command or an instruction and not just a wish or suggestion. The notion of a “public” mandate ensures that this is not merely a partisan mandate nor one conferred by party leadership. The question does not ask whether there was an actual mandate, or whether the public even tried to give the Republicans a mandate. It only asks whether there was a mandate perception among the freshmen. Also, at issue is not whether an individual representative thought there was a mandate, but whether the mandate perception was pervasive in the 104th freshman class. The response to the mandate question is striking in the way it conveys an intensity in the mandate perception. Three-fourths of the respondents indicated that the mandate perception was strong, not mild or casual. No person answered “perhaps.” The mandate perception is a clear finding in this study. As one staffer remarked,

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“The freshmen thought they had a mandate to push an agenda that was far more ambitious than any this town had seen in forty years.” In conjunction with interview data that reveals how the class behaved in various ways because it perceived itself to have a mandate, this finding provides powerful support to the argument that perceptions of this nature are causative elements that must be considered when modeling congressional behavior. It is not enough to know that the freshmen felt they were given a mandate. It is important to isolate the nature and scope of the mandate. An endeavor was made to accomplish this primarily through interviews, and secondarily through the presentation of a survey question setting forth optional ways of conceiving of the mandate (Table 5a). The plan was to provide respondents with mandate ideas widely associated with the class in the writings of congressional observers. The choice called “other” was included in the hope that any important mandate conceptions that might be omitted would be specified by survey participants. TABLE 5a: Nature of the Perceived Mandate

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The preceding tabular information suggests that a majority or near majority of the freshmen put stock in at least five mandate conceptions. Based upon interviews that were completed after the survey was written, the activities of balancing the budget and downsizing government would also belong near the top of the list. Interestingly, three-fourths of the survey respondents selected four or more items from the list to include in the class’s perceptions of a mandate. No survey participant selected only one item from the list, while 40 percent of the participants selected seven or more of the nine options. This observation supports the argument that the class perceived a very broad mandate. The mandate included the goals of policy change, internal reform, and a restructuring of government priorities. Eighteen percent of the individuals surveyed made use of the option labeled “other.” Opinion in this group was divided between individuals indicating that the perceived mandate includes the responsibility of balancing the budget, and individuals suggesting that the mandate was about government downsizing with power being shifted to the states. In retrospect, both of these options should have been added to the list of choices, since they were high on the Republican agenda in the Contract. The omission of these options results in a loss of opportunity to quantify their importance relative to other options listed. That aside, there remains a wealth of insight to be gleaned from comparing the frequency of responses given. The strategy for the question in Table 5a was to give respondents the unconstrained opportunity to portray the perceived mandate as they thought the freshman class conceived it. Respondents were instructed to give the most important mandate consideration two marks, and the other pertinent considerations one mark. This approach provided respondents a way of revealing the perceived breadth or narrowness of the mandate, while at the same time differentiating between the perceived primary mandate element and lesser ones. It also provides analysts a straightforward way of quantitatively differentiating between the prominence of each option as generalized to the class. Table 5b reorders the top five mandate conceptions by adding in the value of first-place votes (double marks). Consideration of first-place votes moves the Contract answer from second place to first, and the integrity in government answer from fifth place to third. The reordering of mandate perceptions with the use of first-place votes provides a closer correspondence to interview data than does a simple ranking of mandate elements

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TABLE 5b: Most Important Elements of the Perceived Mandate

without a scheme to differentiate the relative importance of the options. The interpretation of the differences between the two approaches is clear: The perception of a mandate for internal reform was more broad-based than any other mandate perception in the 104th class; however, other mandate perceptions, although less broadly held, were thought to be more important by some class members. The issue of morality and integrity in leadership loomed so large for the 104th class that a pronounced tendency to fault find regarding the President’s leadership spilled over and generated a preoccupation with analyzing Gingrich’s House leadership as well. Regulatory relief was another high-profile concern for the class, largely because core partisans in the Republican base were very aggressive on it. However, regulatory relief did not find the level of support among the general public that the freshmen anticipated. As one staffer remarked, “The mandate, if it existed, included a call for internal reform; there is less certainty whether the mandate included a dramatic rollback of environmental regulations.” One observation from this mandate question that is especially intriguing is that the legislative activity of moderating the supposed extremes of the Clinton administration is ranked above the activity of installing if possible the dominant GOP partisan agenda (Tables 5a and 5b). Interview data suggests that if the survey had been done a year and a half earlier, the order of these two options would have been reversed. According to a number of staffers, an evolution in interpreting the perceived mandate began in January 1996 after the problematic government shutdown episodes. Admittedly, among more moderate members of the class there never was a perceived

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mandate for a partisan Republican agenda. Senior staffers for moderates laughed at the idea, but did acknowledge that it was pervasive among more conservative class members. INTERNAL REFORM When the 104th Congress took office, it did so in an environment of a bipartisan public attitude that Congress ought to be more efficient, and more alert to waste and unfairness in its own operations. However, when it came to the specifics of many of the proposed internal reforms, the public’s attention span was very short, possibly attributable to lack of understanding among many voters regarding the nature and consequence of the reforms. The freshmen and their staffers often remarked about this, with one saying that by and large, the public did not care about the internal reforms. Another staffer observed that politically knowledgeable people respond to internal reform issues, but that the importance of these reforms is readily drowned out among the general public by issues that affect them directly. Also, it was argued that the freshmen were too busy in the first few weeks of Congress to educate their publics regarding the internal reforms made at the start of the 104th Congress. Coming into the 104th Congress, Republicans had long claimed that the minority party needed more power in the committee system—a decision that Democrats came to agree with upon seeing that they were going to be the minority party. However, Republicans did not end up changing the balance of power in committees as much as they professed they would while in the minority position. As one staffer commented: “Minority party staffers have little power to do anything important. This has created a lot of animosity in times past, and a lot of frustration at present among Democrat staffers accustomed to exerting a greater influence.” The staffer continued to explain that the disproportionate amount of power given to the majority party over the minority party (by internal House rules) explains much of the partisan rancor. Other staffers reinforced this view, with one contending that the Contract was sold to the American public with the idea of ushering in a new era in which there would be a more level playing field between the parties. One of the internal reforms that did gain a good deal of attention in the media regarded the new employment laws under which Congress would operate. The better informed segments of the public were tired of seeing Congress write one set of laws for the nation

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while exempting itself from the same. As one interviewee commented: “The reforms will help the prestige of Congress. They should reduce the perceived need of people to run against the institution.” There was a modest difference in motives between many Republicans and Democrats regarding why Congress should write the Congressional Accountability Act (CAA) that it finally put into law. Many freshmen Republicans believed that if Congress had to labor under the same employment regulations that it placed on the general work force, it would come to understand more fully the burdensome nature of these regulations. Allegedly, this would make Congress more careful about expanding such regulations upon private business in the future. On the other hand, many Democrats felt that the status quo was unfair to congressional workers who deserved to receive the same protections and benefits enjoyed by workers in other government jobs and in private industry. (104th freshman) A big point of the Congressional Accountability Act was to sensitize Congress to what they were doing to others in the nation by making them live the same reality. This place has been insulated from reality…. The laws that go out to the public now will be more reasonable and flexible because the Congress will be aware that it will have to live by the laws it imposes on others.

The Republican argument about the importance of the internal reforms leaves open the question of whether the 104th House freshmen pushed for the reforms because they possessed deep convictions about them, or because House leadership promoted these reforms. It may be that Gingrich and company concluded that these reforms were of critical importance to the ability of Republicans to reach beyond core Republican voters and garner support from fence sitters generally disenchanted with Congress. With these considerations in mind, a survey question was devised that looked at internal reform as a mandate (through the Contract), a political strategy, or a reflection of ideology (true belief in certain ideals). In an attempt to minimize the risk that respondents might think of internal reform in different ways, examples of the type of reforms at issue were put in the question (Table 6).

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TABLE 6: Support of Internal Reform

It may be a positive indication of candor that three-fourths of the class indicated that a mandate perception (via a Contract-centered election) was the most important reason for the class’s energy on behalf of the reforms. Naturally, the class did believe in the ideals behind some of the reforms, especially ones designed to put the internal affairs of Congress in a brighter light where the public could assess the propriety of congressional operations. On the other hand, most Republicans are not favorable to increased levels of employer regulations, and thus, reforms that limited the prerogatives of Congress in these matters could not have been very attractive. One thing that this survey question does reinforce is the importance of the Contract in explaining the actions of the freshmen in the 104th Congress. DECISION MAKING The perception of a mandate from the general public was of great importance to the 104th freshmen when they first came to Washington. However, once in the nation’s capital, they faced many other sources of influence. Noting this, an effort was made to discover how the freshmen judged the comparative impact of influence from constituents, party leadership, lobbyists, and political exchange with Democrats. To do this effectively some kind of benchmark was needed concerning which value had been developed by other means and with other questions. The Contract with America served this purpose satisfactorily. The answers presented in Table 7 have been reordered from the survey so as to reflect ranked outcomes.

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TABLE 7: Factors Influencing Legislative Decisions of Freshmen

Consistent with interview findings, the freshmen placed a higher value of holding to the Contract with America than they did on following party leadership. Discontent with leadership grew during the instances when party leadership was perceived to be going soft on the Contract or veering away from it as an agenda-setting tool. Still, leadership was perceived as being significantly more important to freshman class decision-making than constituency feedback, public polls, national lobbying organizations, or members of the opposition party. Based upon interview data, many freshmen often took pride in the idea that they were not poll followers, and would not make decisions based upon the ability of the media to influence public opinion. The freshmen perceived a larger role for the President as an influence upon decision making than intellectual exchange with the House Democrats. Two points bear consideration: First, some of the importance assigned to the President is noted by respondents as meaning that the President influenced freshmen to take positions opposite to his own. Second, there appears to be a dramatic imbalance in the attention given to GOP party leadership over Democrat members of the House. It almost appears that the other party is invisible. It is as if their ideas in committees and on the floor do not really matter. The degree to which this is true of the House overall and not just the freshman class suggests that the idea of voluntary

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bipartisan legislating (as contrasted with bipartisanship out of necessity) is more of a wishful ideal than a reality. The category of “other” was again productive, in this case garnering seventeen responses. Two-thirds of the “other” suggestions focused on just two additional factors influencing decision making: first, personal ideology, and second, campaign promises. Hindsight suggests that if these two options had been on the list, they would have been ranked quite high among the seven options. Although party leadership obtained a second-place rating overall among survey participants, the participants who responded to the “other” option barely gave party leadership a fourth-place finish. This suggests that survey participants who see a large role in the class for ideology and campaign promises tend to see this coming at a cost to the relevance of leadership. Some of the “noise” in the ranking of factors in Table 7 is eliminated by focusing solely upon respondents’ first-place and second-place ranked answers. This approach shows the Contract with America to be rated twice as important as influence from party leadership, and four times as important as feedback from constituents. All other listed influences fade from sight when this approach to analysis is employed. The point is that although many considerations exerted a background influence on the legislative decisions of the 104th freshmen, the Contract held sway. As interview findings demonstrate, the freshmen believed they had a principled responsibility to abide by the Contract. Doing the Contract became the most tangible expression of their sense of mission. The survey question shown in Table 7 attempts to rank the importance of factors influencing the legislative decisions of the 104th class. On a few occasions interviewees voiced the opinion that legislative decision-making involves so many unpredictable elements that the ranking of influences becomes very difficult. It was alleged that there is an artificiality in the legislative decision-making models used by academics. One senior staffer with a professional background in political science argued that decision making in Congress is vastly different and not as predictably rational and calculative of self-interest as portrayed in American Political Science Review articles. He further remarked, “Decision making is fluid and does not conform to any particular set of mental rules. What moves decision making will vary from case to case, and is very contextually sensitive.” Equally interesting was an observation lodged by one of the members of the 104th freshman class:

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Having once worked in academia, I can say that how the decision-making process unfolds in Congress is not like political science textbooks suggest. In reality, representatives are so pressed for time and inundated with constituent work that there is only a very small amount of time to devote to any given issue. This means that you have to rely upon staff and advisors to give you summaries of what is going on with various pieces of legislation. You may have a series of votes back to back on which you know almost nothing about what is being brought up. There were a few members of this class who, like the early founding fathers, tried to read every bill before voting. Before long they had to dismiss this course of action.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON FRESHMAN THINKING The question on freshman class legislative decision-making (Table 7) explores high-profile influences such as leadership, constituencies, the campaign agenda, public opinion polls, special interests, the Chief Executive, and the opposition party in Congress. There are other influences as well—influences that may not receive as much attention. Early interviews with freshman class staffers (March 1997) revealed that some of these influences were considerable. Thus, a question was designed to allow a second set of influences to be ranked (Table 8). Two influences (constituents and special interests) were carried over from a preceding question on decision making so as to facilitate comparisons. Also, the wording of the question was broadened from “legislative decision-making” to “the thinking of 104 th GOP freshmen.” This was done to accommodate the variable nature of the influences. In trying to determine the best way to present the findings in Table 8, five different ranking systems were tried. Each system produced the same order for the top four answers.4 The selected method is a simple weighted system that gives three points to a number one choice, two points to a second-ranked choice, and one point to a third-tier choice. This method assumes that options assigned a four or a five are being designated as less important than an average consideration. Answers in Table 8 have been reordered from the survey order to reflect ranked outcomes.5

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TABLE 8: Additional Influences upon Freshman Thinking

The question in Table 8 provides a wealth of findings. To assist with the analysis of the responses, each answer option is analyzed singularly or in combination with just a few other options. The analysis begins with the most highly ranked influence on the list: subgroups. Subgroups (Policy and Goal Communities) within the Class The answers provided by survey participants suggest that subgroups within the 104th freshman class exerted nearly twice as much influence on the class’s thinking as either think tanks or electoral constituencies.6 Regardless of the precision of the comparison, the general message points to the importance this class laid upon networking within the class and cultivating peer relationships. Indirectly, the survey also acknowledges the Speaker’s energy in communicating with freshmendominated subgroups, thus giving them good visibility and credibility in the GOP House Conference (Sinclair 1997, 8). The subgroup finding, especially in the context of its ranking relative to other influential forces, is one of the clearest indications of class members

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working together and putting a premium upon seeking policy accomplishments through class teamwork. This finding supports the argument that class can matter, and that class can be sustained not only through the formal organization of the class with its elected officers, but also through caucuses and informal groups within the class that become instruments of policy clout by issue area. (Legislative director) The freshmen have realized that nothing gets done on the Hill except by coalitions, so individuals are finding ways to organize so that they can have a more substantial influence. (104th freshman) There were several groups that emerged in the 104 th Congress. One was called the “New Federalists.” We dealt with economic issues, and got a lot of support. As an example, we were the group that put together the dismantling of various federal departments…. By contrast, the freshman class grouped under the leadership of Roger Wicker was more oriented toward public relations We did have class meetings, but the hard work really got done in the New Federalists group. (Leadership staffer) Much of being in leadership is about interpersonal relationships. We have to work with groups as well as individual members. Sometimes we need one vote and can go to one person and get the vote. Other times you have to go to groups like CATS, the Conservative Opportunity Society, and the Lunch Bunch, and explain to them what you are doing and get their support. The Monday morning conservative staff group is another important force that one needs to get on board, since staffers have a lot of influence with members. (Press secretary) Gingrich met frequently with the 104th GOP freshman class, just as he meets often with the sophomore and freshman classes now. These classes are really factions in the House…. Many members belong to a number of groups…. The Conservative Action Team [CATS] was formed with the idea of being an anchor on the right to help bring the administration toward the right.

A revealing account of the importance of subgroups within the 104th freshman class was given by two staffers on different occasions. After

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the freshmen had gained a little experience in the House they began to realize that an inertia toward bigger government that pervaded Washington could undercut leadership’s commitment to stay the course on the budget battle. So, capitalizing upon the networking that had developed among various freshman subgroups, the 104th freshmen as a class put together “Tiger Teams”—groups of several freshman offices that worked well together. These teams targeted certain media groups (like CBS and NBC) to get the GOP message out concerning the things they were trying to achieve with regard to the budget. The freshmen felt they could not depend upon leadership to get the message out, so they took it upon themselves to do what they thought leadership should do but could not be trusted to accomplish. The Tiger Teams are one more indication of the self-awareness of the 104th freshman class and their ability to take initiative on behalf of shared interest. As another demonstration of the importance of subgroups in the class, staffers for the 104th freshmen formed their own organization, and developed a strategic team system to monitor policy activity in the House and to report their findings back to the main staff organization. Once alerted, the main staff organization lays plans for informing members of the House and supplying them with strategies to protect and further the class’s objectives. The House Republican Conference The term “House Republican Conference” or simply “Conference” is used in two ways by the House Republicans. One usage refers to all of the Republican members in the House, and is a parallel to the term “House Democratic Caucus.” The second usage of the term “House Republican Conference” refers to a specific internal leadership organization entrusted with the responsibility of generating and disseminating strategic information to all Republican House members on behalf of party unity and leadership’s agenda. A few Republicans use the term “House Republican Caucus” when referring to the entire Republican House membership so as to avoid giving the impression they are speaking of the Office of the House Republican Conference. However, most members rely upon context to clarify whether they are speaking of all House Republicans or the Conference Office, since the term “Office of is not a formal prefix for the information promulgating organ. The Office of the House Republican Conference is chaired by Representative John Boehner (Ohio), and a staff of about fifteen

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workers. As a key member of Gingrich’s central leadership team, Representative Boehner is abreast of leadership’s thinking, and is able to use office resources to convey leadership plans to GOP House members. Each week the Conference distributes a game plan, position updates, and background information. It also consults with member offices to help them gear up their public relations efforts. Boehner’s office sees itself as a core part of leadership activity. One of the Conference’s staffers explained that the office retains some technical autonomy from the Speaker and majority leader, but in daily operation the Conference is simply an expression of leadership. This view is contradicted (off the record) by freshmen and their senior staffers. They see the Conference as a semi-autonomous arm of leadership, and one that sometimes expresses self-will and the preferences of its staffers. Often, press secretaries in member offices attributed Conference shortcomings directly to Conference management and key personnel, and not to party leadership in general. As demonstrated in Table 8, survey respondents saw the Conference as highly influential with the freshmen. They gave it a second-place rating among nine influences on the list. (Interviewees suggested this influence was the highest when the focus of the Conference was upon the Contract with America.) Two things about the ranking stand out: First, the number of first-place votes garnered by the “Conference” option is substantially lower than the first-place votes received by the “Subgroup” option. This suggests that the class relied upon information exchanged by members and staffers in class subgroup environments more than it relied upon information generated by leadership. This supports the idea that peer relations were very important to this class. It coincides with interview findings that there was a level of trust between 104th freshmen that surpassed their trust of party leadership. A second observation is that in spite of the inferiority of the Conference as an influence when compared to freshman subgroups, the Conference was judged to be much more influential than constituents, senior members, think tanks, GOP elites, lobbyists, committee staffers, and the media. In other words, the freshmen sensed they were information-deficient, and recognized that leadership did exert an influence over them by means of providing or withholding timely information. In view of these considerations, future research by congressional scholars should give more attention to the Office of the House Republican Conference. The Conference

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should be conceptualized as an arm of House leadership, as well as a semi-autonomous entity. The influence of the Conference is closely connected to its continual output of member-assistance literature. During interviews, staffers and members were often heard reciting arguments found in Conference literature. This literature includes daily news releases and floor preparation guidance. Once or twice a week the office issues “talking point” literature to assist member offices with media and constituent interface. This literature is often resource oriented, and may include long lists of references to recent news articles. As the need arises the office issues position papers to deal with policy and tactics, as well as propaganda fact sheets. An example of this literature is the “Common Sense Accomplishments” series that highlights Republican successes in the House. The Conference also publishes the news releases and position papers of certain approved groups. One example is an oversight bulletin published in conjunction with the Office of the U.S. House Majority Leader. The bulletin reports news from committees, and facts and figures that seemingly support oversight efforts. In a limited way, the communications role of the Conference competes with the informational role of committees (see Krehbiel 1991). Electoral Constituents Lacking Washington, D.C., Offices; Think Tanks One survey response that may surprise some people is the perception of participants that the influence of district constituents upon the thinking of the freshman class was not much greater than the influence of Washington-based conservative think tanks. This finding could be misunderstood and needs some explanation. The 104th GOP House freshmen were deeply committed to being responsive to all their constituencies in home districts in matters of general representation. Some of the moderately conservative freshmen determined to go well beyond partisan representation and also try to be somewhat responsive in policy matters to Democrat voters. As one senior staffer remarked, “My boss goes home every weekend and has office hours every Saturday morning where anyone and his dog can come in. It does not matter whether a person has contributed to his campaign.” Yet, it should be noted that most of the freshmen were ideologically driven before deciding to run for Congress. They had convictions of

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their own, and hoped that voters would be tolerant enough to give them a good amount of free rein. They wanted to be responsive representatives, but they also wanted to be trustees in the historical Burkean sense more than they wanted to be mere delegates. The thing that really excited most of the 104th freshmen was that their new Republican leadership appeared to share their policy agenda and conservative principles. Thus, when they arrived in Washington, the new freshmen were very open to further arguments, justifications, strategies, and techniques that would help increase their political support and turn their policy preferences into law. Republican leadership capitalized upon this openness when it connected the freshmen with conservative think tanks that announced a strong conservative ideology, and when it gained the freshmen’s trust. During the initial GOP freshmen orientation, and then almost weekly thereafter, members of the think tanks and their representatives sought to provide the freshmen with emotional inspiration, intellectual arguments, informational resources, and networking insights. Consequently, the freshmen came to see these think tanks as exerting a greater influence on what the class became than any uncoordinated effort of constituents in individual districts. The fact that the survey question dealt with influences on the class (not individual members) probably contributed to the strong showing of think tanks as contrasted to constituents. Lobbyists, Senior House Members, Elites, and Think Tanks One of the goals in designing the question about sources of influence on freshman thinking was to isolate and break out the sources of influence that arise within the House Republican party. To accomplish this, three important ways of thinking about GOP influence were mixed into the array of answer options provided (Table 8). One option refers to GOP members more senior than the 104th members—in other words, the rank and file in the party apart from class peers. A second option refers to all GOP elites apart from those involved directly in the office of the House Republican Conference. This would include House leadership, Senate leadership, the national party chairman, and other influential high-profile party officers. A third option involves the office of the House Republican Conference under the direction of Chairman John Boehner.7 The survey findings show a perception (right or wrong) that GOP rank and file and GOP elites both exerted about the same amount of

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influence on the freshman class—an influence that was judged to be slightly less than that exerted by conservative think tanks. A couple of things are of interest here. First, the overall influence of the rank and file in the Conference was judged to be in the same range as that of GOP elites. This data may point to a suspicion that many of the freshmen felt toward political careerists and those with power even in their own party. Admittedly, the freshmen demonstrated a good deal of acceptance for careerists like Gingrich, Armey, and other very conservative leaders in the 104th Congress. However, this acceptance by freshmen turned into distrust by some when they felt careerism was contaminating the purity of the Republican revolution. As several senior Republican House members commented, veteran members who were not closely tied to Gingrich were treated by 104th freshmen as though they were part of the Washington problem. Hence, a narrow question asking only about the influence of senior House Republicans would probably rank this influence quite low. But the question as posed asks about the influence of all House Republicans more senior than the freshmen. Members of the 102nd and 103rd GOP classes were generally highly esteemed by the freshmen, and this is reflected in the ranking of this answer option. Another finding suggests that survey participants did not see the freshmen relying very much on information from national special interest groups with lobbying offices in Washington, D.C. Interview data suggests this is true to the extent that freshmen suspected that many national interest groups are in Washington to feed heavily at the government spending trough. House Republicans even circulated a list among themselves regarding which lobbying interests deserved a real ear and which ones deserved only polite tolerance. On the 1994 campaign trail, many of the prospective 104th GOP House freshmen told constituents that Congress was corrupt in the relationships it had developed with lobbyists, and if and when they got to Congress they would not be the puppets of these interests. The accuracy of these pronouncements, however, is open to questions. More than a few staffers commented that freshmen were more than willing to allow agents for the lobbies they trusted to write proposed legislation, especially in matters that would protect small businesses from environmental regulations. Furthermore, as one of the answers to this question reveals, special interests configured as conservative think tanks (AEI, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, etc.) exerted a substantial amount of influence among the 104th freshmen. This

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observation is in accordance with Ricci’s (1993) findings on the rising influence of conservative think tanks in Washington.8 Committee Staffers An interesting finding from the survey question shown in Table 8 is that the 104th GOP House freshmen were little influenced in their decision making by the work of committee staffers. Committee staffers were viewed as self-serving and territorial in many cases. The freshmen were committed to being responsive to their individual districts, whereas committee staffers felt a different set of obligations. Furthermore, some of the freshmen felt that committee staffers showed a tendency to go native in Washington. In general, interview data suggest that freshmen were suspicious of many committee staffers and often saw them as obstacles more than resources. Staffers for party leaders seemed to share the view of the freshmen regarding committee staff members. (Staffer for leadership) Some of the committee staffers get swelled heads and think of policy areas as resting under their control, especially when no member of Congress is actively providing oversight. But, when the issue reaches a higher priority and gets back on members’ radar screens, then the committee staffers have to back off. Committee staffers don’t like being asked, “What the hell are you doing?”…Committee staffers are not driving the ball, but they sometimes give you a real goal-line stance.

The issue that this question does not raise is the amount of decisionmaking dependency freshmen displayed toward their own office staffers. Here, interviews provided a mixed picture. On one hand it was explained that many of the freshmen had a difficult time delegating decision-making authority on policy matters to staffers. On the other hand, there were a number of indications that the lack of political experience that was so prevalent among the freshmen necessitated that they lean heavily on the expertise of their senior staffers. The impression received is that there was a good deal of variability on this matter. Generally, the very conservative freshmen consulted extensively with senior staffers, but did not delegate discretionary decision making as much as did moderates.

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The Media There are several important considerations that arise from the finding on media influence. Survey participants deny that the media exerted much influence on the decision making of the freshman class. There is a good deal of interview data to suggest that the freshmen did, in fact, pay attention to the things the media proclaimed about the class’s importance in the House. Many observers alleged that the more the freshmen read about their power, the more they tried to exert it. As one press secretary remarked, “Members of the 104th freshman class thought they had a public mandate, especially once they got here and saw how much coverage they were getting from the media.” Another said that freshmen solidarity and publicly visible networking provided the media with interesting stories, and the attention these stories received “further fueled the solidarity of the freshmen, creating a snowballing effect.” But some observers thought the snowball was more media hype than true class unity. It does not appear that survey respondents were attempting to deny a major media effect, but were largely thinking about ideology, policy, and principles when denying much influence for the media. On more than a few occasions, senior staffers referred to articles in Capitol Hill newspapers. On other occasions staffers were observed watching televised coverage of congressional activity. Several times invitations were provided by members or staffers to watch proceedings on the floor from the vantage point of a television in a member’s office. In a couple of instances, representatives were observed making strategy with senior staffers as a result of C-SPAN coverage. Therefore, it is possible that media only exerted the small amount of influence suggested by the survey instrument. Yet, it still may be true that when it comes to actual policy decisions, the

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freshmen did not perceive the media to have much influence on their thinking. Media influence is often gradual and subtle, with many stories exerting a cumulative effect over time that is not attributable by viewers to media influence (Bartels 1993). It may be that one of the reasons survey respondents were hesitant to give much credit to the media as an influence upon the freshmen’s thinking is because of a widespread feeling among conservative Republicans that the national media does not treat them fairly, or follows them for its own market-share building purposes. However, it must be pointed out that many of the 104th freshmen believe they have cultivated excellent relationships with local media sources, and that the problems the party has with the media are a result of bumbling in public relations work and an unproductive habit of media bashing (Fenno 1997, 44–45).

(Legislative director) Most Republicans believe there is a liberal media bias. Most of the media in this town became accustomed to going to certain Democrats to get their information. These habits persist to some degree, and it hampers the ability of the Republicans to get their message out. (Senior staffer) The freshman members of the 104th class have received a lot of media attention. The media is interested in controversy, contention, expressed frustrations, and things that denote organizational friction. The controversy swirling around the class makes more interesting news than mundane lawmaking. (Veteran staffer) The media loves controversy. Stories that work are stories that show members operating outside the system. This is why the freshman class got so much press in the 104th Congress.

POLICY COMPROMISE FOR THE SAKE OF REELECTION GOALS One of the arguments made at the outset was that the 104th GOP House freshmen demonstrated a clear reluctance to compromise their policy agenda. Even in the face of electoral risks, they hesitated to compromise except at the margins, and then only enough to ensure

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competitiveness at the polls, not outright victory. Granted, for many of these freshmen, they stood to gain more in terms of electoral support by being unyielding in their stances than by becoming committed incrementalists. However, this was not the case for the majority of freshmen, most of whom were more ideologically conservative than their districts. Nowhere did the conservative agenda put Republican freshmen at more risk than on the environmental policy front. A long list of political observers judged them as being more out of touch with the American will on environmental policy-making than in any other area. The difficulty for the freshmen was that they knew Americans tend to dislike federal government regulations in general, but the freshmen failed to understand that when Congress begins talking about specific regulations that protect the quality of water, air, or food, Americans tend to step back and support safety and quality of life over incrementally greater costs.

(Legislative director) Much of the general public reacts very positively to the notion that the government regulates business too much—overregulation. The Republican party framed the deregulation concept in the Contract in such a general way that they received high support for their position. In so doing they did not come to understand the undercurrent to the general notion when the debate moved into specific regulations that affect people’s quality of life. (Chief of staff) An antiregulation policy posture was regarded early on by Republican leadership, and by the rank and file, as a sure winner. So, they ran with it. But before long, polling data began showing that they were losing badly on the environment, and that they had misread the public mood about dramatic cuts on environmental regulations. (Senior staffer) Some of the 104th freshmen came to Congress thinking that their environmental agenda would help them get reelected. They heard so many stories from constituents concerning the excessive enforcement of environmental laws that it created a perception among members of a huge outcry for a rollback of environmental legislation…. The wake-up was gradual and member by member.

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Partway through the 104th Congress, House GOP leadership admitted that it had done a weaker job on environmental policy than just about anywhere else and promised to make amends. These amends did result in some environmental policy-making successes for Republicans late in the 104th Congress and on the eve of the 1996 congressional elections. Without a doubt, the looming elections did encourage some modifications by Republicans at the margins and a little beyond. As one senior staffer for 104th freshmen leadership told me, “The freshmen began to realize in the second session that they were vulnerable electorally, and thus, did need to compromise.” Another said that the impending election caused Republicans to lay off some sensitive environmental legislation until after the election, while trying to hurry up certain environmental bills that could reflect positively on the Republican environmental agenda without requiring much compromise. Recognizing complexity here, a question was formulated regarding the effect of the election upon any move toward bipartisanship in environmental policy-making (Table 9). TABLE 9: Effect of Reelection Considerations on Freshman Behavior

The survey results suggest that the electoral risks that the freshmen saw coming in the 1996 congressional elections exerted a mild to moderate influence upon their negotiating stance and policy positions on environmental and natural resource legislation in the latter part of the 104th Congress. This finding may indicate several things. First, the frequency of elections in the House does serve a useful purpose by pressuring legislators who are working toward the ideological

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margins to move back toward the middle on some legislation so as to improve their chances of winning reelection and being able to continue their policy agenda in an incremental fashion. As one staffer quipped, “The sight of the gallows sharpens the mind.” Second, the freshmen who claimed to be nearly impervious to career considerations in political service were likely overstating the case. Third, this class did demonstrate a higher commitment to a policy agenda and more willingness to take risks on its behalf than what has been typically thought to be the case for junior members. Fourth, and finally, the Speaker had good reason to be worried about the need to provide leadership in moderating the rhetoric and policy stances of the House Republicans. Without the Speaker’s advice in this area, many of the 104th freshmen may have charged ahead recklessly with an agenda too conservative to allow for their reelection. Clearly Gingrich understood that heavy losses in such a historically large class could have serious consequences for the GOP agenda. (See Table 10 on comparative class size.) TABLE 10: House Freshman Class Size, Post-Watergate Period

THE SURROGACY VALUE OF STAFF ANSWERS One of the early concerns regarding the use of a survey that would be completed by the senior staffers was whether the survey responses

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would adequately reflect the representatives’ views. Theoretically, a member’s senior staffers have an agency responsibility to the member, and should feel a great sense of fiduciary responsibility to hold their own views at an arm’s length and fairly represent their bosses. Furthermore, it is reasonable to expect that members of Congress will place at the top of their office hierarchy individuals they believe share their convictions and views. Nevertheless, an attempt was made to quantify the degree to which the completed surveys reflected the thinking of the representatives as ascertained by the survey respondents. Thus, the last question on the survey dealt directly with this issue. As shown in Table 11, 89 percent of survey respondents expressed assurance that their answers closely reflected the views of the members they represented.9 TABLE 11: Perceived Surrogacy Value of Staff Opinions

A small percentage of survey participants expressed some uncertainty about the surrogacy value of their opinions, and one individual indicated a probable pattern of opinion disparities. Later, it was discovered that this one response was nothing more than a cautionary means of preventing anything on the survey from being directly attributable to the member. It was also discovered that some of the chiefs of staff who indicated a “moderately close” surrogacy value for their survey answers could have written “very close” except for their concern about the answers being attributed by name to their representative, and then used for a political purpose. 10 Furthermore, in several meetings with representatives it was suggested that their top staff officials spoke for them in these matters. These considerations further establish the high surrogacy value of representatives’ senior staffers completing the survey instrument.

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It would not be a problem to this study even if the opinion agency were not as high as suggested by the survey question. Although most of the 104th GOP House freshmen have intensely independent personalities, they generally recognize their lack of experience in Washington and the importance of putting adroit and savvy persons at the top of their staffs. Consequently, most of the chiefs of staff and legislative directors interviewed were experienced observers of professional politics. In many cases, their assessments of the freshman class in the 104th Congress may be more sophisticated than those offered by the representatives they serve. Regardless, this is not an issue because the research design provides for a blend of senior staffer and member perceptions. The amalgamation is seen as beneficial not only in broadening the scope of insights provided in interviews, but also in providing a platform of assessment by staffers that may be more objective regarding the weaknesses of the class than that which would be volunteered by the members themselves. To the point, members were not likely to volunteer unflattering information about other members, whereas staffers were sometimes willing to do so.11 CONCLUSION Findings from a ten-question survey completed by 80 percent of the House GOP 104th freshman offices strongly suggest that the theory undergirding the study is credible in its application. The strong findings on class identity and cohesion support the idea of a policymaking emphasis being an earmark of a large organized political group in the House. This builds upon Fenno’s (1973) findings on the policy orientation of some committees and the willingness of some members to emphasize the policy-making goal above the reelection goal. The viability of the policy goal for the 104th freshmen is further enhanced by the strength and breadth of the mandate perception. The high-profile role of the Contract and freshman-populated subgroups as contrasted with the general managerial role of party leadership reinforces the idea that legislative decision-making was approached by the class as part of its policy mission.

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NOTES 1. The purpose of the survey was to provide a means of crosschecking interview findings. Consequently, survey questions overlap considerably with interview questions. The survey allows a check on the consistency of answers received on an individual office basis, as well as an aggregate basis. Due to confidentiality requests that were a condition of cooperation on the part of many offices, this work does not link the names of representatives with their survey answers. Nevertheless, an informal assessment was made that compared survey responses on an office-by-office basis with interview information received from each office. The level of agreement was very strong and above the level expected. 2. The “other” option was included on most of the survey questions in an effort to keep from boxing in respondents. On two questions this decision paid large dividends when respondents offered important options that had been overlooked. 3. Survey respondents see leadership as having a very slightly higher view of class unity. This dif fer ence is probably inconsequential. If there is any meaning to the difference, it reflects positively on class unity. First, the class might be adept in a bargaining sense in portraying itself to leadership. Second, the Speaker’s portrayal of the class to Democrats as a unified force to be reckoned with may have been more sincere than some observers imagined. Third, the class’s assessment of its own political consequence may not be mistaken if, indeed, leadership reached the same conclusions. Finally, there is the consideration that class unity persisted long enough to impress leadership. 4. Five ranking systems for participant responses were contemplated when considering how to present the data regarding competing influences upon freshman thinking. These systems included (a) the simple weighted system used; (b) ranking by number of first-place votes; (c) ranking by the total number of firstplace and second-place selections; (d) ranking by the total number of first-, second-, and third-place selections; and (e) ranking by the point value of all selections, where ones are counted as one point, fives are counted as five points, and answers are ranked in an order that puts those with lowest-point totals first. 5. The question in Table 8 uses a blended approach and allows respondents to use a simple 1–5 grading system, but asks that the most important factor be chosen first, and then other judgments tailored accordingly. Although this question overlaps with a preceding one, it was decided that two questions, each with fewer than ten options, was superior to one question with a laundry list

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of options so long as to make it difficult for respondents to make comparative judgments. 6. Subgroups include freshman-dominated organizations like the New Federalists, the Family Caucus, and CATS (the Conservative Action Team). The influence of subgroups and the House Republican Conference are both ranked above the influence of electoral constituents in respondents’ answers to the question displayed in Table 8. Since electoral constituents appear in the Table 7 question as well, there is some ability to extrapolate the importance of these influences relative to the influences ranked in Table 7. The appearance of “special interests” in both questions provides similar opportunities to extrapolate implications. 7. If this question is asked again in the future, the House Republican Conference will be called “the Office of the House Republican Conference” (i.e., Chairman Boehner’s office). This will prevent the risk that some respondents might overlook contextual considerations and think of the entire House Republican party. Clarification would also help the answer option concerning GOP elites. 8. In May 1997, I observed that staffers for 105 th sophomores gave substantial opportunity for influence to an agent for the Heritage Foundation during large strategy-planning meeting for conservative staffers. It does not appear that the freshmen think of conservative think tanks as special interest groups. Thus, depending upon how one defines national special interests, the freshmen may have given select ones a good deal of attention. 9. The 89 percent agreement rate includes an unknown portion of the forty-seven surveys completed by representatives. Based upon a pattern of indications from senior staffers, it would appear that fewer than half of the surveys were completed by members. The fact that members themselves completed a good number of the surveys adds to the strength of the general results. 10. There was a good deal of concern among about one-fourth of the 104 th freshman offices about partisan-motivated infiltration by individuals posing as researchers. Several of the offices recounted episodes of this nature, and did so as a way of excusing their cautionary stance regarding the research undertaken here. 11. The surrogacy value of senior staffers’ opinions is not without limitations. The nature of the inquiries affects the usefulness of staffers’ opinions. It may be better to ask a representative to explain the motivations and rationale behind a particular voting decision than to ask a staffer. Questions about individual representatives are often best answered by the representatives themselves. By contrast,

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the questions in the present survey are about the freshman class as a class. At this level, senior staffers are comparably well-positioned to members to make assessments.

CHAPTER 6

Freshmen and Principles The Contract as Mission

The 104th freshman class is a maverick class with an abundance of members who will fight for their convictions even at a clear cost to selfinterest. (Freshman chief of staff)

The Contract with America was like a contract between the freshmen—at least, that is how some of them seemed to look at it. (Freshman press secretary)

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONTRACT The GOP’s 1994 “Contract with America” created a mission statement upon which conservative Republicans could declare a meeting of their minds. It included organizational reform for Congress, as well as a policy platform couched in the language of conservative principles. House Republicans used the Contract in an instrumental sense as a vehicle to enhance unity of purpose. Enhanced agreement made it easier for Contract proponents to portray policy planks in the Contract platform as fundamental principles. In a sense, conservative House Republicans came to understand principles as ideals with wide support among conservative ideologues. 123

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Although a few House Republicans expressed reservations about the Contract, most were eager to sign on. Following the 1994 congressional elections, Newt Gingrich declared that Republicans would read the Contract on the floor every day until they accomplished it (Healey 1994). Gingrich also announced that the GOP House victory created a mandate for the Contract. Yet, polls showed that only one-fourth of Americans were aware of the Contract (Drew 1996, 33–34). There was also another problem. The idea of a “Contract” with “America” seemed a little strong to some legislators after the public relations ordeal House Republicans went through in trying to flesh it out and implement it.1 Two years after the 1994 election, some GOP staffers admit the Contract platform should have been named “Contract with Core Republican Constituencies,” not the “Contract with America.” Of course, a partisan-limited title loses political power, and a platform so named would have been “dead on arrival” in terms of broad voter appeal. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, most of the 105th GOP House sophomores realize that the party’s victory in the House in 1994 was not paramount to a public endorsement of the Contract. But, in the first year of the 104th Congress, that point was not so apparent to many junior members. Although most of the 104th freshmen (now sophomores) do not continue to envision the Contract as a public mandate, per se, the Contract remains for the class an essential part of their explanation of a sense of mission in the 104th Congress. In some ways the story of the Contract goes back to 1979 when Charlie McWhorter, a friend of GOP national chairman Bill Brock, suggested that Republicans gather on the Capitol steps and pledge themselves to a common platform. In the congressional race that followed in 1980, Republicans ended up wining thirty-three new House seats, and also gained control of the Congress. Some would attribute the Republicans’ success to the Reagan factor, or the general vulnerability of the Democrats at the time. But, at least one House Republican, Newt Gingrich, would decide that the maneuver was profitable and should be repeated in the future. For Gingrich, that future arrived in 1993 when the time seemed right to put together a new Contract-signing plan (Gingrich 1995, 111–112). In the meantime, Gingrich labored for Republican ideals through the vehicle of the “Conservative Opportunity Society,” a group Gingrich founded with Vin Weber and Bob Walker in 1983. The idea was to promote ideas of “an opportunity society” in contrast

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to the “expanding welfare state” that Gingrich laid at the feet of the Democrat party (Drew 1996). The history of the new Contract can be traced to a January 1994 House Republican conference in Salisbury, Maryland. This weekend of brainstorming led to the development of the “Salisbury Statement”—a campaign platform of sorts that became the early draft of the Contract.2 Planning moved quickly, and by June 1994 Gingrich and his associates had agreed to hold a Contract-signing event on the Capitol steps in September (Gingrich 1995, 115). They selected a ten-item platform consisting of planks that enjoyed public support ranging from 60 percent to 90 percent. Their strategy was to make it electorally unprofitable for President Clinton to attack their positions (ibid., 118). Although more than 300 Republicans signed the Contract on September 27, 1994 (Thurber 1995), there was a concern that the signing of the Contract might not have much publicity value. So, “Gingrich arranged for it to be published in TV Guide at a cost of $275,000, paid for by the Republican National Committee” (Drew 1996, 30, 33). But, what helped the Republican Contract more than magazine publication was the decision of the Democrats and President Clinton to publicly oppose it (ibid.). That drew the attention of the national media, and turned what some saw as a publicity stunt into a national debate. For Gingrich, the Contract was no gimmick: It helped nationalize and focus the Republican congressional campaign, unified the House Republican party, and infused party members with a sense of direction that would be essential if the Republicans were to appear organized in their first attempt at leading the House in forty years (Gingrich 1995, 11; Thurber 1995).3 Gradually, the Contract evolved for Gingrich from a campaign tool into a device useful for managing the Republican agenda in the House (Drew 1996). Gingrich had two ways of looking at the Contract: first, as the fleshing out of so-called principles, and second, as an expression of an issue agenda. With respect to the first, Gingrich believed the Contract was built on five notions, or “basic principles,” that form the heart of American civilization, namely, a common understanding of our society (and its spiritual roots), an ethic of individual responsibility, a spirit of entrepreneurial free enterprise, a spirit of invention and discovery, and a pragmatic concern for excellence (Gingrich 1995, 34–35). This free-spirited approach to creating “principles” to gain the political high ground was soon to be adopted by the 104th freshmen.

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With regard to the Contract as an expression of an issue agenda, Newt chose to highlight six issue areas where he believed change would be of great importance to the well-being of the nation. In each area, one can see a value placed on free markets, capital growth, and economic prosperity. Briefly, the plan looks like this: First, renew American civilization, meaning promote conservative conceptions of personal responsibility and government noninterference with economic opportunity. Second, foster the information age and technology. Third, support business on an international scale. Fourth, dismantle the welfare state and take its economic burden off the back of business and working families. Fifth, localize government where possible, in an attempt to end centralized planning where it crimps business. Sixth, balance the budget so as to produce a stronger economy (Gingrich 1995, 7–10). For many of the freshmen, these Contract issues meta-morphosed into principles, resulting in a situation where everyone’s preferred issue positions became matters of political principle. This undermined the spirit of compromise almost as much as the concept of a rigid public contract. Thus, the ideas of contract and principle became essential elements in the 104th GOP freshmen’s self-view and mission. THE IDEA OF “PRINCIPLE” Two factors played especially important roles in giving the freshmen a sense of identity. First, this class saw itself as mandated by an election built around the philosophy underlying the Contract with America— a contract to which the class pledged itself. Second, this class saw itself as principled to a higher degree than other classes. Their selfview was that they, as principled people, were coming to Washington to overturn the unprincipled work of Democrats. A leading legislative scholar notes the importance of this, and produces quotations to the effect that two-thirds of the class determined to stand for its principles regardless of electoral consequences (Fenno 1997, 42). In discussing the issue of principles, there is the matter of how to define “principles.” Based upon what can be gleaned from a contextual examination of how members and senior staffers used the term, there are a good number of overlapping ideas, as well as some notions that may be peculiar to a few members. It may be that how members define “principles” depends in part on the most recent frame of reference from which they draw inspiration.

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For present purposes, the actual content of the principles— although interesting—is not as important as the feelings of mission and justification that accompany a sense that one’s own group has a stronger attachment to sound principles than the other groups in the mix. A feeling of superiority in principles changes the way people come to the negotiating table and leave it. The feeling modifies the way debate progresses, it impacts the choice of means to various ends, it alters the development of comity in the chamber, and it may change the way representatives relate to their constituents. There is no reason that people with humility must view themselves as unprincipled or ambivalent about the possibility of discerning sound principles. The mayor with integrity and insight should have a greater sense of abiding principle than the habitual thief. The politician who chooses to vote based upon conscience about the public interest has a right to a greater sense of noble principle than the politician whose vote choices largely reflect an attempt to maximize self-interest. Of course, most votes do not provide such a clear choice. Nevertheless, the point remains that if one of the main themes legislators and staffers bring up in discussion is that they are busy acting upon principle, then political scientists who are trying to understand the triggers of legislative behavior do well to look into this sense of principle as an explanation for member actions. This work understands principle to be a member perception that is instrumental in building the concept of legislative mission among members of the 104th GOP freshman class. Typically, legislative scholars explain legislative behavior in reference to goals such as reelection, power, and policy-making. Scholars have not given much attention to legislators’ perceptions of being publicly mandated, perceptions of possessing and abiding by principles, and perceptions of having pledges to fulfill. Often, it has been argued by political scientists that what happens in campaigns does not explain legislative behavior. However, a change in the political environment may be making it possible for candidates with a different mix of perceptions to win office. For the purpose of this research, my desire is to understand how perceptions about principle fit into the larger picture of a sensed public mandate. Political scientist Barbara Sinclair has pointed to the value of this in arguing that 104th freshmen were “willing to allow Gingrich to exercise great discretion so long as they saw it as being in furtherance of their goal of delivering on their mandate.” But, these freshmen were unwilling to grant Gingrich much discretion in budget negotiations with the President

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because they feared it entailed “selling out their policy principles, and that they were unwilling to do” (Sinclair 1997, 30–31). The freshmen as principals wished to make sure that their agent (Gingrich) respected their principles. What Is Meant by Principle? There are several ways to try to define the term “principle”—first, by the dictionary; second, by asking staffers and legislators what they mean when using it; and third, by assembling all of the pertinent remarks, and then distilling the themes and implications. With regard to dictionary definitions, the Oxford American Dictionary (1980) describes “principle” first as “a basic truth or a general law or doctrine that is used as a basis of reasoning or a guide to action or behavior,” and second, as “a personal code of right conduct.” Other dictionaries take similar paths. When staffers were asked about the meaning of the term “principle,” they suggested ideas similar to what is provided in dictionaries, but less formally. To the freshman Republicans, principles are one’s central values, guiding beliefs, first truths of reason, most treasured learning, fundamental commitments, and ideas with the most proven worth. The challenge is to translate these abstractions into political policy attachments. My effort to distill what is entailed in the freshmen perceptions about principle results in five major conceptions and a similar number of associated ones. Based upon the totality of interviews in this project, one can argue that the 104th freshman Republicans share a good deal of common ground on the following package of “principles.” These are the items repeatedly discussed with vigor as interviewees spoke of their principles. First, do what you say you will do (promises made; promises kept). Second, stand for your core beliefs and don’t muddy the water with unnecessary compromise. Third, term limit yourself and don’t assimilate into Washington.4 Fourth, balance the federal budget and put national interests ahead of narrow parochial interests. Fifth, decentralize and deregulate on behalf of smaller national government. Other principles mentioned less often but still commonly include the following concepts: Vote your conscience, not your reelection odds; refuse to play the legislative pork game; put Congress in order before telling business to get its house in order; be an agent for constituents before being an agent of party; and finally, restore federalism and reduce unfunded federal mandates.

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In spite of some criticisms about their principles, the members of the 104th Republican freshmen class were infected with the idea that Congress could be made into a superior institution if legislators with principled convictions would make legislative decisions on the basis of fundamental principles rather than self-serving political expediencies. The difficulty is that there is little evidence that the class ever deeply explored questions such as: What is a principle? How can principles be identified? On what basis are principles more important than other ideas? It seems as though many of the conservative freshmen arrived in Congress with the notion that principles are self-evident truths. Regardless of questions about the meaning of principles, it is evident that many observers believe the freshmen class’s investment in idea of principled legislating informed their behavior. One legislative director made the remark that “many members of the 104th freshman class do not greatly care if they get reelected so long as they have abided by their principles.” A chief of staff observed that “things would be a lot easier for many members if we had a Republican President; then, they could stand 100 percent of the time on principles, instead of 95 percent of the time. But the fact is that we are still moving the ball.” A very senior Gingrich aide backed up these assessments with this comment: “There were other members who have stood for what they believe in, and have little interest in advancing themselves…. I don’t want to say that the freshmen were the only ones who were different. But, overwhelmingly and disproportionately they were governed by their principles.” In spite of the tendency of many observers to associate the claim of principle with the 104th freshmen, some observers were reluctant to overemphasize this connection. A staffer for the majority whip said, “You cannot tell the long-timers that they are not as principled or conservative as the new arrivals. The long-timers had been dealing with a different situation, and did not have the numbers. They did the best they could under the circumstances, and laid the groundwork for the 104th freshmen.” One point that can be drawn from these observations is that regardless of the ability of the freshmen to abide by their principles, they raised the level of House dialogue about principles to a higher level.

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THE HIGH-PROFILE ROLE OF “PRINCIPLES” How is it that the 104th Congress drew such a large group of new members who placed a premium on the idea of a principled approach to legislative activity? One argument is that the political environment changed in ways that were conducive to the successful candidacies of individuals who laid stress on this particular idea.

(Legislative director) The Contract seemed to accord with the personal convictions of many rank-and-file Republicans. Thus, they were following more than a party line: They were acting in concert on behalf of their own personal views of accomplishing good policy. (Senior Gingrich aide) The reason the freshmen went along with what Newt proposed for the first year is precisely because we had designed a principled agenda. In a sense, what happened in 1994 reflected a self-selecting process. Although many of the candidates decided to run before they knew of the Contract, running and winning on that Contract was, to a certain extent, self-selective of people who believed in standing on principles. And while we did not announce the Contract until September, we worked with the candidates during May, June, and July to get agreement on the details—and the plan was known for some time before that—so I think it is fair to say it was the singular nature of the Contract that pulled together candidates who wanted to run on the matter of principle, that is, common principles.

It is important to discuss the idea of principles along with the Contract with America because each fed on the other. The Contract laid out the idea that candidates should be people of principle (depth of character), as well as providing a list of ideas that could be called principles. The existence of this list of principles that almost all the freshmen had pledged themselves to uphold gave the freshmen a sense that they were all on the same page and, as a group, on a principled mission. Going the other direction, the precandidacy selfperception of members of the class as being principled individuals made them especially interested in a document like the Contract. Furthermore, in signing the Contract, they acquired a perception that to remain principled, they needed to do all within their power to fulfill the mission set forth in the Contract.

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(Chief of staff) The Contract addressed voter cynicism by saying, in essence, “We will put our promises in print. If we don’t perform as promised, throw us out.” (Veteran GOP legislator) The most important thing the class wanted was for the leadership to stick to the Contract and see it through into law. They were very insistent that leadership not be diverted from this goal. They came to do the Contract. They felt their political survival depended upon keeping their promise on the Contract.

Many of the 104th freshmen were businesspeople, and to them a contract meant an agreement not subject to compromise under pressure. Perhaps had the Contract with America been called “The Plan for America” or some such thing arguably subject to revision, the freshmen would not have felt so obligated to it. The sense of their obligation was heightened by the fact that many of them campaigned against Congress by claiming that sitting members were unprincipled and not true to their word. The 104th freshmen believed that to be people of principle (character) they had to abide by the principles (doctrines of reason) to which they had pledged themselves when they signed the Contract on the Capitol steps. The result was a freshman class where many of the most conservative members—often called purists or wholeloafers—felt that substantial political compromises were tantamount to unprincipled behavior. One fairly moderate senior staffer said it was incredible that “these guys are actually voting their consciences— they are more conscious about issues than party lines.” But, not all moderate GOP observers were pleased by the conservatives’ claim to principle. To them, the claim of voting one’s conscience was simply a means of putting a high-road spin on low-road stubbornness. (Experienced legislator) What the freshmen need to learn is that just because you are flexible and compromise a little to make government work does not mean you are not principled. But I don’t think this class views compromise as a positive. Consequently, it is difficult for the leadership to accomplish anything without having to meet constantly with the freshman class. It is very usual. (Conservative 104th freshman) People say government is the art of compromise, but once you have compromised everything you have no principles left—and what have you gained?

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Legislative Learning (Conservative 104 th freshman not reelected in 1996) Compromise is not a bad word when it is coupled with pragmatism and principles. You don’t have to sacrifice your principles in committing to a plan of incremental progress flowing out of negotiations with the President who sits in the opposition party. The question is whether you are moving in a general direction that fits with your agenda.

The 104th freshmen thought their class to be profoundly united in early 1995. The passage of time and the maturing of the legislative agenda altered this perception. Although the class remained very cohesive in terms of looking out for its broad interests and pursuing its major ends, the class divided increasingly over questions of means to ends. In the words of one legislative director, the class was “not monolithic,” and it was fairly susceptible to division over matters of means. Another staffer remarked that “the 104th freshmen came in unified, and continue to be unified in terms of goals, but are fractured on how to get there.” The fracturing was especially noticeable in matters like environmental policy where the Contract suggested smaller government but did not lay out a game plan with regard to regulatory relief. Legislators were on the same page with staffers in these perceptions. What caused the fracturing? Some division was due to “tensions between being true to one’s district as well as to one’s own ideological beliefs.” Some freshmen thought certain issues should be approached from a delegate’s perception, with special sensitivity to constituent preferences. Other freshmen may have viewed the same issues as appropriate for a trustee’s approach—arguing that the issues were too complex for voters to sort out on their own with the limited information they had. There was also some division over issues of pork. One staffer argued that “Congress ends up assimilating people into its systems. And, regardless of principle, people end up voting for parochial interests.” This was a sensitive point among freshmen, since most felt that their districts expected their representatives to abide by “principles of not spending more money.” But, none of this explains the greatest cause of fracturing with the class. That cause is found in the debate over two approaches to legislating: purism and incrementalism. A senior staffer for a freshman from the West framed the matter this way: “The real division in the freshman class is drawn between the purists and the pragmatists. The purist group is smaller but more vocal. The pragmatists are the more experienced politicians.”

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PURISTS AND INCREMENTALISTS Purists believe that today’s Republican legislators have an obligation to articulate their principles to the voting public, and then abide by those principles in committee debate as well as floor voting. The underlying idea is that it is better to fight for high ideals and lose than to secure mediocre wins based upon compromise.5 The justification for this position is that compromise is the road to government growth. Putting it a bit too starkly (to make the point clear), one side wants big growth for government and the other side wants no growth. Those opposed to government growth are expected to be good sports in the political arena; hence, in past Congresses they have compromised and given in to a moderate rate of growth in government outlays and regulatory powers. If the pro-government camp wanted 10 percent growth, the opposition camp agreed to 4 percent, and patted itself on the back (allegedly the Bob Michel country club set of Republicans). The purists in the 104th freshman class argue that this kind of compromise created a slippery slope where with the passage of time the government growth group obtained massive increases for government programs. With this in mind, they argue that the public sent them to Washington in 1994 to enact a revolution of just saying no. They reason that if they—as businesspeople and professionals who can return to attractive private careers—are not willing to take the heat for stopping the incursion of government into the affairs of private life, who will? If voters cannot depend upon this group to do what they said they would do, why should voters even bother to go to the polls? In the words of one freshman, “Effective government is having the courage to stand your ground, lose, and try again, rather than saying, “I will take a little bit of the pie rather than getting the whole pie.” There may be ignorance and miscalculation as well as some insight in these arguments, but they do illustrate why the purists are generally opposed to compromise. Incrementalists, on the other hand, argue that Rome was not built in a day. They contend that liberal Democrats had to content themselves with a forty-year process of building government programs, and Republicans will have to content themselves with at least a ten-year process of partially dismantling the ones they like the least. They argue that some progress in today’s environment is better than no progress and that principle which makes you the minority party is hardly useful principle. As one moderately conservative freshman remarked, “The fact that you have principles isn’t sufficient. You can have principles

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and lose elections. We need to have principles and operate in more intelligent ways as politicians.” As pointed out by two freshmen press secretaries, differences about what constitutes “intelligent ways” generate considerable tensions after a while. (1st press secretary) There is the great conflict between the wholeloafers and the half-loafers. The wholes say it is all or none— they want to do policy “the right way” or not do it at all. They see compromise and incremental progress as a sellout to Washington politics. By contrast, the halfers think that progress is progress, and that a lot can be accomplished in incremental steps pursued carefully over an extended period of time. In general, the halfers tend to be the more experienced politicians. (2nd press secretary) There no such thing as a closet whole-loafer. One can think one’s responsibility is to keep pushing the ball forward one inch at a time, or one can think one’s responsibility is to maintain intellectual and ideological purity and get all or nothing.

Incrementalists notice that as long as the public is content to keep a Democrat in the White House, there must be a message in it that the public does not want the Republicans’ “full meal deal.” If Republicans are to be true to their pledge of being more responsive to the public than congressional Democrats were in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then Republicans will have to be incrementalists. The incrementalists point out that the Republican plan can be adjusted on the basis of insight gleaned in congressional elections every two years. If the public keeps the Republican margin narrow, it means they want the Republicans to compromise. Furthermore, the incrementalists argue that the public’s reaction to the government shutdown demonstrates what will happen to the Republican revolution if the purists get their way. As convincing as this argument may seem, the purists counter with allegations that the shutdown had a negative effect because it was mismanaged. They contend that if the media gave the public a less distorted view of the policy-making battles in the House, the public would be more resilient in its support of the Republican agenda. In reply, the incremenalists label this response as wishful thinking. One argument purists use to defend themselves is that although they take flak from some quarters in the party for wanting the whole-loaf, they make leadership’s goals more attainable by giving

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leadership extra leverage by which to cut conservative deals with the Senate or Democrats. Incrementalists tend to react skeptically to this, explaining that leadership has admitted that the tactics of purists are a real plague to the party at times. This contention was backed up by a Gingrich aide who said some of the freshmen were “real nut cases”—“brash and without logic” in some of their plans for changing Washington.6 It is legitimate to generalize that the incrementalists among the Republicans tend to lean toward the moderate wing of their party and that the purists tend to move toward the highly conservative side. This does not necessarily hold on social policy, but it does hold regularly on fiscal policy. In conversations about one another, freshmen and their staffers often refer to the two sides as constructed of the whole-loafers (purists) and the half-loafers (incrementalists).7 Both sides flick a little good-natured pejorative flavor into the term when speaking of the intellectual fallacies under which their friends labor. Half-loafers see whole-loafers as paranoid that the revolution will not last more than two or three Congresses. Supposedly, in their paranoia, whole-loafers feel compelled to wring as much change out of the system as possible in a few short years.8 In comparison, the whole-loafers see the half-loafers as less principled and more given to political ambition.9 Some whole-loafers imagine that half-loafers will come out of the closet in a few years and announce that they have seen the light and that term limits are bad for Congress.10 Allegedly, the half-loafers are content to compromise and achieve incremental progress because they intend to stay around and become part of the problem with the passage of time. One freshman known to cherish his professional calling above his congressional career asserted, “This idea of incrementalism will work if every person is going to be a twenty-year or thirty-year member of Congress.” (Fiscally conservative 104th freshman) Most of the freshmen are principled people who came here not wanting to remain for twenty years. For the most part these convictions remain, sometimes contributing to freshmen being too dogmatic in their stances. Many of these people are frustrated with incremental policy-making processes. (104th freshman) There is a distinct difference between the halfloafers and the whole-loafers. This was not apparent immediately. When we arrived we thought we were all in it for

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Incrementalists downplay suspicions from their classmates. They argue that incrementalism can be a high principle, as well as the goal of increased comity in the chamber that is facilitated by incremental approaches. They argue that since they often bent to the will of the purists in the 104th Congress when the ideological ratio was more favorable to the purists than it is in the 105th Congress, the purists should now compromise a little more on behalf of the incrementalists. Now that both camps have the power to block action in the House Republican Conference, this debate greatly informs the nature of internal politics and legislative activity within the House. As one staffer commented in the 105th Congress, “Right now, fifteen strong moderates can control what the Republicans do by declaring they will take a walk, based on principle, if the leadership does not consider their wishes.” How an Affinity for “Principles” Affected the 104th Congress

(104th freshman) Our class more than any other class is constantly tugging the Conference to the right of center. I can feel that tug whether it is eleven members or fifty members. There is that sense of remaining true to the principles that got us here in 1994. The bond still exists, but we’re two years postrevolution and the intensity has moderated.

Early in the 104th Congress, the freshmen pulled the Republican Conference to the right not only in their voting but in their power plays with leadership against the Conference’s less conservative members. In the second session, they limited the Speaker’s strategic opinions by reason of a supposedly principled resistance to compromise. As the second session progressed, the strongest freshmen

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proponents of principled legislating inadvertently undermined the influence of their class by contributing to a division with other less conservative freshmen who did not buy into the whole-loaf approach. In the early part of the 105th Congress, the emphasis upon principle by some freshmen led to a near rebellion against the Speaker. This aborted rebellion ended up shifting some power to comparatively moderate members of the Conference as the Speaker endeavored to repopulate his inner circle with members who would not so markedly constrain his ability to lead. In the big picture, the idea of principled legislating—especially in conjunction with the Contract—affected the party’s internal politics as well as its policy agenda. The idea brought early GOP unity, but in its extreme application, it stimulated division. It undercut comity in the chamber, it limited the ability of leadership to lead, it mired House Republicans in bills too conservative for the President to sign into law in the first session, and it put the GOP at risk of losing the House until moderating sentiments took hold. As one staffer argued, the whole-loaf perspective made the purists “unwilling to settle for changes at the margins.” On the other hand, a purely negative reading of the effect of the movement for principle would be prejudicial. The attachment to principle meant that the GOP revolution had teeth and made some real differences, even if successful bills that went beyond the Contract often took some time. It created an environment where voting for purely parochial interests was more difficult. Additionally, it stimulated a new emphasis in party caucuses about legislating for policy’s sake, thus weakening the logic that members have a right to think of reelection first because everyone else does. In the words of one observer, “The freshmen were prepared intellectually to accept being defeated if that was the price of maintaining principle.” The matter of principles helped shape the relationship between the Speaker and the freshman class. One well-placed staffer stated that “what Newt Gingrich wanted was to get to the inexperienced freshmen before they had a chance to evolve into deal-makers. He wanted to pin them down quickly to the conservative principles on which they had campaigned.” The Speaker realized the freshmen put a premium on principles. Therefore, he decided to capitalize upon this for the sake of his agenda. He couched the conservative agenda in terms of principles, and urged the new members to stand by their principles. Seeing the agenda in these terms, the freshmen

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became especially loyal to it. One leadership staffer offered this observation: “The freshmen cooperated with Newt because of a shared sense of mission based upon principles. They thought that Newt knew best how to advance those principles through the rat’s nest of Washington.” What the Speaker apparently failed to anticipate is what would happen if fundamental parts of the agenda were revised with an eye to making them more politically feasible in the evolving environment. When the Speaker tried to lead by tweaking the party’s policy positions toward the middle, many of the freshmen took a stand based on principle and the Speaker’s leadership nearly came undone. One staffer suggested that federal housing programs illustrate the struggle some freshmen feel when it comes to applying principle to policy. One guiding principle for strong conservatives is that housing is a private or local matter. From this perspective, the federal government has no legitimate role in sponsoring or managing housing programs. Now, suppose some member of the Republican Conference introduces a bill to reform federal housing programs by moderately reducing government’s management role and expenditures. Without the bill, the housing programs remain unaffected. Incrementalist Republicans will vote for the bill because it moves policy in the direction they prefer. Purists, however, may vote against the bill because they do not want to be guilty of voting “yes” on anything that authorizes federal spending on housing. To some conservative legislators (and purist liberals, too), maintaining principle means they have little choice but to cast issues into black and white categories. Most Americans have little conflict about principles in matters of spending or authority because most people seem to think in terms of less or more. The purist, on the other hand, tends to think in terms of right or wrong, and sound or unsound (as do many environmental purists on the left). Supposedly, federal involvement in housing is always unsound regardless of less or more. When purists believe that federal housing initiatives steal rights from citizens, some cannot bring themselves to cast an affirmative vote for government to steal fewer housing rights. The consequence of all this is that a heavy emphasis upon principled voting can mean for some members that practical judgments are replaced by loyalties to ideological abstractions.11

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THE BIG PICTURE VIEW OF THE CONTRACT The preceding discussion makes evident an important connection between the freshmen’s emphasis upon principles and their esteem of the Contract as a fundamental guideline, mission statement, and organizational tool for Republican action in the House. In the words of one senior staffer, “The freshmen felt a strong sense of obligation to the Contract, and a feeling of loyalty to those who formulated it.” This observer also remarked that the whole-loaf perspective among many freshmen was enhanced by the feeling they needed to abide by the Contract they signed. The connection between principles and the Contract, although undoubted by many observers, is less clear to others. Perhaps this is due to the attempts of some Republicans to avoid giving too much credit to the importance of the Contract with regard to the outcome of the 1994 election.12 On this point, it is important to differentiate between the freshmen’s esteem of the Contract in terms of what it meant to them as a class, and what they believe it meant to Joe Average in the electorate. There are two reasons for this differentiation: First, if one argues that the Contract was the reason for the 1994 Republican win of the House, one creates a vulnerability for Republican credibility. Many voters were not aware of the details of the Contract.13 Republicans like to believe they won the election because of who they were, not because of what the public failed to understand. By arguing that in 1994 the public understood the general philosophy of the Contract by comprehending the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats, Republicans help preserve for the Contract at least a backdoor public assent. Nevertheless, not all Republicans were sanguine that the Contract really had been grasped by more than the Republican faithful and political elites. A moderate freshman declared that immediately after the election he dared conservative Republicans to find members of the public who knew what the phrase “Contract with America” really entailed. A Gingrich aide basically agreed with this assessment. However, he argued that although the average voter did not know the details of the Contract, the symbol of the Contract, as well as the balanced budget highlights of the Contract, were understood by the public.14 A moderate chief of staff gave a similar evaluation. He claimed that what many Americans really wanted was insurance that Clinton’s plans would be moderated. He argued that the public understood their dislike of the

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Clinton plan more than they understood the content of the Contract. Another staffer argued that most Americans perceived the Contract to represent a conservative movement even if they did not understand its particulars. Thus, in voting for the Contract’s promoters, the public was voting for a turn in a conservative direction. The second reason some Republicans downplay the importance of the Contract (while at the same time assenting to its importance in various remarks and in survey responses) is that they wish to avoid giving the impression of an unthinking dependence upon the Contract, as though it were some kind of litany. The 104th freshmen do not want to be seen as conformists to a party agenda. These are people who like to see themselves as putting their own principles and constituents ahead of party. They like to think they are acting upon convictions resulting from years of observation and reflection, not some kind of agenda thrust upon them by an ambitious party leadership eager to further its own goals. Consequently, members of the 104th freshman class laud the Contract, while at the same time pointing out that they feel very fortunate that it just so happened that the Republican party came up with an agenda which matched their own. As explained by one shrewd female legislative director, the freshmen wanted to be policy entrepreneurs on behalf of their constituents and the broad public interest, and saw the Contract fortuitously designed to further their policy entrepreneurial goals. (104th freshman) We put up the Contract poster in our campaign office, and it was a nice marketing tool. But, there was more to the Republican movement than that. I did not quote the Contract during my campaign. Instead of quoting Gingrich and Armey, I quoted Jefferson and Madison. (Moderately conservative 104th freshman) There wasn’t anything particularly brilliant about the Contract with America. Without it, I would have run on regulatory reform, legal reform, a balanced budget, and immigration reform. But, in any event, absent a Contract with America, the freshmen would have cared about the same issues.

The Contract with America was more than a lucky strike. It was a carefully crafted document built from an analysis of extensive survey data regarding politically relevant ideas and mainline thoughts generally supported by American voters.15 As explained by one

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legislative director, “The Contract was a new strategy for an out-ofpower party in Congress; thus, it was a landmark tool in the evolution of congressional politics.” Without a doubt, the Contract worked wonders for the House Republicans, not only in terms of raising the level of their unification but also in terms of energizing them with hope that they had at last found something akin to Aladdin’s lantern. Instead of individual candidates struggling with the idea that if they won they would be little more than one small voice in a minority caucus, they envisioned a meaningful congressional experience because of the vision and organization of party leadership and the nationalization of their cause. Furthermore, when victory came to House Republicans, the Contract with America empowered the leaders of the conservative arm of the movement as the priests of the Hill’s new political religion. One chief of staff observed that the 1994 House election was built around the Contract. It gave Republicans a mission, and made the Speaker something like a prime minister. A press secretary pointed out that the Contract set forth an agenda for the freshman class well in advance of their election and created a momentum and unity of purpose. Nearly all interviewees agreed that the Contract embodied the right kind of issues to help the Republicans win the House. One senior staffer observed that during the 103rd Congress, six months were spent drafting the Contract. Outside groups were consulted regarding what kind of issue stands would attract voters and help the GOP gain a majority. A chief of staff contended that although party management was a benefit of the Contract, the ultimate strategy in the Contract’s design was to get a majority elected. Although most members do not think of the Contract as a tool designed by leadership for the purpose of obtaining a more highly organized House Conference, the Contract did supply this benefit throughout much of the first session. Admittedly, there are members who think it was designed with dual purposes in mind. One freshman argued that if there had been a Contract that GOP House members had signed for the 105th Congress, there would be a lot less internal bickering. He remarked that in the 104th Congress, freshmen would say, “It’s in the Contract, so we’ve got to do it.” But, not all members of the GOP Conference were freshmen. Some of the senior members signed it, but it was of minor importance to them. For some, it was just a tactical tool—a political necessity for the sake of appearances. Perhaps it was Gingrich’s sense of this that caused him to stake so

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much on the freshman class and to use them as a wedge against certain aloof senior members. The idea of unification through the Contract was widely supported by interviewees. One legislative director stated that the freshmen and most House Republicans “pledged themselves as a class and as a party, and this pledge organized their actions and relationships with one another.” This individual went on to argue that the Contract “gave leadership a greater ability to lead, for leadership could point with confidence to the kind of changes that likely would take place if the members held together.” THE CONFLUENCE OF PRINCIPLES AND THE CONTRACT The Contract emphasized principles, and the freshmen’s chosen principles moved them to try to abide by the whole Contract. But tensions were sometimes generated in the process. The Contract called for a term-limited Congress. However, once Republicans were in the majority some of the more experienced members began to have second thoughts. Many of the freshmen called this retreat “unprincipled.” In the end, the term-limiters failed to carry the day, probably to the secret relief of some who voted for term limits. The twists and turns of the debate are too convoluted to take up here, but it does seem worthwhile to point out a few considerations. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the citizen legislator paradigm that most of the freshmen count as one of their core principles is an essential element in explaining the behavior of this class. Many of the freshmen continue to be convinced that legislators who are motivated to make careers in elective office will increase government spending in pursuit of more votes, and will continue doing so until aggressively checked. The goal of the term-limiters was to be a checking force. (104th Freshman) Our campaign issues were debt and deficit, term limits, the citizen model of government, and campaign refinance. The idea is that a citizen legislator does not stay in Washington. We need citizen legislators because we need to leave a sound economic future for our children. The history of democracies has not been great. In the long run they spend themselves into oblivion. The citizen legislator model will prolong the life of democracy by facilitating needed corrective actions.

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(Chief of staff) I never believed in term limits until the last year or two. But, being here on the Hill, I now think it makes a difference in the nature of policy-making endeavors. (House legislator) There was not much discussion of incremental tactics among the Republican freshmen during the 104th. To understand, one must consider the term limits philosophy of this group. They did not have the patience to work at legislation incrementally because they did not see themselves as careerists. The freshmen felt that too many people had been pulling strings for too long, and we needed a new process.

CONCLUSION Richard Fenno judges the Contract with America as something that was smart as a campaign tool for House Republicans but unwise as an instrument for guiding legislative endeavors (Fenno 1997, 20, 52). He sees the allegiance of the freshmen to the Contract as a manifestation of their need to learn how to differentiate between institutional, constitutional, and programmatic priorities, as well as a need to learn when and how to combine legislative goals. He suggests he is possibly too hard on the freshmen, and perhaps the new GOP majority deserves some sympathy in view of disadvantages that result from a forty-year stint in the political wilderness. Fenno appears to have good reasons to be concerned about the effect of the Contract upon legislating activity in the 104th Congress. At the same time, the present research suggests that there are some positive aspects to the meshing of principles with the Contract. For one, this meshing resurrected the idea that politicians on the national level are capable of keeping their promises. Second, the combination showed that it is possible for congressional campaigns to be organized in such a fashion that informed voters can know before going to the voting booths pretty much what candidates plan to do in policy terms. Third, regardless of the ways the freshmen may have been misguided in calling some of their policy preferences “principles,” the idea of legislators abiding by true convictions as contrasted to (the exaggerated notion of) deal-making on behalf of self-serving interests does tend to lift the image of the institution somewhat. Fourth, the Contract may have been a poor organizational instrument in theory, but it did accomplish the purpose

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of helping an inexperienced majority party accomplish a fair amount of policy-making in venues where Congress had been stuck for years. Finally, the Contract and the idea of principled legislating played a major role in developing the identity, cohesion, and mission of the House freshmen. Cohesion and mission contributed to the elevation of the policy-making goal, and allowed the allure of rapid policy-making success to divert attention from reelection calculations. Furthermore, the policy-making goal strengthened the determination of junior Republicans to insist that leadership view them as principals with a right to hold leadership to the original mission understanding. NOTES 1. Gingrich did his best to facilitate the progress of the Contract where he did have power. For example, he picked several committee chairpersons for reasons other than seniority. Bob Livingston was tapped for Appropriations, Tom Bliley for Commerce, and Henry Hyde for Judiciary. Gingrich said, “In each case, I thought they would bring a level of aggressiveness and risk taking that we would need” (Gingrich 1995, 121). Gingrich had Tom Delay, the elected whip, hold training sessions for freshmen. “Our freshman members went through scripting practice before they were even sworn in. There were practice sessions on the floor of the House during December” (Gingrich 1995, 124). Furthermore, Gingrich made Armey the chief operating officer while he retained the role of chief executive and chairman of the board. This division of labor allowed Gingrich to focus on long-range planning (Gingrich 1995, 127). 2. The Contract with America does not look too much different than the reform agenda argued for by Felten (1993), and published by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. Felten explains that the book would not have been published had it not been for the unequivocal support of the Foundation’s president and executive vice president. The book’s recommendations include term limits, staff cuts, budget reductions, a line item veto, reforms to force Congress to obey they same employment laws it requires of businesses, an increased openness of congressional proceedings, a reduction in certain types of casework that mainly serve to increase incumbents’ electoral security (the Fiorina thesis), and a reduction in the number of congressional committees. A similar Heritage book (Jones and Marini 1988) shares some of the same recommendations, but the nature of the recommendations clearly suggests an expectation of the continued control of Congress by the Democrats. 3. In a way, Gingrich’s choice to push for a Contract with America built on widely popular reform and issue positions reflects the kind of reassessment of message that the Democrats underwent in 1991. Democrats began to

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realize that their presidential candidates were overemphasizing Democrat party ideals and preaching to Democrat activists rather than responding with sensitivity to the general interests of American voters (Brown 1991). The moderating of the Democrats’ message, combined with public perceptions of an economic recession (Hetherington 1996; Erikson 1989), opened the door to a Clinton presidency. Likewise, when Republicans moved beyond Republican shop-talk in their congressional races, and did so at a time when Clinton was caught in a popularity crisis, the political fortunes of Republicans changed. 4. Generally, the Republican freshmen thought of term limits in a way that would allow a progressive career from the House to the Senate. Technically, combined limits address the total number of years a person can serve in a legislature; simple limits cap only the number of years that can be served sequentially (Benjamin and Malbin 1992). With simple limits, an incumbent retires after a few years to give challengers a chance to prove themselves, and then reenters the competition after a period of reconnecting “to the real world.” The present research found some indications that freshmen perceive an ideological interest among scholars who oppose term limits, since Democrats appear interested in serving in Congress longer than Republicans (Gilmour and Rothstein 1993). But this situation may be an artifact of Democrats’ majority party status during the past four decades. 5. According to a senior Democrat staffer, the whole-loaf mentality among many GOP representatives is due in part to the rise of the single-issue voter and the political pressure this applies. The single-issue voter is usually not interested in balance, but has an extreme view in a particular policy area. Empower single-issue voters in a half-dozen different areas of policy, and the result is a half-dozen factions of purist legislators who refuse to compromise. Their unwillingness to compromise may be attributable to a self-interested calculation of where their reelection support resides, or it may be attributable to their own roots descending deeply into the philosophy of the single-issue movement from which they were drawn. Allegedly, too much of this kind of extremism disrupts the policy-making process and turns Congress into a town hall meeting. The staffer also argued that a Rayburn or Cannon would not have stood for this, and would have disciplined party members. 6. One of the alleged “gaps” in the thinking of some conservative freshmen related to their suspicions about the integrity of committee work. One can hardly blame the freshmen for being skeptical about the work of committees when the formal literature as well as the popular press perceive a good deal of committee work to be oriented toward strengthening the reelection prospects of incumbents (Hird 1991; Ferejohn 1974; Evans 1994). The freshmen opposed the idea, recognized in legislative literature (Evans 1994), that committee chairs are justified in trading pork barrel projects for broader

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policy goals that they see to be in the public interest. Freshmen tended to see this as unprincipled. 7. The whole-loaf and half-loaf terminology is now working itself into the legislative literature, especially works that are interview-based (see Sinclair 1997, 24). 8. Half-loafers also reject the idea of some whole-loafers that it is worthwhile to pass bills in the House even if the bills are written too far to the right to be signed into law (Healey 1994, 3211). 9. The whole-loaf freshmen did not bite off on Schlesinger’s (1966, 2) view that a “political system unable to kindle ambitions for office is as much in danger of breaking down as one unable to restrain ambition.” The freshmen were not against all ambition, but thought it possible to differentiate between ambition for office and ambition to produce needed change. 10. Interestingly, Loomis (1981) observes that early in the 94th Congress, some of the Democratic Watergate Babies felt like they were a new breed, and would be less oriented toward political careerism than many of the more senior members of the House. Time, however, would show that the careerism bug bit the Watergate Babies as surely as it bit other House members. Indications suggest that late in their second term, an increasing number of 104th GOP House freshmen are becoming interested in enduring congressional careers. 11. If one judges the development of ideology by the number of interconnected political abstractions involved in a system of thought, then the purists are highly ideological. 12. Many members do not downplay the Contract’s importance. Nathan Deal, a House member who switched from the Democratic party in 1995, remarked that his Republican opponent in the 1994 election did not endorse the Contract, and he lost. Still, Representative Deal went on to argue that in some ways the Contract did not get focused in the public’s mind until after the election. 13. Evidence that most voters could not remember any of the details of the Contract at the time of the 1994 elections meant to some analysts that the Contract did not play a significant role in the outcome of the election. This interpretation accords with the Price and Zaller (1993, 135) position that “news stories that are encountered but not comprehended and retained have little importance…for the person’s…attitudes, opinions, or behaviors.” But there is another way to assess the matter, one that points to circumstances in which campaigns can matter (Bartels 1993; Marcus and MacKuen 1993). Rahn, Aldrich, and Borgida (1994) contend that when campaign information is well-structured and the context is amenable, voters are assisted in making on-line processing judgments of the information, even if they are not politically sophisticated. On-line processing refers to the idea that voters analyze information as they see and hear it. Voters may modify their running

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tallies of how various candidates impress them (Fiorina 1981), and then file away only summary impressions (Lodge, McGraw, and Stroh 1989). Thus, when later surveyed they may not be able to recall details of the campaign, but they may be able to tell interviewers that they changed their mind along the way (Lodge, Steenbergen, and Brau 1995). The Contract provided organized information in carefully orchestrated contexts. Therefore, the GOP’s first win of the House in forty years may say more about the effects of the Contract than voters’ ability to remember it. 14. Ron Peters (1990, 293) writes, “The things that would most likely bring about a return of a truly strong Republican party leadership in the House would be a national consensus on the policies of the Republican party.” The Contract was no such consensus, but many of the House Republicans, as well as the leadership, chose to act as though the Contract was the symbol of such a consensus. To some observers, the Contract could be little more than a symbol because voters were so underinformed about it. Ideally, voters in a democracy should be well-informed about the policy platforms of major parties However, the reality of democratic political life does not seem consistent with this hope (Campbell et al. 1960; Converse 1964; Smith 1989; Dahl 1989; Delli Carpini and Keeter 1991). Granted, most voters do not arrive at the polls unaware of the outlines of the issues, or ignorant of the general performance of the economy under the leadership of one party or the other (Downs 1957; Fiorina 1981; Kiewiet 1983; MacKuen, Erickson, and Stimson 1990). Many scholars believe voters have at least a “gut feeling” about the nature and consequence of the more important races (Popkin 1991; Key 1966). People do pay attention to presidential state of the union addresses (J.Cohen 1995), and negative advertising often increases their awareness of issues late in campaigns (Brians and Wattenberg, 1996). Thus, the Republican argument does not seem unreasonable that although voters could not generally remember the details of Contract with America, they did understand that the Republicans were pledging to moderate President Clinton’s agenda. 15. One congressional observer wonders why the GOP would choose such carefully researched issue positions for the Contract, and then seek to cut the budget of the EPA by 25 percent without doing equally careful survey research to see how the public would react (C.Cook 1996).

CHAPTER 7

Freshmen and Principals The Perception of a Mandate

They chose to interpret their victory as an electoral mandate to undertake wholesale change, a mandate for what they called a Republican revolution. (R.Fenno, 1997, 6)

House Republicans believe they have a national mandate, not just a collection of local ones. (Jon Healey, CQ reporter, 1994, 3210)

INTRODUCTION The mandate perception among 104th House Republicans found special consequence because new members possessed a self-image of being committed to responsive representation. The 1994 freshmen liked to see themselves as agents of a public that was demanding more accountability from Congress. From the Republican perspective, Americans in the early 1990s were increasingly calling for change, but congressional Democrats were not listening. Republicans campaigned on the idea that they would listen to the public, put their plans into the form of promises, and if elected, keep their promises to the principals who put them in office.1 Republicans argued in the Contract that agency between voters and representatives had

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broken down under Democratic control of the House and needed to be restored. Consider the opening statements in the Contract: As Republican Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body we propose not just to change its policies, but even more important, to restore the bonds of trust between people and their elected representatives. That is why, in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print (1994 Contract with America).

The “bonds of trust” phrase was understood by many Republicans to mean that representatives should do in office what they pledge to do while on the campaign trail. The oft-repeated idea is that representatives should be agents of constituents ahead of being agents of party. In 1994, some Republicans believed that Democrat members of the House were in a habit of looking to party officials as principals, or to their own preferences, instead of viewing voters as principals to whom they owed a fiduciary allegiance. 2 Furthermore, Republicans argued that although congressional Democrats had enjoyed the support of a majority of Americans for several decades, some of the people voting for Democrats were asking their representatives to take different stands on various issues than the ones being pushed by Democratic party leadership. The Contract with America supposedly responded to this Democratic shirking by setting forth a reform agenda and policy planks supported by enough Republicans and Democrats to represent a supermajority of American voters. Thus, the Republicans’ capture of the House in 1994 was interpreted by most newer House Republicans to reflect a mandate for agency on behalf of voting principals who were demanding change in accordance with the principles underlying the Contract. THE MANDATE PERCEPTION AMONG HOUSE REPUBLICANS As the survey indicates, the freshmen felt that the public was capable of expressing a coherent mandate, and that their mandate was multifaceted (see Tables 4, 5a and 5b on pages 92, 93, and 94, respectively).3 The results of the survey instrument make a strong argument that the perceived mandate was nearly as broad as the

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Contract. Hindsight suggests that the usefulness of the question about the mandate could have been increased by inserting a few more of the key items of the Contract—like balancing the budget, reducing the size of the federal government, and enacting term limits. If these three items had been stated specifically, it would have been instructive to see how their support compared with the support received by the eight items the survey provided. The interview data suggests that the philosophy undergirding the Contract is the center of the mandate perception, and this philosophy is built around smaller government that retains its credibility because it balances its budget and does not seek to continually enlarge its powers. A sample of what staffers repeatedly said makes this evident. “The freshmen had a mandate on the budget, and a mandate to reduce the size of government.” “There is no question but that the freshmen felt they came to the House with a mandate from the public to reduce the size and scope of government, balance the budget, and lower taxes.” “The 104th freshmen came in with a mandate to lower taxes, reduce the amount of government regulation, and inject more common sense into government.”

Phrases like “commonsense policy” and “smaller government” almost became mantras in the 104th Congress, and continued in the 105th. These phrases were everywhere in literature distributed by the Republican Conference, as well as on nearly all the lips of the more conservative Republicans. But, this was also the language of the Contract with America, and it stuck with those who signed on. Why did the House freshmen believe they had a mandate? No single reason explains it all. As one member who retired from the House after the 104th Congress concluded: “They undoubtedly had a perception of a mandate, especially since none of the Republican House members standing for reelection lost in 1994.” Another freshly retired member put it this way: “The freshmen thought they had a mandate—and some had justification for thinking this. A unified theme in the election gave the impression of a mandate.” A senior staffer to one of the freshman class elected leaders stated that not only did the freshmen believe they had a mandate for change, but it

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seemed to be confirmed to them when national attention focused on the Hill in the early months after the 1994 election rather than on the White House.4 This interpretation is supported by another explanation from a senior press secretary who argued that “during the first one hundred days the rating of Congress went through the roof…. It was easy for these freshmen to be on the same page about a mandate because there was a sense that the public was fed up with politics as usual. The freshmen had confidence in the leadership’s agenda to solve the problems, and they possessed a feeling that they brought new things to the table.”5 What role did the media play in all of this? One interviewee said that the media fueled the perception for Republicans that they had a public mandate, especially when the media pushed the question, “Is Clinton relevant?” Republicans felt that this question confirmed their mandate, at least until Clinton later made people believe in his relevancy. Another experienced staffer framed the issue this way: “After the media played heavily on the idea that the freshmen had a mandate, members of the class reasoned that they had to claim one. There is some validity to a claim of a mandate in a case where so many members signed a Contract and then were elected into a new majority.” It wasn’t just the media that was adding fuel to the fire of a perceived mandate for the new Republicans. House leadership was also involved. A staffer for a western freshman said, “The freshmen felt like they had a mandate when they came into office, and were buoyed by the conviction that party leadership was strongly in support of their vision.” Another senior staffer with close leadership ties argued that when the Republicans took control of the House, “Gingrich moved very quickly to consolidate the thoughts of the incoming freshmen that they should have a mandate.” Not everyone agreed with this view. One socially moderate freshman said that he never recalled freshmen talking about mandates. He took the position that the early dynamics of the new Congress was much more about personalities and goals than any sense of a mandate. Nevertheless, this view was very much in the minority. As political scientist Barbara Sinclair observed early in the 104th Congress, “The members that make up the new Republican majority are ideologically quite homogeneous, and they believe the elections gave them a mandate to change public policy” (Sinclair 1995a, 113). A case can be made for the idea that very conservative House Republicans saw more of a mandate in their 1994 win than did their

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less conservative class members. A prominent and conservative freshman told this story: My wife and I were exhausted on election night. I remember thinking as I went to bed, “You can’t rest because every day is going to be harder to make the changes we campaigned on, and harder to implement the mandate the election conferred upon the Republican Congress.”

Why was this new member so convinced that the Republicans had received a mandate? A good portion of the answer is found in the wording of the Contract with America document that most Republicans signed during their 1994 campaign. At the end of the document, just before the signature line, one finds these words, italicized for emphasis: Respecting the judgment of our fellow citizens as we seek their mandate for reform, we hereby pledge our names to this Contract with America. Notice, Republican leadership chose wording that would create the perception of a mandate in their own ranks, especially among candidates with little political experience in interpreting the meaning of voter responses or campaign experiences. It is no wonder that the survey respondents put the Contract with America as their most important consideration in respect to perceptions of a mandate. Interview comments provide additional insight:

(Senior staffer) The GOP leadership was smart in pushing the Contract provisions as a perceived mandate with the public; there is nothing on that Contract list that did not have a 70 percent approval rating with the public. If anyone would challenge them on their mandate, they would say, “So, you think the public is against balancing the budget? Is the public against a line item veto to take out pork?” No one can attack them on these principles without going against the public. The problem the leadership faced down the line is that the public is not always rational in its expectations. If the public wants smaller government, a balanced budget and lower taxes, programs have to be cut.

It is not surprising that the restoration of morality and integrity to government was selected as one of the most important considerations in the perceived mandate (Tables 5a and 5b, pages 93 and 94 respectively) when one recalls that the opening sentence of the Contract

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document says that Republicans propose not just to change House policies, but to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives. Recognizing the role of the Contract in seeding this view, it is easy to see why members and staffers made so many statements like this one: “The limited withdrawal of House seats in 1996 confirmed that the mandate was more than a policy mandate— it was a mandate for trustworthiness and integrity in government.” Although there are exceptions, it appears that the Contract was more important to very conservative Republicans than to members of the party that leaned moderate. One moderate member of the House who left after the 104th Congress stated, “I know that many members of the class felt they had a mandate, but some members of the class belong to the Tuesday group and were a bit more moderate.” The point of this remark is that moderates put less emphasis upon the Contract and felt less of a mandate in relation to it. One chief of staff for a moderate freshman said that the conservatives “saw the Contract as their mandate—quite like the class that came in with Ronald Reagan thought they had a mandate.” This person also affirmed not being able to recall even five items from the Contract. Another moderate staffer said that although “the 104th freshman class had as much of a mandate as is possible as shown by the extent of losses suffered by Democrat leaders in the 1994 election,” one should be a cynic when it comes to the concept of public mandates. The point remains that most of the 104th GOP freshmen and their staffers were not cynical about the idea of a public mandate. One of the most influential of the senior staffers for freshmen said that “the freshmen thought they had a mandate from the public. They thought it consisted of Contract items and downsizing government. They all ran on tax cuts and shrinking government.” So, even when these Republicans did not campaign on the Contract per se, by campaigning on the general themes within the Contract many of them perceived a mandate when they won. As one moderate observed, “They perceived themselves as having a public mandate—and at first many thought the Contract was their mandate” (Weisman 1997c). A Mandate Perceived for the Philosophy of the Contract Several Democrats and a few Republican moderates made the argument that the Contract could not be reasonably thought of as a mandate when Republicans were aware of survey results indicating

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that most Americans could not recall without substantial prompting the details of the Contract. As one Democrat legislative director put it: “The GOP leadership misunderstood the public message—or mandate as some of them called it. The message was to make government work better, to get a job done and to do it fairly. One cannot say the GOP had a mandate when most Americans did not understand the content of the Contract.” Republicans continually volunteered that they were aware of this objection, and several seemed at pains to make it clear they were confident it could be dealt with by saying many Americans understood the tone and direction of the Contract even if they could not recall on demand its terms. Americans allegedly wanted a move in a more conservative direction, and supposedly mandated this when electing in mass the partisans who were toting this Contract around. An influential senior staffer described it this way: The freshman class absolutely perceived themselves as having a public mandate for less government and lower taxes; they may not have had a broader mandate, but they were willing to play that hand. It is true that the public probably did not understand the particulars of the Contract, but they did understand the sense that it was about less government and lower taxes.

Although the idea of smaller government and lower taxes seems to many observers to distill the essence of the Republican agenda, a few of the staffers were not certain that one could go even this far with a mandate conception. Thus, the lowest common denominators for explaining the mandate, especially among moderates, became a reaction to President Clinton, or perhaps a desire for “change.” A chief of staff remarked that “one might say that 1994 was a total disavowal of Clinton, but not a mandate for Republican policy.” Another senior staffer’s comment reinforces this view: “The freshman class came to Congress with a definite perception of a mandate. The public wanted less government, lower taxes, and a Congress that did not embarrass them the way Clinton embarrassed many people. There was a mandate even if it boiled down to being different from Clinton.” Similar sentiments were repeated by other interviewees: (Press secretary) There was a public mandate to the 104th, and that mandate was to change government—to open debate, get the debate moving, and move the President toward balancing the budget.

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Legislative Learning (Chief of staff) Clinton had major public image problems. The dog catcher could have beaten him. One problem experienced by the true believers within the freshman class is they did not understand that they did not have a mandate for their party policy preferences—what they had was a reaction against Clinton. The GOP took a knee-jerk reaction against Clinton as a political mandate, and in the process tried to promote reforms that did not have the kind of bipartisan support that most of the Contract items enjoyed.

Mandate Perceptions Linked to Political Experience A convincing argument can be made from the interview data that there was a general recognition that conservative junior members were more married to the idea that they had a public mandate than were more senior and sometimes less conservative members of the House. A leader among the more conservative freshmen described it this way: “It was interesting to watch that as we got away from the 1994 election, the sense of the mandate stayed by far the strongest in my class as compared to the rest of the GOP in the House. Now the more senior members of the caucus are saying, ‘We need to move away from that old mandate and create a new one, since we’ve used up the energy from the 1994 mandate.’ This creates tension between the senior members of the party and the members who came in 1992, 1994, and 1996.” Junior members of Congress may have carried a more abiding sense of a mandate because of a mental association they formed between the concept of a mandate and the idea of a bond of trust between constituents and their elected officials. The Contract explicitly connected the ideas of an electoral mandate for reform with a pledge for enacting the mandate from the representatives. Experienced members of Congress may have discounted this connection, while newer members took it very literally. Contrasting conceptions are offered below. (Chief of staff) The single most important thing to most of the 104th freshmen was to keep the promises they made. (Veteran legislator) When I signed the Contract I thought there was an understanding that it was like a house construction

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contract where you could say, “Wait a minute, I don’t like this deck, or I want to move that,” and you could initial the changes. (Chief of staff for a conservative 104th freshman) Many of the freshmen ran on specific platforms, and linked them to the phrase “Promises made, promises kept.” My boss created a talk-piece acronym from an idea given to him by a little old lady: DWYSYWD. It means “Do what you said you would do.”6 (Legislative director for a moderate-leaning 104th freshman) The thing that many freshmen do not understand is that the Contract was put together not as an ultimate platform but as a strategically crafted platform to the right of what the GOP really wanted. Some extremism was thought necessary so that there would be room to negotiate back toward the ideal position. However, newer members did not want to use the Contract this way: They wanted to employ it literally.

Part of the reason for the loyalty of the freshmen to the mandate idea may be attributable to the inexperience of newer members of Congress in interpreting actions by constituents and the general voting public. As Richard Fenno (1997) has argued, there is a learning curve involved, and large classes that come in to Congress with little experience may have certain vulnerabilities. Especially problematic may be the inability of newer members to distinguish the wishes of their supporters from the will of the general public. One senior staffer observed that his boss won the 1994 Republican primary as a write-in candidate, and that “if anyone has a mandate for change, it is a successful write-in candidate.” The point is well made that a write-in candidate is unlikely to win without highly supportive backers. But partisan support, regardless of its intensity, can hardly be equated with a broad-based mandate that is expressed across party lines. Yet other members of the 104th GOP freshman class equated geographically broad partisan support as though it created a bipartisan mandate. (104th freshman) I think the freshman class did receive a national mandate. I will use myself as an example. I received letters from all over the country with good wishes, perhaps a ten-dollar check, or an exhortation to keep going. So, I felt a national mandate for what I was trying to do in my own district.

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Political scientist Patricia Hurley observes that when Reagan won the presidency in 1980, “Democrats in Congress, as well as their Republican colleagues, behaved as if the election results were a mandate for Reagan’s policies” (1989, 129). Hurley goes on to explain that “because the 1980 election was interpreted as a policy mandate, party voting did not rise” (130). Here, Hurley interprets a mandate as something recognized by both parties, even if one party does so begrudgingly. But, inexperienced members of the 104th GOP House freshmen class did not initially approach the idea of a mandate as something that needed bipartisan roots. To most of the freshmen, a change in control of the House was the same as a mandate even though the Republicans’ victory gave them the slimmest seat margin (231–203) since the last time the Republicans controlled the House in the 83rd Congress (221–213 in 1952).7 In their stunning House victory, Republicans looked beyond their slim seat margin and thought they saw other evidence of a massive swing in the public’s political desires. The President’s party lost fiftythree seats in the House in 1994 (Stanley and Niemi 1995). A similarly massive seat loss in the House had not occurred for the President’s party since the House Democrats lost fifty-five seats in 1946 during the Truman presidency. Furthermore, House Democrat incumbents lost thirty-five seats in 1994 whereas Republican incumbents lost none. On open seats, Republicans won twenty-two to the Democrats’ four (ibid.).8 Republicans also won the Senate fifty-two to fortyeight, and picked up an extra seat the day after the election when Senator Shelby turned Republican (ibid.). Notwithstanding these GOP successes, the point remains that voters did not give Republicans a large House majority in 1994; thus, the Democrats’ defeats can be explained as a rejection of Democratic congressional hegemony rather than a mandate for a sweeping Republican agenda. There is the question of whether the public actually gave House Republicans a mandate in 1994.9 Unfortunately, the 1996 election season did not make the 1994 mandate picture much clearer. Freshman members of the 104th House Republican class enjoyed an 80 percent survival rate, the second highest survival into the sophomore term for members of large influential House classes in the post-World War II era (Barnett and Loomis, 1997). Some conservative interviewees in the present study claimed this (as well as continuing Republican control of the House) as support for the mandate interpretation, especially since some moderate conservatives

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among House Republican freshmen lost along with more conservative classmates. On the other hand, President Clinton easily beat his 1996 Republican challenger, Bob Dole, and the Republican seat margin in the House was trimmed back by a few seats.10 In general, experienced Republicans heavily discounted the mandate idea after the failed government shutdown strategies in 1995, whereas less experienced players among the House conservatives continued to claim a public mandate. One leading House freshman commented that senior Republicans in the House began looking for a new mandate in 1996, proposing that the public relations value of the 1994 mandate claim was largely used up in the 104th Congress. However, many of the more conservative 104th freshmen held that the Contract’s emphasis upon fiscal responsibility and the downsizing of government gave Republicans an enduring mandate as long as they held Congress. Not only did experience and a somewhat more moderate ideology tend to temper members’ sense of a mandate and feelings of obligation to associated pledges, but experience also seems to be a factor related to members reading less into the Contract, perceiving fewer specifics in any mandate, having less confidence that voters really know what their votes mean, and being more hesitant to equate messages from supporters with the general will of constituents. As one moderate staffer observed with tongue-in-cheek humor: “Regardless of whether there was a mandate for the Contract among the American public, there was a mandate for it among Republicans.” In fact, a fair number of interviewees commented on the disjuncture between the ease of perceiving a mandate and the difficulty of interpreting one. One legislative director remarked, “Perhaps the public did give Republicans a mandate in 1994, but with Clinton in the White House it is just as likely that the public was trying to create a policy balance.”11 Another interviewee declared, “Being out of power for forty years, Republicans did not understand how to interpret their 1994 win. They thought they had a mandate to change everything—an idea promoted by their pollster Luntz. But, they missed the ambivalence of the American public. There are lobbies on both sides of every issue because there is no such thing as a single-sided mandate.” Other interviewees also spoke of the complications associated with mandate perceptions. (103rd class member) Everyone tends to interpret what they think is their mandate through their own eyes. I do think the 104th freshmen thought they had a mandate to do very specific things:

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Legislative Learning to reform the budget, to lift the regulatory burden off individuals, to lower taxes, and finally, to downsize the government. And I think they did have a mandate to do those things. The problem was that the public can give you a mandate to accomplish goals, and then not be willing to suffer the pain to accomplish those very goals…. In the public’s mind there is always waste, fraud, and abuse, and if you could just do away with these factors, you could balance the budget without any structural changes. That doesn’t work in reality. (Legislative director) The American public gave the GOP a mandate to cut the size of government and get government out of matters where it does not need to be. At the same time, people were inconsistent because they did not want to forego their check in the mail. The public mandate was: “Cut spending, but not what you spend on me.”

A Mandate to Reduce Federal Regulations? A large cohort of freshmen that help their party gain majority status are naturally tempted to perceive the new majority status as some kind of public mandate. The temptation is to imagine a mandate not only for change (Dodd 1993) but for a new set of partisan policies. This may explain, in part, why GOP freshmen pushed so aggressively in 1995 for partisan environmental regulation rollbacks. In addition, the perception of a mandate may create a sense of obligation among the rank and file to support party leaders (Rohde, 1994), cooperate with high-profile peer groups and caucuses, and be responsive to core constituencies that have provided the most support (Arnold 1990; Mayhew 1974; Fiorina 1989). The result may be “mandate group-think” that overlooks the electorate’s attempt to end excesses and to moderate policy (St. John 1994; Jacobson 1987, 199–200). Several interviewees commented that a serious problem encountered by the GOP was that the regulatory rollback plank of the Contract was generalistic. Thus, Republicans inadvertently overreached in moving early in the 104th toward dramatic rollbacks in specific environmental regulations. A careful reading of the Contract signed by House Republicans provides little information about regulatory reform. Under pledge number eight for bills to be openly debated there is a statement about “strengthening the Regulatory Flexibility Act,” but this is vague and requires inside

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knowledge to flesh it out. Hence, it appears that some Republicans may have looked at the Contract through rose-colored glasses, reading into it the mandate they wished they had received. (Moderate-leaning 104th freshman) There is a basic guideline mandate from the general public. They want reasonable government, a balanced budget, and receptivity from their representatives…. There is a “mandate from God” syndrome in which representatives claim more than exists. (Press secretary) The freshmen felt they had a mandate to implement with fervor the items in the Contract. They believed their mandate involved a rolling back of government regulations, including environmental regulations. They also felt their mandate was a repudiation of the Clinton administration. In all, they probably read too much into their mandate…. Parties are controlled in the electorate by the interests that show up to vote. For the Republicans this means their right wing. The party has to address the agenda that interests these people to retain their votes.

This work does not understand the 104th freshmen as monolithic in misinterpreting what they took to be a mandate. Interpretative variations show purposeful effort among many interviewees in arriving at nuanced conclusions. This is further supported by statements that differentiate between the concept of a national mandate and local mandates. For example, a 104 th freshman remarked, “If there was a mandate in my district, it was anticareer politician. I helped build and reinforce that, and I hope it is the legacy I leave.” Here the mandate perception is narrow and not equated with the Contract. One chief of staff insisted there was a national mandate in the 1994 election, but that it consisted of local and regional mandates of a variable nature. He explained that the variable nature of mandates is evidenced in the contrasting ways that eastern and western Republicans view land policy.12 Tony Blankley was the press secretary in the Speaker’s office during the 104th Congress. A politico with considerable experience, Blankley sheds light on how the matter of a mandate may have been viewed with some sophistication by those in power positions in House leadership.

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Legislative Learning The freshmen perceived that the electorate wanted them to come in and stop business as ususal, go about the people’s business as citizen legislators, get the books in order, stop the nonsense and end the corruption. In this sense, they perceived a mandate.13 People need to be careful when claiming a mandate. Once in a while when there is a huge landslide victory—like Johnson over Goldwater in 1964—you can probably see some kind of a mandate, like the public voting against the possible use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam, or something like that. But in most elections, if a mandate is implicit in the vote, it remains up to the politicians to claim their mandate and build on it. Sometimes it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: You claim it, assert it, communicate it back to the people in your district, and the media reinforces it. Assuming you can convince the opposition party, it becomes a mandate. When Reagan got elected in 1981, he won with only 51 percent of the vote. What did he have a mandate for? A mandate was claimed, and Reagan was able to intimidate the Democrats with it. The Republicans were able to convince forty or fifty Democrats in the House that there was a mandate; otherwise the Democrats probably would not have voted as they did. A mandate is a very ambiguous thing. The 104th freshman class consciously thought they had a mandate. They may have had it; they lived it out, and most of them got reelected. But I would like to be very careful in characterizing it.

CONCLUSION Although most evidence points to the conclusion that a broad public mandate was sincerely perceived by Republican members of the House and their staffs during 1995, there are indications that at the margins some members saw utility in manufacturing an expanded mandate and using this as a strategic political tool. Data suggests that Republicans wanted to believe that they had a mandate, and that they were not closed to the idea of converting a message from constituents into a public mandate. It also appears that the mandate was more an expression of Republican voters than a reflection of the views of the general populace. In this respect, many Democrats who crossed over and voted Republican were likely voting more against Clinton’s image than for the policies of Republicans. Thus, the Republicans’ claim of responsive representation should be understood

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as a responsiveness to supporters (partisan principals), not necessarily to the voting public at large. There are a number of considerations that make the matter of a perceived mandate very important. The existence of a perceived mandate among Republicans helps explain the partisan nature of the 104th Congress, a continued low level of comity in the House, the nature of relations between leadership and the Republican freshman class, the justification of power redistribution, and the persistence of the Republicans in making what they later acknowledged as serious tactical mistakes (Koszczuk and Cassata 1996; Mercurio 1997). The nature of the perceived mandate also helps explain the high level of class identity and cohesion demonstrated by the 104th House Republican freshmen. In terms of theory, the existence of a mandate perception helps explain the premium the class put on policy-making. The pervasiveness of the mandate perception across the class helps illuminate how the class could be so united in its policy orientation. The multifaceted nature of the mandate perception helps reveal how mandate ideas could have relevance to so many members. Although the interview findings examined to this point are in close agreement with the survey data on mandate perceptions analyzed in Chapter Five, the interview findings do show that mandate perceptions began breaking down with time, especially among more experienced members. Furthermore, differences are evident among interviewees with respect to the amount of sophistication involved in interpreting the implications of mandate perceptions. Although it is evident that powerful mandate perceptions did exist among Republican House freshmen during the first session of the 104th Congress, it is also apparent that as members began developing variable perceptions about the class’s perceived mandate, class cohesion began to sag. Thus, it seems appropriate to revisit the matter of class cohesion to probe the limitations of this cohesion. This is an important concern because class cohesion is the factor that made the mandate perception so consequential in the relationship of 104th freshmen and party leadership. NOTES 1. In Chapter Nine, another principal-agent relationship will be developed—one between the rank-and-file members of the House as principals and House party leadership as agent.

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2. See Jacobson and Dimock (1994) for a portrayal of the principalagent framework in which legislators are agents of the voting public. 3. The argument that meaningful voter mandates can exist depends, in part, upon the belief that voters are capable of rational decisions. Increasingly, scholars believe that voters are at least minimally capable of casting discerning votes (Page and Shapiro 1992). There is not, however, much agreement on how voters achieve this. Some academics contend that voters make good use of political cues, and thus are able to select candidates that come the closest on the average to their policy preferences or conceptions of capability (Fiorina 1981; Page and Shapiro 1992; Lupia 1994; Mayhew 1974 [the incumbency cue]). Others look to Condorcet’s 1785 theory on the importance of jury size, and argue that in large voting pools, the judgment errors of voters tend to cancel out. Political ignorance on the right cancels political ignorance on the left, resulting in a shift of electoral power to the best informed (McKelvey and Ordeshook 1985; Dahl 1989; Converse 1990; but see Austen-Smith and Banks 1996). 4. Like the 104th GOP freshman class, Clinton came into national office acting as though he possessed an electoral mandate; yet, he had been elected on only 43 percent of the vote (Merry 1994). There is a tendency among politicians to assume a mandate when there is a change in the partisan control of an office or legislature. Just as Clinton tried to govern in the early going from the left, and had to move toward the middle, the Republican Congress tried to govern from the far right, and soon had to moderate (Merry 1994). 5. Freshmen in the House are more likely to think they have a clear-cut mandate than freshmen in the Senate, since the smaller House districts show more extremes in constituent ideology than the larger Senate districts (Poole and Daniels 1985). 6. Most of the freshmen believed that in serving the will of their electoral majority—as contrasted to the districtwide constituency base—they were expressing democratic responsiveness. In this way, their behavior was consistent with the finding of political scientists that middle-of-the road voters are not well-represented by members of either party. Members of Congress tend to overrepresent support coalitions at the extremes (Poole and Rosenthal 1984), in part, because candidates who move too aggressively toward the center tend to lose campaign resources and do badly in party primaries (Polsby and Wildavsky 1980). Moderate voters do receive indirect representation, however, since members of both parties generally have to engage in compromise to make legislative headway, especially in the environment of divided government. 7. The Republican seat margin in 1994 works out to 53.1 percent. In 1952 it was 50.8 percent. Although Democrats held only 53.3 percent and

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53.8 percent of House seats in 1954 and 1956 respectively, their percentage of control never slipped below 55 percent thereafter until 1994 (Stanley and Niemi 1995, Tables 3–16 and 3–17). 8. Stanley and Niemi 1995, Table 7–6. 9. The research design of the present project does not include the issue of the reality of a public mandate; it includes only the perception of a mandate by members of Congress and the effects of the perception on legislators’ attitudes, goals, and actions. 10. The variety of meanings attached to divided government (Hinckley 1981) make it difficult to extract the meaning of Clinton’s 1996 victory relative to the alleged 1994 Republican mandate. One concept is that as presidential popularity dwindles, voters are more prone to vote for the opposition party in Congress (Kernell 1977). Born (1990) and others (Campbell 1960) argue that the electorate is composed differently in midterm and presidential elections. Jacobson (1990) takes the position that voters want one thing of members of Congress and something else of Presidents. When a single party cannot fulfill contrasting desires fully, divided government results. Erikson (1988) observes that the midterm pattern has been explained as a withdrawal of presidential coattails (J.E.Campbell 1985), a high-stimulus, low-stimulus surge and decline phenomena (Campbell 1966; Hinckley, 1967), a negative referendum on poor presidential performance (Tufte, 1975, 1978; Born 1986), and a combination of these explanations (J.E.Campbell 1993). Erikson argues that the midterm loss of seats in Congress for the President’s party may be a reflection of the electorate’s attempt to penalize the President’s party for being the party in power, thus balancing power (Erikson, 1988, 1014–15). A number of scholars see the electorate as active in moderating the policy actions of elected officials by balancing or dividing government (Erikson 1988; Alesina and Rosenthal 1989; Alesina, Londregan and Rosenthal 1993; Zupan 1991). 11. Some experienced senior staffers seemed aware of the concept used by Fiorina (1988, 1992) that in environments where parties are importantly different in ideology, some voters may seek to balance party powers. Thus, not all interviewees believed that voters would give a Republican presidential candidate the opportunity to win the Oval Office at the same time Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Indeed, there is recognition among scholars that ideological extremes have a weightier influence in party decisions than do moderate forces (Morton 1993; Aldrich 1994; Wittman 1983; Page 1978; also see Poole and Rosenthal 1984; 1985; Poole and Daniels 1985). Consequently, it is much more feasible to discern the implications of mandate perceptions among legislators than to say whether mandates actually exist based upon the partisan division of power in elective offices.

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12. Jonathan Salant (1996a), a CQ reporter, observes that regional differences did not seem to detract much from freshman class unity in the first session of the 104th Congress, but did begin to exert an effect in the second session. Especially notable was the less conservative stance of northeastern Republicans on social policy, and the clash between easterners and westerners on land policy. 13. The freshmen perception of “business as usual” in former Democratic Congresses included the belief that House Democrats were guilty of “shirking”—voting their own ideological preferences rather than being responsive to the interests of their districts (Richardson and Munger 1990). This idea is popular in the casual literature but inconsistent with some formal findings for the 1956–1990 period. Consistent with Kingdon (1989), Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson (1995) found that legislators demonstrate “rational anticipation” of changes in public opinion and adjust their policy positions prior to congressional elections. Thus, the drive for reelection rather than the actual turnover of seats becomes the mechanism of policy responsiveness. Interestingly, by the end of the 104th Congress, the GOP freshmen began to realize that their responsiveness had been so geared toward Republican constituencies that Democrats could consider them guilty of shirking when full district interests were considered.

CHAPTER 8

The Freshmen as a Political Unit Limitations and Dimensions

There were times that the freshman GOP class put their collective foot down. This was a strong-willed freshman class. They had an agenda to fulfill, and a sense of themselves. (David DiStefano, chief of staff for Representative Ney) CLASS AS AN ORGANIZATIONAL UNIT It is one thing to envision House freshmen simply as members of their party conference; it is quite another thing to conceptualize the occasional large and cohesive class as a functioning political unit.1 As Fenno argues, it is the size of legislative groupings and their policy cohesion that really make them consequential (Fenno 1997, 22–23). Generally, freshman classes are not thought of as being especially cohesive. Thus, the typical argument against conceptualizing freshman classes as political units is that membership in a class is a vague form of organization, especially in comparison to membership in a standing committee. The committee member is involved in a formal structure with organization, rules, internal government, influence, jurisdictional power over legislation, and a recognized relationship to other groups. Furthermore, since many committee members serve on their committees for extended periods of time, the relationships that develop tend to be long-lasting. (However, the adversarial two-party nature of committees prevents the development of anything like cohesive communities.) Supposedly, these considerations put committees in a different league

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than freshman classes. The result is that committees are frequently studied but not freshman classes. The criteria that seem to be helpful in designating congressional committees as political units are criteria that the 104th House GOP freshman class meet as well. Admittedly, most freshman classes for the majority or minority party would not meet some of these standards. There were suggestions, however, from some of the more senior legislators that there have been other classes that are fairly comparable to the 104th GOP freshman class on some dimensions. The 1974 Democratic Watergate Babies class probably comes the closest. In the opinion of Republican legislators, their freshman classes of 1980, 1984, and 1992 demonstrated considerable cohesion and continuing relevance of class relations for class members. The 104th Republican freshman class was formally organized, and its organizational identity was recognized by the House Conference and party leadership. The class chose its own officers, established its own internal government, and decided upon its rules of operation and endeavor. The class not only met regularly, but tended to use an agenda to guide its activities. Class members communicated with one another not only in meetings, but frequently through massdistributed faxes and e-mailings sent to other class members (e.g., “Dear Colleague” letters). Class leadership not only interfaced with class members, but met regularly with party leadership. The office of the freshman president saw to it that information gained from meetings with party leadership was provided to member offices. Furthermore, the class had three members on the Steering and Policy Committee—Zack Wamp, Jerry Weller, and J.D.Hayworth. These three freshmen demonstrated special care in trying to serve class policy-making interests, especially as furthered by the judicious recommendation of freshmen to the various committees. Although the 104th GOP freshman class did not have control over a jurisdictional area of legislation in the way a committee does, and the class seldom acted formally as a class, per se, it did exert extensive influence upon the progress of legislation by means of member interfaces and its considerable sense of community. Staffers to freshmen showed a great deal of initiative in developing a high level of monitoring concerning legislation under development in the various committees.2 The freshman staffer organization assigned particular staffers to certain subject areas where they had privileged access to what was going on. The staffers reported regularly to the larger body

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that in turn discussed and debated issues, and decided how the weight of the freshman class could be applied to influence, advance, or block the developing legislation or party planning. Until late in the first session, nearly forty of the seventy-three freshmen remained quite active in their class organization. Few committees in the House have this kind of clout, because committees do not have this kind of size, unity, or teamwork on the part of members and staffers. The freshmen did not have to read the formal literature of political science to understand the importance of members combining to create group pressure in a legislative environment (Denzau and Munger 1986). Many of the freshmen had taken special note of the influence of outside interests on Congress, and they saw no reason why their class should not become a powerful interest within Congress. The freshmen reasoned that parties have not been monolithic during the twentieth century. In spite of leaders’ efforts to provide party discipline, members have been fairly free to follow their own consciences and pursue district interests (Peabody 1981; Loomis 1988). In view of this, the freshmen were emboldened to form and use organizations for their own policy purposes. The class organization became more than a club for political peers; it took on some of the functions associated with legislative coalitions. Patricia Hurley (1989) writes that members of “the House and Senate are elected as individuals, but in Congress they function as members of groups” (131). She continues, “The most salient group is certainly the party, but members may find themselves pulled away from party and into alliances based on particular policy issues or ideological concerns” (ibid.). Using the oft-employed conception of coalitions to describe units of political cooperation in Congress, Hurley envisions four bases for congressional coalitions: partisanship, shared policy preferences, common regional concerns, and ideological union. Apart from the geographical base consideration, the other three bases of congressional coalitions are apparent in the 104th GOP House freshman class. Thus, the cohesiveness of the class is consistent with what is expected of naturally forming coalitions. “THE MAJORITY MAKERS”: A COHESIVE GROUP Repeatedly, members of the 104th GOP freshman class said that there was a sense of camaraderie between class members that could not be achieved among committee members, participants in a task force, or

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members of a large policy caucus. The freshmen shared special bonds and class cohesiveness because of shared circumstances, and the feeling that they as “the new” were importantly different from “the old.”3 They saw themselves as “The Majority Makers,” and in the initial period wore with pride their lapel pins declaring this status.4 They felt united by considerations such as class dynamics, shared ideology, and an early-going respect for party leadership. Even so, they also made a conscious effort to heighten their cohesion for tactical reasons.5 Furthermore, they endeavored to leverage their unity by drawing into their circle of influence the conservative members of the 103rd class. (104th freshman not reelected in 1996) The 104th freshman class was extremely unified, especially when we decided to dig in our heels on something. The party found out they couldn’t do much without us. We had many meetings in the Speaker’s office where we exerted our will. Since over half of the Republican majority consisted of freshmen and sophomores, we had the ability to hold the feet of the leadership to the fire and get something done. (Veteran legislator) The 104th freshmen are the most cohesive class in eighteen years. They came to office with a sense of mission and esprit de corps. (Senior legislator) Looking back, I cannot remember any other freshman classes that were as cohesive or ideologically close as this group. (104th freshman) I think the phenomenon of the class’s high identity is attributable to the size of the class, a seminal election with a change in the direction of American politics, and a party leadership that has consciously endeavored to figure out how to maintain its cohesiveness.

Not Withstanding Cohesion, Differences Exist The idea of class cohesiveness should not be confounded with a notion that there were few differences between members. To the contrary, there existed an array of backgrounds and ideas. There were people of medicine, professional sports, entertainment, broadcasting, small business—and even law. In the words of one

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freshman, “Many of us see things differently, but we always get along because we have unity of purpose.” Another 104th freshman remarked, “One of the things I observed in the early days of getting to Washington and meeting the other freshman members of the House was that there were a lot of contrasting opinions.” Furthermore, a well-placed staffer explained that a lot of the differences between the freshmen were veiled by Gingrich’s masterful job of portraying them as united so as to further his bargaining strategies. This raises a question: Why did the class possess so much solidarity if there were significant differences among members? Repeatedly, interviewees said that similar campaign experiences and the Contract with America made a real difference. One legislative director said that the nature of Gingrich’s recruiting combined with a sense of the times among potential Republican congressional candidates resulted in a class that can be seen as organized under a Ronald Reagan rubric. The freshmen also felt united by the idea that they were the leading edge of the first House Republican majority in forty years. Nevertheless, it is the case that they were as much united by choice as by circumstance. (Senior Gingrich aide) The Washington media certainly recognized the 104th freshmen as a class. At the same time it would be a mistake to see the class as monolithic. The class was cohesive without being monolithic. They certainly were selfconsciously a class, they worked as a class, and they met together as a class. The freshmen covered each other’s backsides and supported one another. If one was abused, they would rally around him. There is no doubt that they had very high esprit de corps, and were committed to each other for the common cause. But there was a vast range of types. There were experienced savvy politicians, as well as people who didn’t have a clue about what politics is about. There were people who were team players and others who were loners. Some were close to being outcasts, some were bellwethers for the class, and some didn’t represent anything but their own whims. So they varied with regard to human qualities and attributes.

The Importance of a Shared Outlook on Fiscal Policy From a policy-making perspective, fiscal issues played a contributing role in freshman class unity. First, there was general agreement that

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budgets ought to be balanced except in times of emergency such as war, a national disaster, or economic crisis. Second, most of the Republican freshmen believe that taxation becomes excessive when Democrats control Congress, and taxes ought to be reduced. Bill Schneider, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted this, saying, “Tax hatred is what holds the Republican Party together” (Weisman, 1997a, 3056). Still, unity was not boundless. The freshmen struggled to agree on how much they wanted to cut government, and in what ways. Agreement was also pressured in regard to how tax savings should be distributed. Some members felt their first loyalties were to the business community, whereas others were closely connected to pro-family lobbies. A lesser point of contention concerned whether to take savings from program cuts and use them to pay down the deficit, or whether to use the savings strategically to provide tax cuts.6 (East Coast 104th freshman) The common bond that kept us together was the recognition that the government was spending more than it could, that programs were inefficient, that money was being wasted, and that taxes were unnecessarily high. On other issues there was a lot of diversity, with people from the Northeast tending to see things differently than people from the South or West. (Influential 104th freshman) When the freshmen came here, we were focused on balancing the federal budget. This was the central theme that united the class. We were all over the board on social issues.

A Growing Tension within the Class The unity of the class was so extraordinarily high during the first 100 days that as the session wore on some members came to believe the unity was vanishing. However, most of the freshmen and staffers recognized that even as class unity declined with the passage of time, it continued to exist at a relatively high level (Salant 1996; also see Tables 2 and 3 on pages 89 and 90, respectively). What was clearly lost after the disastrous government shutdown was the euphoria that the class could make nearly anything happen. Interview findings show that a modest decline in 104th freshman class unity in 1996 and 1997 is attributable to a variety of factors, including the increased importance of committees, the Speaker’s

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problems, careerism, lack of progress on the agenda, a broadening of the agenda, a restructured debate, contrasting time horizons for policymaking, regionalism, party politics, and parochialism. The factors dampening cohesion that were mentioned most frequently included the debate between incrementalism and purism, and the effects of time constraints upon members busy with committee work. A western freshman stated, “I don’t believe the strong bonds between the freshmen are still there in the way they were in the 104th Congress. Committee relationships are becoming increasingly important to some class members.” Several moderate-leaning freshmen agreed, stating that the sheer amount of time members spend working in committees begins to make the relationships that form there more important than class relations. But a number of members and staffers saw this differently. One staffer said that the Speaker was a unifying factor for freshmen in the first session of the 104th Congress and that the Speaker’s growing problems weakened the cohesion of the class. Other interviewees agreed, pointing out that Armey, DeLay, Boehner, and Paxon each had slightly different relationships with the freshmen, and that Gingrich’s decline in influence allowed these lieutenants to gather disciples and lay emphasis upon somewhat competing approaches to the work of the House Conference. Here again, not all interviewees agreed. One chief of staff remarked that class cohesion was coming undone at the margins, and that Gingrich’s problems did not fully explain the change. He said, “What changed is that some members are endeavoring to capitalize upon their strengths in terms of career interests, while others are still concerned with making good policy.” The 105th Congress got off to a slow start legislatively. As explained by a press secretary, “Legislative progress meant party unity,” whereas a lack of legislative progress in the 105th contributed to division. The rapid pace of the Gingrich agenda in early 1995 gave House Republicans little time to reflectively criticize leadership’s plans. Furthermore, fast-paced legislating gave members a sense of accomplishment and a willingness to subordinate personal interests to the good of a party endeavor that seemingly was making a great deal of headway. Yet, as one legislative director pointed out, the pace was the most rapid and the unity the highest when House Republicans were working on Contract with America reforms and legislation. Hence, it is difficult to separate the effects of a slowdown in pace from the effects of moving further away from the Contract agenda as the 104th Congress progressed.

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One interesting argument concerning a reduction in class cohesion was based on the contention that the Republicans’ success in altering the framework of the political debate in Congress actually contributed to reduced class cohesion. A senior staffer argued that some of the freshmen became willing to compromise after they became convinced that they had successfully changed the footings of the debate. With new footings, compromise became safe and in the interests of Republicans because the negotiation points of the debate had been shifted toward the right. This justification for compromise annoyed some of the freshmen who felt most compromise was unprincipled, and that ground gained should not be given up. Midway through the 104th Congress, these contrasting views on compromise had some observers dividing the class into two companies: incrementalists (longterm strategists) and purists (storm the fortress). But other divisions developed as well, especially in environmental and natural resource policy. Geographical considerations were argued by some members and staffers to limit class cohesion.7 Others argued that pure politics were a larger problem for unity. A staffer remarked, “Sometimes there is division when the politics of certain legislation are so compelling [e.g., try to make the President look bad] that some believe the party should push ahead even if the President is going to veto it.” Additional reasons given for a reduction in class cohesion late in the 104th Congress and into the early 105th Congress included debates about careerism and the justification of political pork. Freshmen Full of Themselves Some Republican members of the House and Senate were happy to see the unity of the freshmen diminish. It was observed that the freshmen fed their egos on the idea that they were the personification of a public mandate. Allegedly, this idea made some of them act like they wished certain senior members of the Republican Conference could be kicked out. Nevertheless, as explained by one legislative director, a shared general mission helped hold the party together even though party loyalty continues to be secondary to personal convictions among most members of the 104th class. (Leadership aide) Some of the freshmen are iconoclasts. We had a crisis about a month ago on our committee funding resolution. There were eleven members who bucked the

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leadership, and their coincidence with the Democrats brought down the rule. A couple of the freshmen got up and said, “I did not come up here to be a Republican.” There are always going to be crazy people, but we usually don’t get so many of them. (Politically experienced 104th freshman) The 104th freshmen had a “get out of the way” attitude. The class members felt they were sent here to change the institution and the structure. The core of forty or so freshmen considered themselves to be revolutionaries in the true sense of the word, and they were proud of it. (Senior legislator) These freshmen were very bushy-tailed. Some of us who had been carrying buckets and laboring in the minority vineyards for years couldn’t even get up to bat. I guess I was out in right center field politically. Suddenly, all these people came in from the right field bleachers and I was pushed into centerfield.

Another senior Republican remarked, “There was tremendous resentment from some of the older members because the class implied, in essence, that those who had been there more than a few terms were compromisers or people who didn’t know what they were doing.” However, not all observers agreed with this assessment. A senior staffer in a leadership office commented, “It wasn’t like the old Republican guard was on a different page than the new freshmen. They all stood for the same principles.” Still, some of the older members did not appreciate the Speaker’s regular use of the freshman class to increase his bargaining power. The Speaker would say to the Democrats, “Hey, I would like to bargain with you, but I have over seventy members of the freshman class who want to go this other way.” Since there was a perception that the freshmen were at least partially out of the Speaker’s control, this tactic often worked. But, in the minds of some older members, it directed too much attention to freshmen who already had more attention than they could wisely handle. The Class in Component Groups Total atomization of the freshmen was never really a risk, since there were so many commonalities on which individual freshmen could find community with ten or even fifty other class members. For example, the CATS organization (Conservative Action Team) was

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largely populated by 104th freshmen. One legislator said, “CATS is just another vehicle for the freshman class. So is the Family Caucus.” Several freshmen observed that the “New Federalists” were an influential subcommunity within the freshman class that contributed to member connections through discussions on conservative fiscal policy. This group also rose to the protection of freshmen who might face discipline from party leadership for voting their consciences.8 A midwestern member commented, “Strong individual faith is a shared characteristic among many members of our class, and it helps cement the bond of trust between us.” Oddly enough, even breakfast tastes were a commonality among some members. One press secretary pointed out that the New York Times did an article on a freshman breakfast group that was a “scrambled eggs group—no waffles and no pork.” A large number of the freshmen even went to pains to strengthen cooperative association by obtaining adjacent offices. (Legislative director) Another sign of the organization of members is the alignment of conservative freshmen on the fourth floor of the Cannon House Office Building. Now, it has come to be known as “Buddy Hall.” The proximity of their offices gives them greater ability to plan together, talk matters out, and stick together if they want to walk over to leadership’s offices to lodge a concern. Also, the conservative members of the 104th class have created their own dialogue forums as vehicles by which they can promote legislation that serves their shared interests.9

Even though some freshman class cliques did quickly form, the freshmen overall were broadly communitarian with one another. Those who were politically inexperienced, although bonded together on this level, endeavored to be nonjudgmental about the consequences of past careerism among their classmates. In the words of one freshman, “I’m a career politician. I was shocked that the nonlegislative background people would choose to integrate so readily with those of us who had political experience. I thought they might have disdain toward us, but that was not the case. I learned some fresh approaches to some things, and they learned from us.” This in itself is a testimony as to the power of class identity. The inexperienced freshmen tended to be suspicious of nonclass members who were professional politicians, without feeling the same way toward members of their own class. There was an undeniable sense of

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community in the class, and it made them into something of more consequence than they would have been as a mere caucus. (Staffer for class officer) When one compares the last three freshman classes to earlier GOP freshman classes, one finds that the representatives are getting together much more often, doing more joint planning, and providing more leadership within their individual offices. (Staffer) There wasn’t a night that some group of freshmen were not hanging out together mulling over things. They voted as a bloc in many cases; they had unity even before being sworn in.

The simple reality is this: Even though the cohesion of the 104th freshmen declined with the passage of time, class identity remained robust by means of subcommunities within the class that became the visible representatives of powerful class interests (see Table 8, on page 101). In one policy area twenty-five freshmen might come forward in united fashion. On another policy front, a group of forty might be highly visible. Since membership in these groups was informal, and many of the freshmen participated in several groups, the freshmen always seemed well represented in the party’s internal affairs as well as on the floor. Other party members knew that when twenty freshmen stood up for something, they could probably pull twenty or thirty more of their number into the fray if push came to shove. No other vote bloc in the House—on either side of the isle— had this kind of identity, cohesion, and energy. One thing especially interesting about the freshmen is that their group initiatives were bottom-up more than top-down. The formal officers of the freshman class did not push the class policy-wise. These leaders saw themselves as facilitators of peer dialogue and disseminators of information useful class to members. The impetus for coordinated action came from ten to fifteen members of the class, their staffers, and the influential leaders of subgroups who made a point of continually getting people together to talk things out.10

(Chief of staff) Real leadership in the 104th freshman class was largely personality and ability driven. There was symbolic leadership from class officers during the first few months of the

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CONCLUSION As Fenno observes, the GOP freshmen “were an unusually cohesive group” (Fenno 1997, 23) during the 104th Congress. The challenge is to understand this cohesion, its perseverance, it’s limits, and its partial breakdown over time. As explained in Chapter Four, the main causes of cohesion can be organized under three headings: peer group commonalities; a sense of mission, principle, and adequacy; and a perceived mandate. Group commonalities were enhanced by circumstances that produced GOP congressional candidates with similar ideals. These circumstances included a Clinton policy agenda that focused would-be GOP candidate frustrations; scandal and problems in the U.S. House that invited the emergence of GOP candidates emphasizing integrity and reform; and the blossoming of new leadership in the House that created a national platform and catered to the conservative wing of the party. The sense of mission, principle, and adequacy was helped by the existence of the Contract, as well as the perception that party leadership intended to magnify the power of the freshman bloc in the House. The perceived public mandate not only energized the freshmen in the first session of the 104th Congress, it also helped them concentrate on shared policymaking goals, especially goals of reducing the size of government and balancing the budget. The class’s shared fiscal policy emphasis not only heightened class identity in the House and in the media, but also provided member adhesion when disagreements in other policy matters threatened to undermine class unity. Clearly, the class was not monolithic in its unity. Class cohesion almost became fragile at times as a result of a potentially dangerous

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fracture between purists and incrementalists. Although class cohesion was flawed, it remained significant enough across a broad band of the class to give the rest of the House the impression that an influence bloc existed in the class that was larger and more determined than any other bloc of voters in the House. Although this reputation irritated some senior members, leadership usually put a positive spin on the benefits of freshman class activism. The 104th freshman class developed a larger-than-life image not only because of its privileged relationship with leadership, but because of the sense of community that existed in the class, as well as the vitality of subgroups largely populated by class members. A few years ago a prominent congressional researcher stated, “What we do not know is how our national representatives change while they are in office. We know more…about the evolution of legislatures than we do about the evolution of legislators, and this is unfortunate” (Hibbing 1991, 5). The research undertaken here (and covered in preceding chapters) sheds some additional light on how junior legislators’ perceptions evolve, and correspondently, how changes in perceptions affect legislative behavior. In this case, a reduction in the vitality of the partisan mandate perception after 1995 contributed to a reduction in class cohesion, an increased tolerance for incrementalism, and a gradual move away from the right edge of the conservative agenda (Doherty and Katz 1998). This evolution among junior members suggests that socialization to incrementalism may be affected by mission and mandate perceptions that cause a large premium to be placed on policy-making relative to the Mayhewian reelection goal. NOTES 1. Some scholars use the idea of “coalitions” to describe informal political units in Congress. Patricia Hurley (1989) envisions congressional coalitions forming on four bases: partisanship, shared policy preferences, common regional concerns, and ideological union. She also observes that a large influx of freshmen tend to contribute to party voting, since freshmen follow party leadership more closely than do senior party members. Thus, freshmen contribute to coalition based upon partisanship. 2. The freshmen did not have to read the formal literature of political science to understand the importance of members combining to create group pressure in a legislative environment (Denzau and Munger 1986). Many of

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the freshmen had taken special note of the influence of outside interests on Congress, and they saw no reason why their class should not become a powerful interest within Congress. The freshmen reasoned that parties have not been monolithic during the twentieth century. In spite of leaders’ efforts to provide party discipline, members have been fairly free to follow their own consciences and pursue district interests (Peabody 1981). Hurley (1989) writes that members of “the House and Senate are elected as individuals, but in Congress they function as members of groups” (131). She continues, “The most salient group is certainly the party, but members may find themselves pulled away from party and into alliances based on particular policy issues or ideological concerns” (ibid.). 3. In arguing for the high cohesiveness of the freshman class, no argument is being made against general cohesion for the House Republican Conference. The general trend has been toward increased party unity following a low on this dimension in 1970 (Stanley and Niemi 1995, 199). 4. The lapel pins were the idea of Representative Dick Chrysler. 5. Koopman (1996) argues that at the minimum, moderates and conservatives in the House Republican Conference share common interests in coherent policy-making and the strengthening of the Republican party in the House. 6. Rieselbach (1995, 184) argues that high-visibility policy issues of a fundamental nature are the most difficult ones on which to preserve party cohesion. These issues not only attract the most vigorous attentions of special interests, but also the most input from a wide cross-section of constituents (Rieselbach, 1995, 184). 7. Republican principles sometimes create conflicts for very conservative legislators. Consider the policy area of prison construction: One group of conservatives decides against federal involvement on the basis that prison construction is in the jurisdiction of the states, not the federal government. To them, this is an issue of principle regarding federalism and states’ rights. Another group of conservatives believes Republicans must stand by the principle of being tough on crime. From this viewpoint, the federal government has a responsibility to defend its citizens from danger. Thus, the government should be involved in building prisons so as to relieve overcrowding and avoid early release pressures. The 104th freshmen discovered that “principles” don’t solve problems. 8. When Representative Mark Neumann was reprimanded by his committee chair, the New Federalists were an important factor in rallying the freshman class around him.

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9. A couple of staffers told me that part of the motivation for “Buddy Hall” was to allow more spiritual fellowship between like-minded members. The point that religion can exert an influence in politics has not been lost on students of Congress. Benson and Williams (1982) did a survey to see if there was a connection between religion and members’ voting patterns. The survey showed that 24 percent of their eighty-member pool felt that religious beliefs had a major effect on their voting; 56 percent, a moderate influence; 19 percent, a minor influence; and only 1 percent indicated no influence. 10. When GOP freshmen select a class president, the president’s office supplies staff to operate the class’s limited organizational machinery. Everyone in the office of the freshman president is expected to make whip calls among freshmen. Thus, the president’s office sacrifices some ability to serve district constituents in order to service the freshman class. The 104th freshman class had meetings once a week. Class officers also meet weekly. The class formed a few internal committees that met occasionally to pursue their business. The freshman class committees elected committee leaders to be their representatives at certain party leadership meetings. A weekly meeting for conservative staff members (mostly from 104th freshman offices) ended up being as important for planning and organizing as the meeting for members.

CHAPTER 9

Leadership and Freshman Class Power Relations in the House

In sum, party leaders played an unusually influential role in shaping legislation during the 104th Congress, but they did so as agents of a cohesive majority party that believed itself mandated to bring about major policy change. (Barbara Sinclair, 1997, 17)

LEADERS AS AGENTS The idea of an agent acting on behalf of a principal is a concept that has found extensive application in academic studies (Pratt and Zeckhauser 1985). Political scientists have been especially fond of using this framework in theorizing about a great many things. This theoretical framework is useful for bottom-up theorizing where voters induce preferences in legislative agents (Denzau, Riker, and Shepsle 1985, 1118), as well as in top-down theorizing where leaders appoint experts who are to demonstrate loyalty as well as professionalism. The very nature of representative government stimulates thinking in principal-agent terms. Jacobson and Dimock (1994) use this theoretical framework in their efforts to measure and analyze “shirking”—an activity where legislative “agents” follow their own preferences rather than those of their constituent principals. Sinclair (1995a; 1997) theorizes that congressional party leaders are agents

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of members who expect their leaders to be able to serve members’ interests by solving collective action problems. Judicial theorists Songer, Segal, and Cameron (1994) employ principal-agent theory in their studies of the responsiveness of lower courts to higher courts. Bawn (1995) observes that this approach is used in studies on the way Congress (the principal) provides oversight to the bureaucracy (the agents), or abdicates adequate oversight (Lupia and McCubbins 1994; Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991). Principal-agent theory is also widely used in analyzing political behavior where cooperating groups share power and responsibilities. Maltzman (1995) applies this theoretical approach to the controversy regarding whether congressional committees are agents of their chamber (Krehbiel 1991), their Party Conference (Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991), or external constituencies (Shepsle 1989b). Maltzman endeavors to demonstrate that agents can serve multiple principals. In sum, principal-agent theory has a significant pedigree, and seems an appropriate theoretical framework for thinking about power relations in the 104th Congress, especially intraparty power relations between the Speaker and the rank and file. The House Speaker As Agent The Constitution (Article I, Sec. 2) states that the House of Representatives shall choose its Speaker and other officers, but the development of the leadership organization and its rules is up to the party in control. Each new House establishes rules that limit or expand the powers of the Speaker. Nearly as important is a body of precedents that evolve from Speakers’ rulings over the years (Peabody 1981). Thus, the powers of the Speaker are heavily invested in traditions, perceptions, and expectations, and are not remarkably reconfigured each new Congress by the majority party’s rank and file. The House Speaker can be conceived of as an agent of a party conference, an agent of the chamber, or a principal who wields power like an army general and expects his associates to fall in line. History records all of these behaviors and roles in twentiethcentury House Speakerships. The Speaker, under some circumstances, is thought by many to be as influential in policymaking as the President (Cheney and Cheney 1996).1 Originally, the Speaker’s role was largely procedural. With time, however, the Speaker became a party leader and policy-maker (Palazzolo 1992),

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and sometimes an authoritarian general. Early in the twentieth century, Republican Speaker Cannon turned the House into his own fiefdom, souring many House members on the idea of extensive authority centralized in the Speakership. In 1911, the rank and file revolted and stripped Cannon of many of his discretionary powers (Riesebach 1995). Evidently, Cannon failed to learn from the example of authoritarian Speaker Thomas Reed, who was beset with similar problems not many years before (Peabody 1981). Member reprisal against the exercise of excessive authority in the House has not been limited to the office of the Speaker. In 1961, the House reined in Rules chairman Howard W.Smith. In each of these instances the House sought to corral a leader who thought he was a powerful principal, and bring him back toward an agent role as “middleman” (Jones 1991). The House’s tendencies in these matters did not go unnoticed by later Speakers. When Sam Rayburn assumed the Speakership in 1940, he moved the House away from hierarchy and toward a bargaining approach of leadership (Rohde 1994). If anything, the move in this direction was so consequential that Davidson (1992) suggests the term “congressional leadership” becomes an oxymoron in much of the twentieth century. The Gingrich Speakership Canon (1991, 309) writes that powerful congressional leadership “is usually defined as the ability to pass a legislative agenda.” Defined this way, Speaker Gingrich demonstrates powerful but not unbounded leadership. Arguably, Gingrich is the strongest Speaker in the House since the leadership of Thomas Reed and Joseph Cannon (Thurber 1995). Barbara Sinclair (1995a) observes that due to Gingrich’s “enormous prestige” in the early portion of the 104th Congress, he was able to exercise “power well beyond that specified in the Republican Conference rules” (113). For example, he was able to tread on the territory of the Committee on Committees so as to promote more fully his own slate of committee chairs (ibid.). The ability of Gingrich to sell the idea of a very strong Speakership was eased by the momentum the Democrats created in this direction in the 1970s and 1980s (Davidson 1995). Democrats sought to reduce the power of the senior conservative Democrats who held a disproportionate share of committee chairmanships. Democrats experimented with wide-open floor-amending process in the

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mid-1970s, but soon found that to accomplish their policy objectives, they needed party leadership to structure vote choices by carefully crafted restrictive rules on floor amendments (Sinclair 1995b). One way of looking at Speaker Gingrich’s House leadership is to note that “the functions of party leaders tend to reflect the problems and opportunities encountered by Congress itself (Palazzolo 1992, 126).2 One of the new opportunities—a potential problem—is the empowerment of informal leadership (Hammond 1990). Increasingly, this empowerment is aided by means of interoffice electronic communication (Casey 1996). Informal leaders can include discussion leaders, policy-making leaders, coalition builders, strategic thinkers, and even key staffers. Informal leaders communicate daily with a great many people in Congress by means of e-mail, faxes, and recorded messages. They strengthen or weaken the plans of a Speaker with no more than a series of convincing memos disseminated to the rank and file. Strong party leadership in the House in the 1990s is more precarious than it was early in the century. This is due not only to the rise of influential informal leaders, but also to the fact that parties external to Congress are no longer as strong as they were during the height of rule by Reed and Cannon (Sinclair 1992). The ability of parties to enforce discipline has broken down, as members of Congress have acquired more control over their image, agendas, and campaigns. Nevertheless, during much of the postreform era of committee government, Democrats were able to use the strategic distribution of committee seats as incentives to stimulate party member cooperation (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 185; Price 1989, 185). The point is that attempts to replicate strong top-down leadership are likely to be risky, even though there has been a resurgence in recent years in the capacities of parties to structure member options (Rohde 1994). The Impact of Junior Members on Leadership Ornstein (1990) makes an interesting observation about the historical relationship between the decline of committee power and the increased power of junior members. As junior members become politically stronger, Speakers may be able to successfully acquire and exercise more power because junior members are more responsive to party leadership than senior members. At least, this was the theory until the second year of the 104th GOP House freshman class. Then, Speaker

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Gingrich began to find out in various ways that junior members have their own ideas about power and the use of delegated authority. Just as the 104th freshmen were essential to the success of Gingrich’s bid for the Speakership in the 104th, the 103rd freshmen made the difference for Armey in his successful attempt to become chair of the 103rd Republican Conference in a race against the less activist-oriented incumbent, Jerry Lewis of California (Koopman 1996). Armey’s acquisition of this position was important to the strengthening of the Gingrich power base; nevertheless, the dependence of both leaders upon the goodwill of junior members placed their leadership status in a conditional and sensitive position. There is a term, “conditional party government,” that partially describes this situation. According to Rohde (1994), the term refers to a system in which party leaders and the chairs of the most important committees are held accountable to rank-and-file members, not vice versa. As Gingrich found out in 1997, when junior members have close relations and peer group loyalty, it is difficult for a leader to discipline rebellious members even when they do something as serious as bringing down leadership’s crucial procedural rules for floor debate on a bill. In the 104th Congress, conditional party leadership complicated the ability of the House Republicans to make efficient progress after their first 100 days. The Republican rank and file was long accustomed to seeing little of their will performed in committees. Furthermore, they were rankled by what they saw as a partisan division of power in committees rather than a division based upon the goal of institutional efficiency (Binder 1996). They wanted to see a relatively high proportion of legislative work done on the floor—an idealistic preference that Gingrich shared with them (to protect his own power) until he discovered its problems. The tendency of junior members in the 104th to prefer floor debate to committee negotiations is consistent with Smith’s (1989, 146) observations that since minority party members find their committee work to be unfruitful, they have a less positive view of committees than do majority party members—a fitting view of Republicans who had spent most of their time in minority party service. But the floor can be a difficult environment to work in when the ideologies of the respective parties manifest pronounced differences (Rohde 1994). Discovering this, Gingrich endeavored to shift some power back to committee chairs in the 105th Congress, only to be accused by some conservative junior members that he was backing away from his responsibility to maintain the momentum of the

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conservative agenda. Thus he was criticized when he exercised extensive power, and criticized again when he reduced the extent of that exercise. This is the melody, but not the harmony, of principal-agent relations in the new Republican House. DYNAMICS OF THE PRINCIPAL-AGENT LEGISLATIVE PARADIGM The most common conceptualization of the relationship between House party leaders and party members offered by legislative theorists is one in which leaders are agents of their conference membership (Rohde 1994; Cox and McCubbins 1993; Sinclair 1995a). The leaders are not puppets of the members, but are beholden to the rank and file because the broad membership elects its primary leaders every two years. Furthermore, there are House rules that allow the rank and file to dispose of their leaders midterm if they wish. Members recognize the risks that accompany the act of empowering leaders. One hazard is that leaders will use their delegated powers to subvert the agenda preferred by the rank and file and replace it with a modified agenda that serves other purposes (Sinclair 1997). There are also risks that leadership will unintentionally get off message or become embroiled in personal scandals that injure the reelection prospects of members. Members are willing to face the risks of empowering leaders for several reasons. First, where one ideology dominates the party in the chamber, members of the majority faction generally feel confident that in attempting to select leaders they can discern which candidates are capable of excellence and likely to be faithful agents of the conference majority. Second, members have a collective action problem in which they need able leadership to broker their differences and bring about legislative solutions to policy questions. Third, where there is a fairly close balance of power between parties in the House, members need to be able to speak to the opposition party with one voice through their leadership. This unity of message reduces the extent to which the opposition party can undermine a policy agenda by siphoning off votes from marginally content party members. Fourth, where a President from the opposition party occupies the Oval Office, it becomes essential to the success of the House majority that a strong leadership group be able to negotiate ably with the nation’s Chief Executive.

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Leadership-Agent Relations Are Conditional Once a party has chosen its House leadership, there is the question of what type of strategies leadership will use to strengthen the party in the chamber and spearhead a coherent agenda. Barbara Sinclair (1997) proposes four strategies that are relevant in many instances: member inclusion, message dissemination, the structuring of choices, and majority building. Leaders cannot freely implement their strategies, but must take into consideration their prospects for success based upon how the political context has shaped member expectations (ibid., 25). In the 104th Congress, GOP leaders were constrained as agents by the existence of a “cohesive majority party that believed itself mandated to bring about major policy change” (ibid., 17). Although members had “enormous confidence in Gingrich’s political sagacity,” they were willing to allow Gingrich to deploy extensive discretion only as long as they perceived this discretion as being “in furtherance of their goal of delivering on their mandate” (ibid., 30). Thus, the perception of a public mandate among the cohesive freshmen ended up limiting the length of the leash to which the Speaker was collared. This suggests a dynamic in which the principalagent relationship is not self-standing, but is linked to member perceptions of what they must do and, in turn, what leadership must do to help them. From this observation one can hypothesize that an increase in the strength of a mandate perception among members will produce an increase in the degree to which the agent (the leadership) is held accountable for discretionary promotion of the policy agenda by the principal (the members). Assuming for the moment that the foregoing hypothesis is correct, one can further hypothesize that changes in the political environment will produce changes in leadership styles and choices, especially in regard to the principal-agent relationship. Sinclair argues (1997) that the political context of the 104th Congress differed enough from that of the 105th that Gingrich’s approach to leadership changed, as did his relationship with party members. Although Sinclair sees an activist leadership in both contexts, she argues that House leadership in the 105th Congress is less aggressive and less able to meet member expectations that have become increasingly heterogeneous with the decline of the mandate perception (ibid., 26, 30). In short, she suggests a weakening of the agency relationship in the 105th Congress.

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Agency Endangered by the Mandate Perception The present research project sheds light on all of the foregoing matters. One can argue that the Republican House majority overestimated their public mandate from the start. They assumed one political context while a different one existed. This misunderstanding of the public will led to a series of House Republican missteps, including the disastrous leadership decision to use a partial government shutdown as a lever in budget negotiations with the President. A large portion of the public reacted with frustration to political maneuvering they viewed as irresponsible and dangerous. As the public opinion ratings of Congress fell, and public resistance to the shutdown plan rose, Republicans (and especially House freshmen) began to rethink their opinions of the support they could count on in the political environment. The rethinking was most evident among the moderate conservatives who began drifting toward the small moderate wing of their party, thus reducing the ability of the conservative majority bloc to demand that leadership be responsive to their will. When the 1996 congressional elections slimmed the size of the majority enjoyed by the Republicans in the House, the moderates found the size of their group adequate (relative to the party’s majority margin) to stimulate policy compromise. When Gingrich realized that both wings of his party were empowered, he sought to be an agent of the moderates as well as conservatives. But, strong conservatives felt betrayed. Some of them contemplated undermining the Gingrich leadership and finding a replacement Speaker beholden only to conservatives in the party. The plan did not work out, but the fireworks that ensued sobered the party and shed light on the delicate balances of power that inform the principal-agent conception of leadership-member relations in the House. A MULTIFACETED CONCEPTION OF THE PRINCIPAL-AGENT RELATIONSHIP The preceding argument will be supported with an analysis of statements made by legislators and senior staffers disclosing their views of the nature of power plays and member-leader relations in the 104th Congress and first part of the 105th. The new House Republican leadership found themselves more beholden to their members than they anticipated when planning the new majority party. They understood that good leaders must serve their supporters, and

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they sought to provide an array of important services for Conference members and aspiring GOP House candidates.3 At the same time, they possessed their own vision and agenda, and did not wish to be attendants for a directionless mob. They blended the concept of service with the hope of personal achievement and power. They conceived of themselves as principals on one hand and agents on the other. It may be difficult to see how leaders can be principals when the rank and file vote leaders into office. But, observe, it was Newt Gingrich’s own ambitions, planning, and strategic actions that brought him to the front of his party. In a certain way, Gingrich put himself into power—he voted himself in by consciously and tactically cultivating supporters to be agents on behalf of his ambitious plan. As long as Gingrich appeared to be a political genius to junior members, they happily reconciled themselves to the dual role of being agents for the implementation of Gingrich’s strategies, as well as being principals in calling him to accountability for wandering from the agenda. Until December 1995, most of the junior members felt that the GOP revolution would flounder without Gingrich. This notion made them think of Gingrich as the principal of the strategy of the revolution, whereas they thought of themselves as the principals of the power of the revolution. As Richard Fenno observes, “The relationship was one of mutual dependence. It required fairly constant monitoring and bargaining, especially on amendments” (Fenno 1997, 36). Not only is it insufficient to exclusively conceptualize the 104th House leadership as merely agents (and never principals), it is also insufficient to hypothesize an agent-principal relationship in which the House agent is always singular—a monolithic party membership group. Even as Fenno (1978) argued for the importance of legislators being able to differentiate between various constituencies (geographical, reelection, primary, and personal), it is argued here that the House Speaker as party agent faces a potential segmentalization of principals (members) in the chamber. The fracturing of the membership as principal is consequential to the degree that any fractured segment is large enough to tip the balance of power in the chamber to the opposition party on a policy or procedural issue in which there is a shared interest. Obviously, this will be relevant more frequently to a party’s moderate wing than to the radical wing, since moderates will have more shared interests with the opposition party. The fracturing of membership is also a consideration where members are oriented toward differing goals, such as reelection, influence, or policy-making.

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In cases where a faction is both cohesive and influential in a House party, one can hypothesize that the group as principal will demand a great deal of its Speaker-agent in servicing the attainment of its goals. This line of reasoning is highly relevant to the 104th Congress, where conservative junior House Republicans could demand a great deal of leadership because they were cohesive and because they populated the majority of the House Conference. It is not difficult to imagine this group giving a great deal of power to leadership in order to further their ambitious policy-making agenda, while at the same time being quick to call leadership to account for any straying from a perceived mandate. It can be argued that the perception of a strong public mandate not only stimulates the principal to greatly empower the agent, it also moves the principal to place checks on the agent’s power on the occasions the agent strays from expected paths. THE EVOLUTION OF PRINCIPAL-AGENT RELATIONS IN THE GINGRICH HOUSE In the late 1980s, Newt Gingrich set out on a strategic plan of cultivating ideological and visionary dialogue with the Republican freshmen in each new class. He believed this approach would gradually build a new conservative activist base in the House Republican Conference—a base from which to launch a drive to create a GOP majority party. By 1994, Gingrich had developed a sophisticated system of stimulating the emergence of conservative candidates for the congressional office. Consequently, when the Republicans won the House in 1994, Gingrich and his inner circle felt a sense of nearness to the new ideological majority in the Conference. Some might go so far as to call it a paternal instinct, or perhaps a sense of property rights in the new cohort. Regardless, when Gingrich and his inner group were chosen by the rank and file to lead the Republican House Conference, they had reason to be confident that the conservatives who made up the vast majority of the Conference would be highly loyal and cooperative. This encouraged the new leadership to be aggressive and to seek a great deal of empowerment in spite of a sentiment among many conservatives against the centralization of power. The euphoria the Republicans felt coming off of the 1994 acquisition of majority rule of the House made nearly anything seem possible. Gingrich played up his own theme of a sweeping public mandate for ideological conservatism, and demonstrated resolve to

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empower GOP House members who could see things similarly. Consequently, many moderate conservatives quickly stepped further to the right to minimize the chance of being passed over in the stampede for influence. As veteran moderate conservatives converted out of self-preservation, well-established moderate Republicans in the party found their personal and group power reduced. But this is too simplistic. Moderate Republicans were genuinely overjoyed at the prospect of being in the majority and seeing policy enacted that was closer to their preferences than the policy-making provided by the former Democratic majority. The moderate wing of the House GOP Conference decided to be team players on the floor, while continuing to press for their convictions in private dialogue with leadership and conservative party members. The result of all this in terms of principal-agent theory is that in most of the first session of the 104th Congress, the Gingrich leadership was agent to a principal that was generally conservative in matters publicly visible. However, underneath the surface there was a more complex dynamic that resulted from a feeling among junior conservatives that in empowering Gingrich as Speaker they also empowered themselves. Coming to a place of prestige and influence never before experienced to this degree by a House freshman class, the 104th freshmen Republicans felt a sense of privilege in their relationship with leadership. They also understood how dependent the Speaker was upon their cohesion as the means by which their shared agenda could be accomplished. Freshmen Exercise Oversight on Power Delegated to Speaker Having arrived at a sense of great power, the freshmen were not willing to take a backseat. This became a problem once the party moved beyond the most attainable parts of the Contract with America. As the progress of the party on their agenda bogged down partway into 1995, the tactician in Gingrich made him seek flexibility for the process. But the freshmen had turned their platform into mandate-backed principles, and could not see a role for flexibility. Consequently, the Speaker found his negotiating power hemmed and his considerable powers narrowly channeled. A fairly difficult and unproductive period ensued, not so much in terms of bills the House passed but in terms of what became law.

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Agent-principal relations came to a head at the end of 1995 following the collapse of the House leadership strategy to use a government shutdown to force Clinton to negotiate concessions on the budget deal. In the eyes of many freshmen, Gingrich was no longer brilliant enough to be the Conference’s unquestioned strategist. Many conservatives felt Gingrich demonstrated poor judgment in strategy, as well as gullibility at the negotiating table. The new consensus in the GOP Conference was that the membership would have to keep a tighter rein on their Speaker-agent. Gingrich Endeavors to Moderate the Revolution The debacle of the partial government shutdown rattled Gingrich and seemed to endue him with a feeling that the mandate did not go as deep as most House Republicans wanted to believe. With his own public approval rating at an abysmal level, and the public’s view of Congress rapidly sliding, Gingrich set about to create a slightly more moderate personal image, as well as a somewhat more ideologically moderate legislative agenda. His long House experience told him that the survival of the Republicans as the House majority party was at stake. Interestingly, many of the freshmen did not believe the reelection risk was as great as some of the more senior party members were coming to believe. Some of the freshmen were convinced that the loss of face in the matter of the government shutdown was due more to tactical blunders on the part of leadership than any misunderstanding of the public’s mandate for reform and policy change. It was not until the blooming of the campaign season in the late spring of 1996 that freshmen began to understand that although they had the continuing support of their party’s core constituents, they were rapidly losing support in the general electorate. Briefly stated, most of them chose to compromise on legislation in the next few months, but only enough to give themselves a fighting chance for reelection. Gingrich would have liked a greater margin of safety. Although Republicans retained control of the House following the November 1996 elections, their margin of control was cut to the point where it was smaller than the size of the remaining moderate Republican House group. The circumstantially empowered GOP moderates soon let it be known that they wanted increased influence. Recognizing that little could be accomplished without keeping the moderates on board, Gingrich became the dual agent of moderates

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and conservatives in the 105th. This created the impression for wholeloaf conservative freshmen-turned-sophomores that Gingrich had betrayed them, or was not as conservative in his inner convictions as he earlier appeared. Consequently, radical conservatives tried to undermine Gingrich’s claim on his agency role. When that did not work, and when moderates became increasingly influential by reason of the failed radical coup, the group on the far right had to content themselves with the hope that a return to dominant influence would come with the acquisition of additional conservative House members in the 1998 midterm elections. As Barbara Sinclair argues (1997), the upshot of this is that the competitive configuration of preferences among GOP House Conference members confronts leadership with the task of balancing members’ interests without creating too much dissatisfaction (31). To the degree that the whole-loafers who have now lost their dominance can compromise and share the role of principal with the half-loafers, they contribute to the ability of the Speaker to be an adequate agent of the whole membership. Without compromise from conservatives who are less given to compromise than moderates, the Speaker-agent will have to be responsive to two principals. The jury is still out concerning how successfully this can be done. MEMBERS DESCRIBE POWER RELATIONSHIPS There is little question but that party leadership and the freshmen formed an alliance to empower one another because each side saw substantial benefits in so doing. Gingrich demonstrated an intention to give power to the freshmen if they would help bring him the Speakership. The freshmen showed Gingrich they could strengthen him if he would use his power to help them accomplish their shared policy agenda. Neither side felt manipulated by the other (at least in the early going) because both felt benefitted by the arrangement. The Speaker’s relationship with the 1994 class was one that sprang out of strategic calculations regarding how power in the House GOP Conference had to be redistributed in order for the strategists to make relatively unimpeded progress on their common revolutionary agenda. (Influential 104th freshman) As new members we did not know how to work the rules or system. So we met with key people on leadership staffs who could help us. We would say, “Here is

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Legislative Learning what we are after, but we don’t know how to get there.” They would say, “Here is how you can do it.” They wanted to do it, too, but couldn’t because they were strapped into the system. So, we became very purposeful in our actions. We ended up developing scissor moves where the leadership would be on top, freshmen pushing from the bottom, and the committee chairman—who are normally the locus of power in the system— would be caught in the middle. We would cut them off. We did a lot of that, aided by a system where leadership would kind of give us a wink and a nod to move forward, while publicly holding up a stop sign. That is how we did a lot of things before people knew what was going on. Strategies like this helped pull the class together.

Gingrich realized that in imparting influence to freshmen far beyond normal freshmen dreams, he could win great energy from them on behalf of his goals—an idea that proved largely correct in the early going but faulty, in part, later on. The Speaker stood to gain support not only from the freshmen legislators but from their staffers (the worker bees) as well. In empowering the freshmen Gingrich also empowered a vitally important group of planners, networkers, communication specialists, strategists, and program ambassadors whose loyalties were not compromised by service to the former Republican regime. Many of the new staffers were quite moldable by leadership due to their youthfulness, ideological idealism, and lack of previous experience in Washington. Leadership could often induce staffers to stand strong on behalf of lofty ideals because staffers do not have the kind of vote-casting accountability to district constituents that weighs upon members. Furthermore, as Gingrich anticipated, some of the freshmen leaned heavily upon their aides in the early going. Often, freshmen representatives would say to their staffers while riding on elevators, “What are we voting on today?” Or, “Why are we taking this position?” Gingrich empowered the freshmen in many ways. He helped the freshmen gain influence by opening the way for a number of them to take the lead on major pieces of legislation in the first session. More importantly, he gave them influence in terms of important committee positions.4 When party leadership put freshmen into good committee positions, it was not just to further members’ ambitions. In some cases, selection was made on the basis of keeping the Republican party in the majority by helping marginally reelectable members become more

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reelectable. This was accomplished by putting vulnerable newcomers on important committees. This allowed freshmen to argue to constituents that they were well positioned in Congress to protect their district’s fundamental interests. As one experienced legislator observed, “Advancement may have reflected one’s status on the endangered list as much in some cases as it reflected knowledge or ability.” Endangered members meant an endangered majority. Power Diffusion As Style As House Speaker, Gingrich commonly acts as an agent on behalf of his own interests, as well as for his party. One of his aides said, “Newt, like other members, does whatever is in his best self-interest. If Newt can help the freshmen and the help is cost free to him, he will do it—and it usually is cost free.” The aide then went on to explain that Gingrich likes enthusiastic people who are willing to take on projects, and he sometimes offers help to certain members partially for the satisfaction of working with energetic, visionary people. Thus, Gingrich worked on behalf of process goals as well as policy goals. For example, he wanted to create task forces as a progressive way of stimulating planning and innovation not only because it would strengthen the House Republican Conference, but because he believed open processes are healthier and fairer than closed ones (Sinclair 1997). One of the Speaker’s aides saw it like this: Under the Democrats there was a highly controlled seniority system that required loyalty to party leadership for members to get ahead. By contrast, Mr. Gingrich made an effort to reach out to both moderates and conservatives. He put freshmen and junior members on the Rules Committee and on the Steering Committee to create a more energized dynamic there. Freshmen were placed on key committees not just to increase their reelectability and help keep the Republican party in the majority, but also to create a more dynamic and diffuse system of power in the House. The goal was to bring the rank and file into positions of influence and reduce reliance upon leadership. If you go back and look at the task forces that Mr. Gingrich established, they were outside the committee system, and they were designed that way for a reason. Task forces get you outside the box and result in groups that are more free-flowing than standing committees. Task forces empower the rank and file.

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Sometimes people believe whatever they want to believe. One staffer’s impression was that the Republican leadership was not intent upon reshaping the 1994 class to any great degree. He remarked, “Gingrich was a facilitator of dialogue, not a dictator concerned with defining the class for his own agenda. The freshmen were self-guided. They saw needs in America and stepped forward to meet the needs.” In view of Gingrich’s well-known agenda-setting activities, one might discount a remark like this except for two reasons. First, the same type of observation was made by a number of other interviewees. For example, one chief of staff pointed out that Gingrich built his relationship with freshmen by frequently consulting with them as though they were veterans of the political process. Another staffer said, “Newt had a lot at stake in the freshman class, so he serviced their objectives.” Second, Gingrich did not need to be a dictator: Circumstances provided him with a class that voluntarily shared his agenda. Nevertheless, as another chief of staff commented, “Gingrich knew where he wanted the country to go, and he spent a lot of time working with the freshmen to drive that message.” In the words of a Democrat chief of staff, “The Sam Rayburns of the world are master politicians, and Gingrich could have been among that rank had he been less ‘lordy,’ and had he not pushed so far, so fast.” Repeatedly, interviewees said that in working with members of the GOP Conference, Gingrich used more of an educator’s approach than a politician’s style. One freshman reflected on the way this affected the class, saying: Newt reminds me of the professor we all had in college. He walks into the room, he announces the topic, he makes an offthe-wall statement, then he sits back while a majority is formed. Members of the class have to respond to an absurd statement. The extravagance of the statement forces people to position themselves. There is no middle ground because of the way the statement was made. As soon as the majority is formed, the professor engages. Afterward, there is more specific debate. Newt uses this approach internally in the party; he also does it on a national level. This tendency has gotten him into trouble at times. But it has also accelerated the national debate on issues.

The creation of a dynamic and diffuse system that readily incorporated freshmen contributions may be attributable, in part,

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to Gingrich’s love of ideas over details. The freshmen were his ideal students because having just arrived in Congress, they had not been beaten down by the realization that Congress is details. One highlevel staffer who had worked for years with the GOP leadership put it like this: Newt is visionary. Whether you like him or hate him, you have to admit the guy is an idea factory. He will sit and spurt out ten ideas in a one-hour meeting. Seven of the ten may be crackpot ideas, two are decent, and one is a gem—a real strategic nugget of how to create a wedge issue or whatever. But Newt does not pay attention to detail, and he does not adequately follow through. He sifts out the ideas, but someone has to come along behind him and scoop up the ideas and implement them.

Power Diffusion As Strategy One point that becomes evident in all this is that party leadership, and Newt Gingrich in particular, went beyond norms in cultivating a relationship between leadership and newcomers. Of course, leadership did the normal things to help the freshmen out. The majority leader’s office provides all freshmen with a thick manual called “Hit the Ground Running” (formerly “Managing Toward a Majority”). This resource book helps new legislators staff their offices successfully and avoid various mistakes. This kind of arm’s length help is essential, but does not create bonding. Party leadership wanted bonding with the 1994 class, and worked diligently to create a sense of nearness with freshmen. There is a duality here, a dichotomy of sorts: The Speaker respected the freshmen’s right to autonomy of political principle, while at the same time trying to capitalize upon commonalities to create a cohesive freshmen group that he could use strategically in matters of internal politics and policy-making. What is fascinating is that Gingrich tried to shape the 1994 class for strategic purposes, yet in so doing helped create a class that later limited his strategic options.5 As time passed, Gingrich found that the freshmen blocked him in working with House Democrats, Senate Republicans, the President, the media, and his own leadership group. In the words of one staffer, “The freshmen were Newt’s Frankenstein. He created them, and then it didn’t work out the way he assumed it might.”

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Legislative Learning (Senior GOP legislator) When it finally came time to accomplish some things, there were about twenty freshmen who said, “I’m not going down that road with the Speaker.” The Speaker lined up all the leadership in front of the Conference and said, “You’re either with me or with Clinton.” And twenty people rode off on their own. He was all upset, stepping on his lower lip, and his brow furrowed. I walked up to him and said, “Newt, you created these Frankensteins, now they’ve turned on you. You better put them back on the table and check the juice level or whatever.” (Press secretary in 104th freshman office) After a committee chair disciplined Neumann, there was a sense of frustration among class members. They said, “If we can’t step up—when that is what we were brought here to do—then this body is just back to where it was before!” A lot of people got real worked up about it. Gingrich, being astute, saw this was not going to play, and that he would have to appease the freshmen. Gingrich wanted the ferocity and energy of the freshman class, but like holding a cat by the tail, there is the risk it will turn around and scratch you.

WHERE ARE THE “NEWTOIDS”? One idea promoted by some in media early in the 104th Congress was that the freshmen were tied to Gingrich’s apron strings. David Brinkley, for one, tried to do a story on the “Newtoids.” But the freshmen were not Newtoids, especially not in the second session. It is true that during the first session of the 104th, the freshmen generally bent to the Speaker’s will. But they went his way because he convinced them that it was in the interests of their policy agenda to do so. The freshmen saw Gingrich “moving the same direction they were moving, and they were happy to give him power because it was helping them fulfill promises they made during the campaign. Promises made, promises kept—this was the class’s theme.” (Tony Blankley, the Speaker’s press secretary in the 104th) I didn’t particularly think the Republican freshmen gave power to party leadership. We often went into meetings with the situation where fifteen to twenty freshmen—and not always the same ones— did not want to take the step Newt was recommending. Some

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of them did not want to compromise; they wanted to move straightforward. What happened in the period of September 1994 through early December 1995 was that Newt Gingrich had the admiration and confidence of the vast majority of Republican House members, and especially the freshmen. I was in meetings where freshmen would say something like, “I don’t think it makes political sense to do this.” Then, Newt would say, “Well, it is my judgment that the best way to get from A to B is by way of C.” What would happen is that the members would subordinate their own political judgment to the Speaker’s judgment. They were constantly persuaded because they thought Newt knew best. But, it was a very conditional kind of assent, and it was issue by issue. There was a sense that they admired Newt greatly: Like Moses, he was a champion who led them into the promised land. Notwithstanding that, Newt had to win their votes one vote at a time. We went from meeting to meeting and Newt would make his case. He had to have Armey and DeLay there backing him up. The freshmen had to be convinced on each round. (Legislative director) Initially, the freshmen idolized Newt, and party leadership exercised powerful influence. But this changed. (104th freshman) Members of this class have a great ability to influence each other. But we are not influenced externally. The class is influenced internally by its own members. I consider party leadership to be an external force.

Freshmen As Agents for Constituents Most of the GOP freshmen came in feeling like parties were too strong in leaning on individual members to compromise principles in deal-making arrangements. To an unusual degree, most of the freshmen were determined to be true to their own counsel even if it cost them progress in the party system. As a result, a saying developed early in the second session that “trying to lead the freshman conservatives is like trying to herd cats.” Freshmen said as much, with one explaining that he always put his constituents above his party on every vote. A longtime legislator affirmed this to be the case, saying he had never seen a class where leadership played less of a role in shaping the class. He attributed it to “the strong sense of allegiance the 104th freshmen feel toward their constituents.” Another

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mature member remarked, “Gingrich thought the freshmen would stick with him. He didn’t think they would challenge him on policy the way they did.” A chief of staff for a conservative class member asserted, “We’ve got clout, and we can defeat things. The freshmen will not be strong-armed except at a cost to leadership.” (104th freshman) The thing we did differently two years ago is that we formed our own caucuses and organizations strategically so that we wouldn’t be domesticated by the system. This is why we formed the New Federalists, the Family Caucus, and the breakfast coalition. We formed multiple organizations that could fight against the system. Before we got into town we held many lengthy late night sessions discussing how we would organize or do this or that. Then, we would locate someone up the system who could tell us where to hunt. (104th freshman not reelected in 1996) Republicans in the House gave the Speaker more power not to further any self-serving interests but to facilitate a shared agenda. (104th freshman) We lacked political experience as to how to play the game, so we end up not playing the game. Leadership has to put its pants on in the morning in the same way we do, and they represent the same number of people in their districts as we do. So, it is true that leadership is less effective intimidating our class than other freshman and sophomore classes. (Senior staffer for freshman leadership) The freshmen were not in Gingrich’s pocket; he was not able to play the freshmen like one would play pieces on a chessboard. A better analogy would be that the freshmen were like a tail wagging a dog—the dog being the party in the House as managed by leadership.

Freshmen As Revolutionaries The thing that is most striking about the attempted independence of the freshmen is that it went beyond an effort to assert their own autonomy. As the class developed a sense of itself—its public identity, cohesiveness, leverage, influence, and willfulness—it decided that one of its great missions was to “hold the feet of the leadership to the fire” regarding the conservative principles of the revolution. This

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decision did not come about strictly as a result of class meetings, but was aided by a series of informal decisions arrived at as subgroups within the class met and hashed things out. Interviewees said that “the freshmen were the conscience of their GOP leadership. They were more worried about backsliding in their own leadership than they were concerned with what the Democratic leadership might do.” Some of the whole-loaf freshmen were so concerned about retaining purity in the agenda that they would pull their own bills rather than compromise on them. (Senior legislator) This class ran not only local campaigns but also a national campaign based upon the Contract with America. In the earliest days of organizing the 104th Congress, they made it very clear that they intended to accomplish the agenda they ran on. They made it clear they expected their leadership not to deviate at all from that agenda. (Staffer) It was perceived that Newt had them at his beck and call, but the reality was that as soon as he endeavored to get them to carry his water, they turned things around and maneuvered so as to get him to carry their water.

A Policy-Making Zeal One conception among legislative theorists is that rank-and-file party members will transfer power to centralized leadership when it helps them in their goal of gaining advancement and influence in the party and in the chamber. A contrasting conception is that members face a collective action problem in which their reelection goal is put at risk by the possibility that too much member autonomy will factionalize the majority party to the place where it does not legislate efficiently. Both of these conceptions fit nicely with the theory that legislators are self-interested careerists primarily concerned with obtaining reelection and power. However, these conceptions fall short in describing the 104th Congress in which much of the policy-making that did occur resulted from the freshmen sharing power with party leadership on behalf of a common policy agenda.

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In his first term as Speaker, Gingrich was a freshman Speaker. Although he had served a number of terms as a minority party member, the 104th gave him his first opportunity to realize broad policy-making opportunities. Thus, Gingrich and his leadership group shared with the freshmen an intense orientation toward legislating. To a lesser degree, the same might be said of the entire GOP House Conference. Nearly all of the Republicans were without the experience of making policy as the majority party in a national legislature. In this sense, almost all House Republicans were freshmen. The excitement of this pushed other goals into a slightly secondary role for many members. For the party’s newest members, policy-making was clearly king. As one of Gingrich’s senior aides remarked, the freshmen gave power to leadership because “these were the people who really led on the issues that were important to freshmen.” This aide also remarked that it would be mistakenly narrow to think that the freshmen gave power to the Speaker simply to roll ideologically soft senior chairmen out of their positions so that freshmen could move up.6 POWER FOR THE SAKE OF POLICY-MAKING Although some freshmen would hardly budge for leadership, playing ball with the leadership was for many members a strategic duty. (A few actually felt their identity was intertwined with Gingrich’s status.) The Republicans made big promises in their 1994 campaigns, and they believed a temporary centralization of some types of power was important to timely policy-making. As one freshman explained, “The advantage of having a very strong party leadership in the chamber is that the party is able to implement an agenda very quickly.” He went on to argue as follows: The way the House is set up does not normally lend itself to much speed. To accomplish what we wanted to accomplish in the first 100 days we needed a leadership team and a structure that would allow rapid progress. The downside of investing a lot of power in leadership is that it may give leadership the ability to implement an agenda partially against the will of the members. The last thing we wanted was to have the agenda that people elected us to implement thwarted by some chairman that happened to dislike a piece of legislation. It was imperative that we create a strong leadership team. Party leadership needed the power to keep committee chairmen in line. We needed to

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make sure that self-interest did not overturn the general interest of where we wanted to go with our agenda.

Power for Reshaping the House Conference Clearly, Gingrich, Armey, and the rest of the leadership group wanted power first for policy-making reasons, and secondarily because of other ambitions. Perhaps the most fascinating chapter in the internal politics of the 104th Congress concerns the strategy of the leadership and freshmen entering into a special power-sharing arrangement so as to bend the hierarchy of the Republican Conference into a more conservative posture, thus boosting the prospects of success in ideologically conservative policy-making. Because of the sensitive nature of this matter, Republicans were somewhat hesitant to provide many descriptions of what transpired early in the 104th during the internal jockeying for power. Reflecting upon 1995 events two years later, some of the legislators and a good number of the senior staffers were willing to be more forthcoming. The story is best told in their own words. (Speaker’s aide) It is true that we used the freshmen very effectively against some of our members, sometimes organizing them surreptitiously. We would say to chairman X, “You can go your own way and stay in the system, but let us tell you the numbers: The freshman and sophomore classes are 53 percent of the vote. If you can find a bigger bloc of votes, you can do what you want.” In the early going the freshmen were willing soldiers—storm troopers for the leadership. However, with the passage of time this has broken down. (Senior Gingrich staffer) As to why Newt gave freshmen attractive positions on committees, several considerations should be borne in mind. There were some class members who were given good committee assignments because they needed them for reelection in our judgment. But, Newt was also selfconsciously empowering the freshman class, and overrepresenting them on important committees. He empowered them for a number of reasons. Using a medieval analogy, one thinks of the king and the peasants against the barons—with Newt as the king, the freshmen as the peasants, and the senior members as the barons. There was an alliance—almost a pincer

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Legislative Learning movement—between the freshmen and Newt in 1995. (After 1995 the dynamics were different.) There were some committee chairmen and some cardinals on the Appropriations Committee who certainly did not have the revolutionary fever we had. Newt wanted to put pressure on them, and not allow them to pick most of the people on their committee. Newt wanted to put on some freshmen who would stand firm and actually cut spending—freshmen who would not get into the pork business as quickly or deeply as some of the senior members. Part of the leadership plan was to strengthen the revolution by putting freshmen in key positions. So Newt was doing this at a strategic level to advance the cause of the revolution, and to add an alternative a set of powers to counteract the entrenched senior committee interests. At the same time he was also on a case-by-case basis helping out individual members for their electoral purposes. He also tried to match a member’s abilities and experience (especially on the state level) with certain committees. So, Newt was linking up a skill and experience with a job to be done. Also, there was at least half an eye to the matter of personalities: You always make those human calculations. But the dominant consideration was strategic, as I described it, and then on a selective case-by-case basis, electoral, for those members who we knew were going to have a difficult election, and needed to be on a particular committee for electoral purposes. That was a secondary objective and was done where it was practical and needed.7 (104th freshman chief of staff) The leadership shared the goals of the 104th freshmen, and many times were responsible for secretly egging them on. (104th freshman not reelected in 1996) The leadership— Gingrich, Armey, Delay, Boehner, Paxton—were all in tune with what the freshmen wanted to see. There was some “wink and a nod,” and “go ahead and push it you guys” stuff. Some of the chairmen were in tune with the freshmen while others were not. There were times that we went to the leadership and got leadership to apply pressure to the chairmen to make sure we got what we wanted in some bills. (104th freshman) Newt did have a good group of committee chairmen who would lean his way, but he also had a number of

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subcommittee chairmen that did not lean his way, particularly the appropriates—the people who are the cardinals. Some of the subcommittee chairmen could be very difficult to deal with, and we had to get through them. Newt did not have his own people in all places, particularly at the subcommittee level. And at the committee level he did not have as much sway over some individuals as he needed to run an aggressive agenda. Additionally, most committee chairmen had to deal with some senior members who were not enthralled with the agenda. John Boehner was our early “go-to” guy because he knew what was possible, and what we could get done with the wink and a nod system. Later, John Kasich provided the leadership liaison role. We would meet with him during the appropriations process and ask, “Which of these groups can we try to eliminate? …Later, Dick Armey was the guy we could whisper back and forth with. We kind of floated through different members of the leadership as we went along. In defense of some of our more senior members, when they saw us involved, they came forward with proposals they had thought about for some time, but had earlier felt were too politically sensitive. Thus, we were able to pass major farm legislation reform, telecommunications reform, and welfare reform.

The full picture is bigger than Gingrich trying to utilize junior members to displace senior members who did not seem to have fire in their bellies for a highly ideological and aggressive policy agenda. The big plan involved using every possible channel of influence to further prized goals. As one insider explained, “The leadership knew who the true believers were, so they tried to lean on them and give them influence. Leadership knew they would go back to the freshman class meetings and spout conservative principles.” Although a few staffers and members suggest that underneath his tactician’s hat Gingrich is as every bit as conservative as the 104th freshmen, the general impression of most is that others in leadership, like Armey, are more entrenched in a self-contained conservative ideology. The corners of Gingrich’s conservatism are sometimes rounded by pragmatism. Nevertheless, Gingrich’s sincerity in pushing aside moderates in favor of a fairly conservative agenda was not doubted except by a few interviewees. One of the more experienced freshmen commented that “there was a lot of talk about selling a

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government building, and other such things. Gingrich seemed to love every minute of it, although he may have felt at times that we were on a runaway train. The old bulls were just shaking their heads; they couldn’t believe what was happening. The whole institution changed, and I guess will never be the same again.” Costs of the Power Deployment Plan The strategic leadership-freshmen coalition in the House was not without its costs to the freshmen and the Speaker. Owing to various antics in the highly visible use of power by a dozen or so freshmen, nearly all 104th freshmen were stereotyped by more senior Republican House members as being too impatient and assertive.8 Gingrich, too, found himself in an awkward position, namely, his superintendency was held in higher regard by the chamber’s political neophytes than by its elders. Some of the more senior members of the House Republican Conference had labored in the comparatively thankless minority party trenches for many years. When the GOP came to power in the House, they had dreams of enjoying the privileges their Democratic counterparts had held over their heads. But in many cases political redemption was not to be. Not only did some senior House Republicans lose out in their bids for subcommittee and committee chairs, but even those who received influential positions in the committee system found their effective influence undermined by the impertinence of young freshmen not acquainted with the historic norm of freshmen keeping their heads down for a while. Furthermore, senior members who did chair something found their management of germane legislation undercut by the activities of task forces, most of which were in the control of relatively junior members. After some of the task forces became too issue-aggressive and blindsided some committee chairs, Gingrich had to face growing resistance to his strategic dispersion of power. Some of the senior Republican members who had waited years for a chairmanship were saying things like, “What the hell is a task force doing addressing my issue area? I have the committee!” Consequently, to avert internal warfare, Gingrich had to transfer some power back into the committee system in the 105th Congress. In spite of the interpretation Gingrich’s spin-miesters put on this move, it reflected upon his ability to find a workable balance in the first place. Another cost of Gingrich’s strategy of dispersing power to junior members is that it created situations in which the Speaker seemed to

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some observers to be possessed with a split personality. As Dr. Jekyl he egged on the freshmen, but as Mr. Hyde he complained to senators and Democrats that the freshmen limited his scope of options. Sometimes Gingrich enjoyed having it both ways. A staff member in the majority leader’s office explained that leadership found it helpful to go into negotiations with the Senate arguing that the freshmen were holding their feet to the fire on conservative principles. The reputation of the freshmen as mavericks gave Gingrich the ability to say, “We can’t go along with this because if we do, some of the freshmen will go crazy!” But Gingrich was not thankful at every moment for the leverage obtained from this situation. The acquisition of power among junior members gave some of them the confidence that they could and should steamroll the Democrats—an approach that many more experienced Republicans thought would painfully backfire. Claiming only a partial hold on the freshmen reins was strategically enjoyable for Gingrich at the negotiation table with the Democrats; however, the reality of having the reins slip through the hands while trying to manage the party internally became increasingly vexing to Gingrich as the 104th Congress progressed. A POWERFUL YET CONSTRAINED LEADERSHIP During a troubled period for the House Republicans in the 104th, Speaker Gingrich walked into a meeting of party members and announced, “I’m not taking questions, and I’m not going to talk beyond my statement. If you don’t cooperate, we’re taking names.” The rank and file helped elect Gingrich as House Speaker, but that does not mean that the Speaker constantly looked over his shoulder to see if the rank and file were happy. With regard to principal-agent theory, the agent is expected to be responsive to the principal. In this case, the agent expected the principal to be responsive to him. An Assertive Leadership Each week in the 104th Congress, Tom DeLay’s office holds a meeting for legislative assistants from the members’ offices. In this meeting, party leadership generally tells legislative assistants what it intends to promote. Leadership uses these meetings to ask for support from the assistants regardless of what their bosses think. In other words, leadership is bold enough to ask assistants to be supportive of party leadership plans even at the cost of partially compromising the

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employing members’ preferences. This strategy may not work in some cases, but it does demonstrate the assertiveness with which leadership may attempt to lead. When members agree strongly with leadership’s position, they may appreciate leadership putting a strong arm on staffers so as to roundup offices that are straying and maximize the party’s influence in the chamber. A number of members and staffers provided enlightening comments on the matter of leadership’s aggressiveness: (104th freshman) In my opinion, Newt Gingrich used the freshman class, justifiably, to empower himself to make some pretty significant changes in the structure of Congress and the committees. The only aspect of the whole Congress that got out of control was when he wanted to term-limit committee chairmen but not himself as the Speaker. But the freshmen would have none of that plan. (Legislative director) Gingrich wanted to get the freshmen voting without delay for the things they had campaigned on so that in the future if they wanted to moderate their views they would have to explain why they were flip-flopping.

Until the fiasco with the government shutdown, Gingrich was confident that the rank and file wanted him to lead aggressively and opportunistically. As one well-placed insider explained, “When the Republicans took control of the House, their leadership acted very swiftly to do several things. Gingrich as the new Speaker quickly consolidated his power in the office. He brought more of the internal budget of Congress under his direct control. There is a perception that he eliminated the LSOs because they were a waste of taxpayer money, but in reality he was after a couple of the big ones that he knew could undermine his power to lead. He knew the risks, for he had used those same kinds of organizations to undermine the more moderate Bob Michel’s leadership.” This explanation was provided without any embarrassment. The fact that the 104th freshmen were so committed to their policy-making goals led them to be supportive of Gingrich in his blended goals of policy-making and power. However, as the Speaker was to find out, the consent of the freshmen was a conditional consent. Their support of the Speaker’s pursuit of power was conditional upon that power being used to further their policy goals.

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Leadership Constrained by Class Cohesiveness One of the important observations introduced earlier is that the Speaker’s strategy of contributing what he could to the power and cohensiveness of the 104th freshman class partially backfired and resulted in a power block with interests that narrowed Gingrich’s tactical and policy-making options. As a moderate staffer observed, leadership is affected by what its constituency thinks, and the freshmen were the vanguard of leadership’s Conference constituency. When some of the freshmen changed their viewpoint on strategy after the disastrous government shutdown tactic, this affected where leadership decided to go. Some of the freshmen thought Gingrich got hoodwinked in negotiations by Clinton. Others felt Gingrich’s instinct to look for compromise made him suspect as a negotiating agent. More than a few concluded that Gingrich’s willingness to invest in a high-risk tactic was inappropriate. Although the freshmen differed in their perceptions as to what went wrong with the government shutdown affair, they shared the feeling that Newt let the party down. Their feelings were especially consequential because of their class cohesiveness. Shared notions in a tightly knit group can become a constraint on the Speaker’s informal powers. Reputation Constrains Leadership In addition to the errant partial government shutdown, there were a number of other considerations that constrained Gingrich’s informal power to lead effectively. One was the ethics flap over the large advance that Gingrich was offered on a book writing deal. Another factor was the resentment that was left over from Gingrich’s attacks on Democrat leaders while Gingrich was in the minority camp. A staffer with ties to the Democrat party argued that Republicans “should not have elected Gingrich to the House Speakership because he had too much blood on his hands.” Allegedly, if the Republicans selected a peacemaker, the Democrats would not have voted against some legislation as a surrogate means of voting against Gingrich. Early in the 105th Congress, Gingrich recognized that he was politically weak, so he tried to reassign some leadership responsibilities to committee chairs. When these chairs looked at the falls Gingrich had taken for trying to be aggressive, they hesitated to do much for several months. This prompted a late spring 1997 label of “a do-nothing Congress.”

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When some freshmen saw how circumstantially weak Gingrich was in the spring of 1997, they decided that if they couldn’t earn credit with constituents for being a member of a party that was going somewhere, they should focus on local problems and seek success on the home front. Thus, some of the freshmen became “Mr. Pothole Congressman” and worked on tasks like encouraging the maintenance of local roads. As power moved away from Gingrich, freshmen lost some of their interest in being in the Speaker’s vanguard. This contributed to the 105th Congress having different tendencies than the 104th. In regard to the principal-agent relationship, it appears that the agent’s response to the principal can be considerably fettered by circumstances such as political weakness that comes from tactical or ethical missteps. It can be argued that the principal (membership) exerts control over the power of the agent (leader) not so much through formal means, but by withdrawing enthusiastic cooperation. The Speaker’s formal powers are insufficient for leadership. The Speaker’s real power is the power to influence—a power that is constrained or enhanced by reputation and relationships. Leadership Constrained by Seat Margin Circumstances Due to the narrowness of the seat margin the GOP possesses in the House in the 105th Congress, as well as the cohesiveness of the conservative junior members and the growing organization and cooperation of moderates, Gingrich does not have ability to effectively discipline members who step outside of the party program while claiming the covering of principle. Any member who feels he or she is being strong-armed by leadership can complain to a cohesive group of fifteen or more members who, if they get behind the disgruntled member, have enough vote power to stop the House Republicans on matters of policy or procedure. This points out how circumstances, such as seat margin, can combine unexpectedly with a carefully wrought strategy, such as creating member cohesiveness, to produce constraints that leadership did not anticipate when enacting the strategy. (Legislative director) Now that the 104th freshmen have figured out how to use their own resources that they have at their disposal, it has made it more difficult for the leadership to move

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quickly…. Right now, the party leadership is doing less, while allowing the committee chairmen to work their will. (Legislative director) Party leadership needs to expand the majority so that they are not being led around by the dozen members of the Lunch Bunch.

CONCLUSION I have argued for a rich and complex view of power in the House. Principal-agent theory is a useful heuristic for understanding this relationship. Nevertheless, a simplistic conception of the Speaker as a responsive agent of the Conference membership is an inadequate picture of how power is used and distributed in today’s House. Power-building in the U.S. House can be likened in some respects to coalition-building in European parliaments. If government is to be effective, multiple parties must coalesce into working majorities. In the U.S. House, the Speaker cannot be King of the Hill without building a secure coalition from various member interest factions within the party. In the 104th Congress, a large freshman class entered with no loyalties to any existing power structure. This cohesive group became a strategic unit for the Speaker in reconfiguring the Republican hierarchy in the House. Gingrich empowered junior members in the hope of broadening his discretionary options; however, he found his strategic and policy options constrained by the strong-willed use of acquired power and group influence by members of the freshman class. The 104th freshmen were often determined to be true to their own counsel and policy agenda regardless of the costs. They were aided in this determination by their mutual support for one another in the face of challenges. Owing to the comparatively small size of the majority seat margin enjoyed by House Republicans in the 104th, a small band of freshmen determined to stand by one of their own could effectively bring leadership’s program to a temporary halt. In the 105th Congress, an even smaller seat margin made this leverage readily available to party moderates as well. When leadership became weakened because of Gingrich’s problems, the principal-agent relationship between the Speaker and conservatives was broadened into multiple-interest competition for power. Gingrich endeavored

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to become an agent for moderates as well as conservatives, but found it difficult to satisfy competing interests. Fennoistic theory introduced earlier suggests that the policymaking goal can importantly inform the behavior of some legislators. An examination of the principal and agent relationship between junior GOP House members and House leadership confirms Fenno’s essential finding, and helps explain how an emphasized policy-making goal by an influential and cohesive member group can empower or constrain leadership. Thus, a policy-making goal may affect internal party politics and legislative organization as well as legislative outcomes. This makes the existence of cohesive, mission-driven freshmen classes important in understanding the U.S. Congress. NOTES 1. According to Peters (1994), today’s Speakership is shaped by four considerations: contextual forces external to the House, the House’s institutional needs, the partisan role of the Speaker, and the Speaker’s political persona. 2. Evans (1991) argues that when it comes to describing leadership behavior in committees, important considerations include a leader’s policy preferences, leadership experience, career plans, and context of operations. 3. John Manley (1969), in his piece on Chairman Wilbur Mills, remarks that a leading House liberal remarked to the press that Mills was a leader in “followmanship.” 4. Gingrich formulated and promoted the plan of placing freshmen on important committees, but the actual selection work was largely carried out by legislators that leadership selected. 5. This descriptive phrase was suggested by my mentor, Burdett Loomis. 6. The argument this Gingrich aide made for term-limiting committee chairs is that when members control chairs for too long, they turn the committees into their own little fiefdoms. Term-limited chairmen will supposedly be more responsive to Congress and their country. However, conflicting arguments are sometimes heard. One argument offered by a 104th freshman is that term limits on power positions in a Congress where members are not term-limited in general has the potential perverse effect of keeping people in Congress longer. People stay around hoping to get a chairmanship when it comes open. 7. One of the more prominent debates in legislative studies concerns the reasons legislators are put on various committees (Hall 1993; Hinckley 1975; Shepsle 1978). One camp argues that members select committees where they can best distribute pork to their constituencies and supporters, and

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thus bolster reelection odds (Shepsle 1989a). Another camp insists that the assignment of committee slots is primarily aimed at serving the informational needs of the chamber (Krehbiel 1991). A third group sees the explanation tilted toward serving party interests (Cox and McCubbins 1993). A fourth perspective sees some value in each of the views (Maltzman 1995). It is of some interest that the matters of knowledge, skills, and compatibility come up in this explanation in addition to the reelection motive. More importantly, this senior Gingrich aide argues that the primary consideration in member assignment was strategic on behalf of ideological policy-making. This suggests two things. First, the primacy of the policy-making goal infected the leadership as well as the freshmen. Second, legislative scholars now have an additional variable to work with in trying to model how committee composition explains congressional action. 8. Loomis (1988) observed similar impatience and assertiveness in the 1974 Democrat “Watergate Babies” class. These traits in the 104th GOP freshmen did not endear the newcomers to senior legislators any more than they endeared the 94th Democrat freshmen to the seniors in their caucus.

CHAPTER 10

Learning by Doing The Progress of the 104th Class

For months, leadership told the freshmen that the President would have no choice but to sign the budget bill. They said, “We have him over a barrel, and we are going to get everything.” Apparently, they never considered what would happen if Clinton did not do as they thought. (Senior staffer)

THE IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING NEW MEMBER LEARNING Political scientists hypothesize about many causative elements in trying to explain legislative behavior and the evolution of the congressional institution. High on the list of variables are member goals, chamber rules, organizational structure, leadership and committee power, and partisan balance (Mayhew 1974; Weingast and Marshall 1988; Fiorina 1989; Arnold 1990; Krehbiel 1991; Fowler 1993; Maltzman 1995). Inadequately addressed is the matter of progressive legislative learning (Hibbing 1991). Granted, Fenno’s observation-based studies of select senators do convey the importance as well as the variability of strategic learning among individual legislators (Fenno 1989;1992). 1 Nevertheless, until recently, much of the discussion concerning freshman learning dealt with legislative norms (Asher 1973; Rohde, Ornstein, and Peabody 1985). The congressional socialization of new members was viewed

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as a learning process, but the focus was much more upon the assimilation of freshmen into the institution than upon the impact of freshman learning upon the actions of Congress. In instances where classes have been viewed as important to legislative outcomes, class consequence has been connected more to ideology, numbers, group organization, and survival rates than to effects associated with learning (ibid., 161–62, 180).2 Richard Fenno (1997) demonstrates that if the focus of legislative learning is redirected from the absorption of institutional norms to the acquisition of interpretative skills, legislative learning becomes an exceedingly important issue. Fenno’s main concern is that when one party is out of power for a long period, party members become underdeveloped in their ability to adequately assess majority party responsibilities and to correctly interpret the meaning of elections. Looking at the freshmen-rich 104th House, Fenno argues that the inexperience of Republicans in the majority party role explains much of what transpired in the 104th Congress. I concur, and supply new interview evidence that sheds light on this matter. After every large turnover of seats in the House, much of what takes place in the House is affected by the learning progress of new members. This should be especially true when control of the chamber changes hands after a long period of time. The new members come to Congress with relatively little legislative experience; the new members have high class cohesion and are in the majority party; and the ideology or mission of the new class is asymmetrical with preexisting conditions in the chamber (Fenno 1997; Sinclair 1997). In the case of the 104 th GOP House freshmen all of these considerations apply. Furthermore, not only did the GOP freshmen have to learn new ropes, they had to learn the ropes from senior Republicans with no majority party experience in the U.S. Congress (Fenno 1997; Maraniss and Weisskopf 1996). There is evidence that legislative learning produces modifications in member perceptions and attitudes, and causes many newer members to become more accepting of incremental progress on their party’s agenda (Koszczuk 1996a; Doherty and Katz 1998). The 104th GOP House freshmen arrived in Congress with a need for learning. Owing to shared commonalities, perceptions, and mission, they were a highly cohesive group during their first year. The class constituted nearly one-third of the House Republican Conference, and their energetic support was crucial to the success of leadership’s agenda.

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Although leadership initially empowered the class, it soon found that the freshmen’s political inexperience resulted in a dogmatism that in some ways hobbled leadership’s options (Drew 1996). Many freshmen were suspicious of political careerism, determined to adhere to their “principled” interpretation of the Contract with America, and willing to use class power to obtain their ends. However, legislative learning modified some members’ perceptions. The result is 105th GOP sophomores with more flexibility and openness to incrementalism and bipartisanship (Doherty and Katz 1998). The changes wrought by legislative learning affect internal party politics, as well as the methods, image, and output of the chamber.3 The progress of freshmen on the legislative learning curve impacts House accomplishments, and House accomplishments empower or constrain the Senate.4 Therefore, in examining the evolution of perceptions in an influential House freshman class, a contribution is made to explaining a larger cross-section of politics and policy-making in the U.S. government (Fishel 1973; Loomis 1988). A sense of mission, a perceived mandate, and the idea of principle exerted an especially powerful effect upon the 104th class because the need for legislative learning was so great. The freshmen’s inexperience contributed to their idea that sound principles reduce the need for compromise. Political inexperience also contributed to the freshmen’s idea that the Contract with America in combination with a historic win equaled a public mandate. Political scientist Ron Peters noted this in 1994, and said if House Republicans “assume that everything they promised to do is what they were elected to do, they may make the same mistake as they accuse Clinton of—that is, misreading the results of the election” (Peters in Healey, 1994, 3214). The need for learning faced by the 1994 freshmen can be demonstrated by contrasting the successful early experience of House freshmen in the matter of internal reforms with their later frustrating experiences in the matter of environmental policy-making. An argument will be made that the internal reform experience gave the GOP freshmen a false sense of power, right, and responsiveness. When they carried these perceptions forward into their agenda to roll back environmental regulations, it took many of them much of the term to discern that the no-compromise position they took on internal reform was not appropriate for working on regulatory policy. Although the learning came hard for some, others grasped the lessons faster. The progress of the class’s learning is manifest in the tone and

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direction of lawmaking in the first session of the 104th Congress as compared to the last part of the second session. The point is further reinforced by the continued evolution of class behavior into the early part of the 105th Congress. INTERNAL REFORM: THE FRESHMEN’S INITIAL HOUSE EXPERIENCE As the 1994 congressional elections drew near, Republicans pledged to make the most sweeping changes in House operations in nearly fifty years (Katz 1994). The first action the GOP freshmen took after helping to organize their party for the 104th Congress was to add their weight to the process of internal reform. The House stayed in session from noon on January 4, 1995, until after 2:00 A.M. on January 5 to get the reforms under way in accordance with their promises in the Contract.5 The Republicans modified nearly a score of House rules in matters such as proxy voting and rolling quorums in committees. However, the package of new rules passed on January 5 (H Res 6) did not include some high-visibility internal reforms that would come later in the year such as cuts in committee spending (March 15), a strict gift ban (November 16), and lobbying reforms (November 29). Much to the dismay of the new freshmen, the early reforms sidestepped campaign finance reform, perhaps giving advance warning that the reform process here would be tedious and drawn out. Most of the actual planning work for changing internal rules with a House resolution was accomplished in GOP meetings near the end of 1994 (CQ Almanac 1995, I–14). With in-party debate and refinements out of the way, the Republicans were able to move very quickly on the first day of the 104th Congress. There was little the Democrats could do because changes in House rules are made by a simple majority in the chamber, and the Senate is not involved. Thus, rules reform was accomplished with few complications—a situation that may have given freshmen a false impression of the rapidity at which fundamental changes can be made (ibid., I–23). Before ending its first day of work, the House passed its first major legislation (429–0). The bill was entitled the “Congressional Accountability Act” (CAA).6 It replaced piecemeal protections that formerly applied to about 34,000 congressional employees (ibid.). The legislation bore resemblance to a bill the House passed in August 1994—a bill that did not become law after getting bogged down in

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the Senate. In 1995 the Senate was in a different frame of mind, and passed a bill similar to the House bill less than a week after the House took its action (January 11). On January 17, the House cleared the Senate version, opening the way for the President to sign the bill into law on January 23. Since the 104th GOP freshmen were very vocal on behalf of the legislation, they saw it as a symbol of their power and connectivity with the public will (CQ Almanac 1995, I–31, I–38). As one freshman remarked, “Nearly all members of the class are totally committed to the changes…. We knocked down efforts by senior members of our party to undermine internal reforms.” The early success of the internal reforms may have misled many members of the 1994 class concerning their power. The CAA was successful not because of the freshmen alone, but because the timing was right, and the Democrats shared the Republican’s interest in the legislation. Even on House rules, Democrats acquiesced. One Congressional Quarterly journalist wrote that few of the senior Democrats “even bothered to speak against term limits for chairmen or the end to proxy voting, ideas they had fought against bitterly for years” (Cloud 1995, 13). Cloud quotes Montana Democrat Pat Williams as saying, “Democrats should have done this if we could have, but we couldn’t…. We had a stake in continuing the status quo” (ibid.). Although the whole Republican Conference supported the change of rules, many veteran Republicans were not enthusiastic about the reforms being pushed by freshman Republicans and Democrats for lobbying, gift, and campaign reform. The new majority leader, Dick Armey, maneuvered to prevent these measures from coming to the floor. Nevertheless, when the Senate took action on lobbying and gift reform in July 1995, the pressure coming from House Democrats and junior Republicans began to overwhelm House Republican leadership. Freshmen were threatening to join Democrats in attaching the lobbying and gift reforms to the fiscal 1996 legislative branch spending bill. Recognizing leadership’s lack of adequate support in the rank and file, Armey quieted the freshman rebels by promising to bring the issues to a vote on the floor by mid-November 1995 (CQ Almanac 1995, I–38 -I– 44). Once Armey promised to let the gift reform measure get to the floor there was little leadership could do to prevent the inevitable, since reform promoters were backing the measure as an internal House resolution. However, in the matter of lobbying reform, the House was

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working on legislation that would have to be passed by the Senate and signed by the President. Therefore, House leaders pursued a strategy in which they attempted to facilitate amendments that might result in a lobbying bill the President would veto. But the amendment strategy did not have enough support to carry it in the face of concerted effort by House GOP moderates, GOP freshmen, and Democrats. When it was clear that there was no stopping the measure, all members got behind it. The House version of lobbying reform passed unanimously on November 29, 1995. The House then cleared the Senate version (S 1060), and the President signed it into law on December 19. The lobbying reforms provided tighter definitions of lobbying, and required more reporting and disclosure.7 The law also created new enforcement powers and mechanisms. With regard to gift reform, it was Speaker Gingrich who proposed the final form of the new House resolution. This resolution (H Res 250) went beyond the one enacted by the Senate and prohibited all gifts except from family and close friends (ibid.). The choice of Republicans to reform House rules in ways that cost their party some flexibility helped divert attention from the fact that the House Republican Conference was centralizing power in the Speaker. Another benefit of the reforms for House Republicans was the stimulation of goodwill among those who monitored Congress closely. Although the reforms were tactically shrewd, new Republicans apparently did not spend enough time thinking about the difference between House Democrats acquiescing on internal reforms that cut into Republican powers, and Democrats caving in on policy that was sensitive to the party’s support base. Nowhere was this more true than in the matter of environmental policy. Junior Republicans seemed to gloss over the fact that the Contract boldly spelled out the nature of the key internal reforms, whereas it only hinted diplomatically at the rollback of environmental regulations. Furthermore, the internal reforms only affected the operation of Congress, whereas the goal of environmental regulation rollback potentially affected people’s quality of life. As Fenno (1997) points out, the inexperience of the Republicans as the majority party may have deprived them of an awareness that the Contract mixed different types of proposed changes. Claiming a blanket mandate for highly different things contained in one document is not realistic. Senior House Republicans and moderates spoke directly to this point arguing that they saw the Contract as a promise to debate the issues on the floor, modify them as seemingly appropriate, and vote on the refined products

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(Salant 1995). As Republicans moved from internal reform to budgetary policy, and then on to environmental policy, they discovered that public support was not undifferentiated across all planks of the Contract. The public was ambivalent or highly divided in more than a few matters. As Fenno points out, “At the time of the budget confrontation their experience with the Contract was the only governing experience they had known. It left them, after one hundred days of success, with a heady but false sense of their power and a false sense of their accomplishment” (Fenno 1997, 41). ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY During his special address at the opening of the 104th Congress, Speaker Gingrich interpreted the eighth plank of the Contract with America as a promise to roll back government regulations. Many conservative Republicans apparently read this into the eighth plank and thought the public would support such action. However, moderate Republicans and Democrats were convinced that the public did not want to see sharp revisions in environmental policy, only carefully directed refinements to update obsolete laws and to provide better efficiency in regulatory efforts. (Senior staffer for moderate Republican) Republicans kept hearing complaint after complaint about burdensome environmental regulations. Instead of trying to fine-tune and fix the laws, Republicans tried to make wholesale changes. They approached problems with a meat clever instead of a scalpel. Perhaps they have learned a lesson. They were being hypersensitive to their constituents. (Democrat legislator) The public did not want an environmental rollback; they were tired of excessive paperwork and delays. They were not frustrated with the regulations but with how the regulations were managed. (Senior staffer) If you ask the public about a particular environmental regulation, you find support that is hidden when asking a general question about overregulation. This is something Republicans should have learned from the Reagan years but didn’t. Reagan said, “I’m against government regulation,” and everyone applauded. But when Reagan let it be known that he was against environmental regulation, people

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Moderates argue that most of the nation’s environmental policy was written by Democrats who became too fond of their accomplishments to tinker with them to prevent policy obsolescence. One example relates to pesticide residues on agricultural products. Congress wrote laws in the 1970s regulating the sale of some items with any pesticide residue. But, continuing advances in science made it possible in the 1990s to identify pesticide residues at 1/1000 or less of the levels discernable years earlier. This effectively made old laws much more stringent with the passage of time, and made it difficult for farmers to use pesticides in ways not associated with meaningful health risks. Moderate Republicans argued that the public wanted a new majority party with the willpower to refine the laws and make them as beneficial to quality of life as originally intended. These moderates accused conservatives of trying to capitalize upon the “mandate idea” as an excuse for gutting regulations on behalf of free market economics.8 Several things went wrong for the Republicans on their environmental policy agenda during the first eighteen months of the 104th Congress. First, conservatives took legislative action before conducting surveys on how the general public would react to specific environmental policy changes. Initially, they were content that their core Republican constituencies were calling for dramatic action. Second, House Republicans used strong rhetoric about the need to reduce excessive protections; in the process, they frightened many people. They came across as being the opponents of environmental protection rather than having a positive environmental agenda. Third, conservatives thought that the small moderate wing of the House GOP would cave in to their policy wishes when put to the test. Conservatives failed to realize that moderates have their own set of policy principles. Fourth, conservatives overlooked the fact that environmental policy cuts differently across the various regions of the country. This is true not only in terms of prevailing constituent ideology, but also in regard to how environmental regulations affect the quality of life. As one veteran legislator observed, it took a while for Republicans to realize that there were no environmental policy planks in the Contract, and that many of them had run differently on the environment in their own districts. Fifth, conservatives wanted to move fast on environmental policy changes like they did on internal

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reform; they did not want to invest time in educating the public on the reasoning behind their agenda. Finally, inexperienced members saw no need for extended bipartisan negotiation. They were content with the idea of forced action, even if it meant attaching major pieces of environmentally sensitive legislation as riders to omnibus appropriations bills. (Legislative director) Republicans did not see how high the environment was on people’s radar screens. They did not put enough emphasis upon quality of life. (Legislative director) In the context of environmental issues, the GOP listens too much to traditional Republican constituencies.

A brief review of the progress of environmentally related bills in the 104th Congress is instructive. Less than three months into the session, the House passed a regulatory overhaul bill (277–141). But it was too strong for the Senate and died when Senate backers could not muster enough support in July 1995. Meanwhile, one of Gingrich’s top lieutenants, Tom DeLay, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that he could not think of a single environmental regulation he liked. The antiregulation actions of House conservatives began to increasingly hurt Republicans in politically moderate districts. In May 1995, House Republicans rewrote the Clean Water Act. Again, failure to properly estimate the Senate’s proclivities produced a bill that could not find Senate support. All the House Republicans gained from their effort was the label of being dirty-water proponents. In July 1995, conservatives tried to attach a seventeen-provision rider to the fiscal 1996 appropriations bill. These riders, if passed, would have undercut the ability of the EPA to enforce environmental protections. However, fifty-one Republican moderates and sympathizers broke ranks to provide a three-vote margin to eliminate the riders. At this point it became clear that conservatives did not have adequate votes to force a radical overhaul of environmental policy. (Legislative director) Some in the House say that the defeat of the riders on environmental regulation was the defining moment of the session. The provisions in the riders were too controversial; they should have been put into bills that could be properly debated without so much haste.

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Legislative Learning (104th freshman) In the beginning we decided to push the envelope in terms of commonsense environmentalism because we knew the Senate would balance it out. We went to the extreme in the House, knowing that it would come back to the middle in conference. So, there was some politics that masqueraded as policy. And we got hit hard for it politically.

The failure of the rider strategy made many junior members look too aggressive and insensitive. The point was reinforced in October when conservatives failed to come to agreement with Republican moderates concerning a major revision of the Endangered Species Act approved by the House Resources Committee. A similar fate befell a revised Superfund bill in November. Bills carrying changes of a more incremental nature would have provided less to fight over. But, in overreaching, conservative Republicans delayed success on many fronts. Gingrich observed this, stating that Republicans “mishandled the environment all spring and summer” (Freedman, 1996, 2919).9 He promised to develop a GOP task force on the environment in the spring (1996) to create a “proactive, positive” environmental agenda for House Republicans (ibid.). Before the task force could accomplish its assignment, the House stumbled over a couple public lands bills. Still, the task force quickly made a difference as it got underway mid-spring. The task force was co-chaired by moderate Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) and conservative Richard Pombo (R-Calif.). This combination did not create happy relations, but did lay a foundation for compromise on policy-making. Before long, conservatives were doing a better job of taking moderates’ views into consideration. The result was seen in bills less difficult for Democrats to accommodate. In July 1996, the Senate approved a House bill to update pesticide regulations. The President signed the bill, and many environmentalists acknowledged that the new legislation provided some needed improvements. In August, there was another success for House Republicans. This time the Senate and the President went along with the House’s revision of the safe drinking water law. Two more notable successes soon followed. In September the House provided a major revision of the nation’s commercial fishery laws. In October, an omnibus parks and land bill cleared when conservatives compromised some of their objectives. Thus, as 1996 drew to a close, House Republicans were able to claim several major accomplishments on the environmental front.

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Some of the progress in the House on environmental policy was stimulated by the pressure of an impending election. House Republicans saw that their reelection odds would be improved if they could show some clear progress in a policy area where they were reportedly weak. But the successes also reflected the acquisition of legislative learning—especially by leadership and the large freshman class. This learning involved a discounting of the claimed mandate on regulatory rollback; a greater appreciation of the value of incremental strategies; enlarged interest in bipartisan dialogue; more regard to the political situation in the Senate and the Oval Office; increased recognition of the need to accommodate regional differences; greater appreciation of the need for public relations work; and more effort to build consensus within the Conference. Comments from House observers along this line are instructive. (Legislative director) Eventually, some of the freshmen came to realize that many of the Americans who supposedly agreed with the need for regulatory reform on environmental policy only agreed as long as the reform was abstract and nonpartisan. As soon as the reforms were attributed to the partisan activities of the GOP, Democrats were no longer supportive of the reforms. This was a hard lesson for the freshmen to learn. (Legislative director) There are some basic reasons the Republicans were more successful on the environmental front late in the second session of the 104th Congress than in the first session. First, they learned that the public was more moderate on the environment than they thought. Second, they learned that legislating is about making compromises. Third, they learned they would have to work with the President, and that the environment is not an area where they would have the high ground if they got into a public spat with him. Fourth, they discovered that legislating is not an all-or-nothing game.

Republicans were probably correct in discerning a mandate for internal reforms. Also, Republicans may have correctly perceived widespread interest in updating obsolete environmental regulations. However, their preoccupation with vocal conservative constituents apparently caused them to confuse partisan demands for dramatic regulatory rollbacks with the will of the general public. Republican leadership contributed to the party’s confusion as they sought to

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manufacture support for changes they preferred. Republicans could have commissioned survey organizations to field-test public opinion on the specific environmental rollbacks they had in mind. But Republican leadership was looking for an occasion to do what it thought was best. In the process, leadership overreached. When Speaker Gingrich recognized the seriousness of the Conference’s error on environmental policy, he tried to encourage House Republicans to strategically moderate their agenda on environmental regulations. His endeavor met with only partial success, because many of the 104th freshmen felt they had a more significant obligation to their core constituents (to whom they had made promises) than they had to Republican leadership. It was only when circumstances convinced junior Republicans that the whole revolution was at risk that they made adjustments at the margins, leading to the successful environmental policy revisions that could have come earlier and with less pain. Unfortunately, much of the unnecessary turmoil and risk was the result of a misplaced perception of a regulatory rollback mandate. THE JEOPARDY ASSOCIATED WITH MANDATE PERCEPTIONS The trouble that can come from mandate perceptions is also evident in the matter of fiscal policy. What would have happened had the Republicans succeeded in forcing Clinton to capitulate to their budget terms under the constraints of a partial government shutdown? The Republicans could have claimed victory, but would such a victory have injured their public image even more than the injury they suffered in losing the contest to Clinton? The President’s victory in this negotiation reassured the American public that a Democrat President could serve as an effective check upon a Republican Congress that might be tempted to say “my way or the highway.” An effective Oval Office check could encourage American voters to keep Republicans in control of Congress, the thought being that Republicans are presently more willing to address the institution’s problems than recent Democrat House members. If Clinton had capitulated during the partial government shutdown episode, voters may have come to fear that Republicans are such determined idealists on behalf of their policy objectives that they cannot be efficiently checked even by a Democrat President. In this scenario, voters may have returned control of Congress to the Democrats in 1996, retaining

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Clinton, perhaps, because of his turn toward the political middle. The point here is that the perception of a mandate may be dangerous to the political success of politicians who invest too much in the mandate idea. Not only did this perception endanger the House Republicans in 1994, but a similar perception nearly cost Clinton his job after one term. Both survived largely because they came to discount their earlier perceptions of a political mandate, but nearly crashed because they did not know how to properly interpret their wins.10 Richard Fenno argues this point rather strongly. Forty consecutive years as the minority party in the House left the Republicans, as of November 1994, totally without firsthand political experience of two essential sorts: first, experience in interpreting electoral victory and, second, experience in governing the country…. [This] led the new majority to make serious mistakes…. House Republicans missed their golden governing opportunity and made possible the rehabilitation, resurgence, and reelection of Bill Clinton. (Fenno 1997, 3) An electoral interpretation that emphasized the incremental and instrumental nature of their governing opportunity would have constrained them to be cautious and selective in setting their legislative agenda. In the longer run, what they most needed to accomplish was to retain their control over the terms of the national policy debate while also convincing an uncertain electorate that the country would function safely and smoothly in their hands, (ibid., 8)

The claim of a partisan mandate by House leaders may help them organize and control the action of Conference members, but it may also undercut the spirit of incrementalism that makes it possible for many small victories to be linked together year after year. Thus, the claim of a mandate on policy issues may be dangerous for those who wish to govern over the long-term. It may be very feasible and even advantageous to claim a mandate on something like the internal reform of Congress, for this is not an inherently partisan matter. But even here, the claim of a reform mandate may become mixed up with the idea of a policy mandate, resulting in legislators listening too much to their own claims and not enough to the wishes of constituents that represent more than one-party interests. This is something the House Republicans of the 104th Congress had to learn the hard way, and it nearly cost them control of the chamber in 1996. As Koszczuk (1996c,

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3198–199) writes, “House Republicans may have read too much into the election that brought them to power two years ago, but they have a good grasp of the meaning of Nov. 5 [1996]. It was not a revolution, it was a second chance…. Voters have signaled that centrism and moderation will be rewarded.” MEMBER COOPERATION AIDED BY LEARNING AND RELATIONSHIPS The learning of the finer points of legislative survival came late to many members of the 104th freshman class. Some learning did come, however, in time to preserve their seats in the congressional elections of 1996, and keep their party in the majority in the House. It came after class cohesion had cracked, but developed in time to prevent the crack from widening into a chasm. As one 104th freshman explained: “When I was running for the House in 1994 people were saying, ‘Government is too big, it must get smaller.’ Or, ‘I’m fed up with the status quo.’ By contrast, in 1996 the message was that we were going too fast and scaring some people.” The representative then acknowledged that the slower pace of the 105th Congress had its advantages. A senior staffer reinforced the idea that Republicans struggled to learn just how far the public was content to let them go: When Republicans tried to move beyond the core agenda, the public no longer felt secure that they were acting in a delegate capacity. Many people did not have confidence in Republicans as elected trustees, and felt they were too much under the influence of big business.

The legislative learning acquired by 104th freshmen helped secure for moderate and conservative members of the class a sense that they could continue to work with one another in the 105th Congress. Moderates were mollified by the idea that their most conservative classmates were willing to marginally compromise their principles when faced with the realization that by maintaining their dogmatic stance they would likely bring down their party in the chamber. Strong conservatives were slightly humbled by the realization that they had miscalculated the public sentiment in certain areas like environmental policy. Conservative incrementalists between the two groups helped draw the others together. But, even with the learning in the last part

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of the 104th Congress, class cohesion was not to be as high in the 1994 freshmen’s second term as in their original term. Survival of Class Identity Is Boosted by Subcommunity Activity The questions of how much and how fast the freshmen would learn, and whether there would be a class left when the first term expired are interesting questions because they lead to an understanding of how the identity of a class can survive even when the class cohesion declines. The 104th freshman class survived into its sophomore term not as the tightly knit group that took office two years earlier, but as a set of a half-dozen communities with distinct proclivities, yet sharing certain highly prized fundamental interests. The 104th freshmen’s visible activities in these communities preserved much of the reputation of the class, even though the class as a formal organization declined considerably late in its freshmen term, as well as into its sophomore term (see Table 8, on page 101). Due to the tendency of many of the members to be active in more than one recognizable grouping, the class cannot be simply resolved into component parts. Membership in the subcommunities is too fluid and participation in group activities is too issue-oriented and contextsensitive to allow the groups to be conceptualized as cliques within the class. Among the notable groupings in the class there is the Gang of Eleven and its supporters on the right, conservative incrementalists in the middle, and moderate conservatives (associated with the moderate Lunch Bunch) to their left (Salant 1995). The moderate conservatives in the middle rally behind both groups at will, although their voting is closer to the voting of those on the far right (Doherty and Katz 1998). Sometimes the support group for the Gang of Eleven swells to twenty-five or even thirty, whereas on certain issues the dozen or so moderates will find another dozen 104th freshmen pulling alongside. Then, too, both the Gang of Eleven and the moderates will at times come to the ideological middle of the class, creating one big class seventy-three members strong in the freshman year, and about fifty-nine members strong in the sophomore term.11 The communities within the 104th freshman class are not based just upon relative position on the ideological spectrum. There are subcommunities in the class that are issue-aligned and policy-oriented. These groups have a core membership, like the Gang of Eleven and the moderate groups, but they also have a fluid participation that may

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double their size on some occasions. Three of the most prominent subcommunities during the 104th Congress were CATS, the Family Caucus, and the New Federalists. When these groups take action, they do not appear on the floor of the House as the New Federalists or the CATS. All that is seen by other members in the chamber is a concerted effort by perhaps ten to thirty 104th freshmen to push some point. It is assumed by observers that other freshmen may be sympathetic to the ones standing forward. So, the exact size of the 104th freshmen movement is not usually discernable, especially when it is coordinated with the actions of members of the 103rd freshman class. To onlookers, it appears as though the 104th freshman class itself is acting, whereas members of the class may realize that the planning for the floor action was largely limited to participants in one of the prominent subcommunities. This creates the situation where the identity and reputation of the class is preserved beyond what the class can actually offer in terms of cohesive planning or block voting. The perception of class persists because there is no other seemingly connected group of thirty to sixty members in the House that can be as clearly recognized by shared interests and a sense of identity and mission. The existence of a class in subcommunities is not new. Loomis describes how the 94 th Democrat House freshmen organized themselves through various policy caucuses, as well as through the Democratic Study Group (DSG). They further organized through their own class caucus initially called the “New Members Caucus,” and later labeled the “94th Caucus” (Loomis, 1988, 31–33;149–53). This caucus continued to function for several years. It remained useful not only as a forum for communication with leadership, and as an aid for furthering reelection concerns, but also as a means of addressing policy problems that did not fit into the jurisdiction of any single subcommittee (ibid., 151). Class Identity through Member Friendships Interviews with class members and their staffers produced evidence of goodwill and friendly tolerance by conservatives and moderates toward one another. This was interesting, since the interviews took place after the 1997 rebellions against leadership on procedural votes—rebellions that temporarily split the class. Granted, the interview work proceeded the July 1997 coup attempt that reportedly generated disenchantment among some class members toward ideological purists in the class.

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Nevertheless, evidence suggests that ties stronger than ideology inform these relationships and contribute to their maintenance. The class continues to exist in the 105th Congress, but not to much effect in its symbolic form as the “organized sophomore class.” The sophomore class organization, although still formalized by considerations like class officers and occasional poorly attended meetings, is not a class in a working sense. Formally, the class has “gone poof,” to borrow a phrase from one of its members, and to note what is increasingly being written about it (Doherty and Katz 1998). However, the class in its sophomore incarnation continues to exist through the interconnectedness and social intimacy of members and staffers. Members may not talk “class” as much, but they still spend a great deal of time talking together. The picture here is similar to that of the “Watergate Babies” freshman class of 1974. Loomis (1988, 45) writes that “common experiences” contributed to the development of “overlapping friendship networks” in this class, some of which remained intact a decade later. The passage of time has made the 105th sophomores more keenly aware of their differences, but has also supplied them with insights about how best to cooperate. Experience has also provided understanding on how to give the space and deference necessary to sustain goodwill. All this sustains the possibility of concerted efforts on issues where these legislators do have powerful shared policy interests. The 104th freshman class exists in the 105th Congress, not so much as a formal organization or structured body, but as a group of legislators and staffers who have lasting friendships and communication advantages within their circles. These people are more easily organized together on behalf of policy interests than any other House grouping of similar size. This phenomenon results from their initial legislative learning experiences that took place under conditions where class identity was of enormous importance. These experiences habitualized communication and trust. In the words of one freshmen, “On the floor my classmates and I have an intimacy that isn’t the case with other members.” Of course, this picture is not without flaws. There are a few members of the class who have significantly broken ties with the class. But to generalize, this is the picture this project’s interviews produce. The Importance of Staffers to the Survival of Class Identity Few political scientists seem to have realized that the continued vitality of a class in terms of cohesive action may be nearly as dependent upon

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relationships among the members’ staffers as it is among the members themselves. Class identity depends largely upon what the members do on the floor and in leadership meetings, and how visible their teamwork is to sympathizers and opponents. Class cohesion is to a good degree rooted in the work and communication of staffers. This work makes it possible for members to get on the same page and obtain a public identity together. Although the 104th freshman class continues to exist because of the overlapping subcommunities that members participate in, the degree to which the class has operational effectiveness is highly dependent upon the relationships of staffers. Senior staffers were asked to put various members and key staffers on the party’s ideological spectrum. One important discovery is that relatively few of the class members have constructed their office staffing from only one narrow band of the ideological spectrum.12 This is not to argue that ideological diversity reigns in freshman offices. It does not! But, there clearly are differences between staffers. This is where the real dynamic of continuing freshman class cohesion kicks in, and it is a big story missed by academics and journalists alike. Mainline conservative staffers are found in the offices of radical conservative members as well as moderate members. Some of these staffers wish their offices leaned less one way or the other. These staffers get involved professionally with staffers in other offices, and become the conduit to their offices of the thinking that most prominently pervades other freshmen offices. Many of these staffers are more policy-ambitious than their representatives. Furthermore, in some cases they are more concerned about policy than the reelection of their boss. Why? Because when one member loses an election, a staffer often has a chance to go to work for another office without any color of disloyalty. Job changes like these often result in higher positions. There are many openings each year, since a fair number of staffers leave each year to pursue opportunities not in member offices. Many of these staffers aggressively network, and they involve themselves in strategic planning with one another so that they can maximize the clout of their preferred voting bloc. These staffers tell other staffers when their member is beginning to waiver on an issue, or when some timely piece of information or intervention from other members might modify the office’s plan of action. In sum, although the formal class organization may decline to little more than symbolic status, and although class members may lose their cohesiveness as they come to understand more fully their differences, the class retains

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a surprising amount of informal organizational robustness due to staffer activity. The growing division among GOP sophomores in the 105th Congress is not as wide as it appears on the surface. Granted, the class can be divided for analytical purposes into the far right wing, the moderate-to-conservative left wing, and the conservatives in the middle who are increasingly tolerant of incremental politics. Yet, even those who recognize this growing factionalization in the class also acknowledge that the class remains fairly close on mission and vision (Doherty and Katz 1998). One problem with other research designs is that they focus on the class too strictly in terms of the sentiments of individual members, while failing to examine the class closely enough in terms of the similarity and differences between member offices. By thinking of the 104th freshman class as consisting of offices rather than mere House members (changing the unit of analysis somewhat, as has been done in this study), an important door is opened toward comprehending how the class survives, and why the class continues to sustain a large reputation for importantly affecting what happens in the House. The range of sentiments and vision among key staffers in the member offices has a great deal of overlap. As the staffers communicate and interact, their work keeps most of the class fairly close in spite of combative or judgmental member rhetoric on certain volatile issues. LEGISLATIVE LEARNING IN THE 104TH FRESHMAN CLASS The experience of the 104th GOP freshmen on the environmental policy front demonstrates the importance of legislative learning. During the second session, Gingrich’s ability to lead the House Conference was constrained by the learning junior members still needed to acquire. For many of the freshmen, the needed learning could come only through the school of hard knocks. Freshmen who felt they were standing on ideological principle were not about to overtly compromise their “high ground” when moderate peers suggested tactical stances that would generate good press. When some of the conservative freshmen did begin to compromise on environmental legislation, it was because they found important offsets to principles, such as legislative productivity, responsive representation, sensitivity to political contexts, and electoral survival for the sake of incremental policy-making. For some of the freshmen, the experience of representing constituents across the political

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spectrum in their districts began to produce new ways of looking at problems. When running the first time for Congress, candidates are most likely to hear from their core supporters. Once in office, legislators hear from a much wider constituency. The result is a broadened perceptive and more tolerance for competitive ideas (Doherty and Katz 1998). Learning the Majority Party Role One of the advantages of interviewing freshmen and their staffers after the completion of the first congressional term is that the interviewees are able to analyze their actions more reflectively than they could at an earlier point. A surprising frankness was noted, especially among senior staffers, regarding the hazards of inexperience in the majority party role—a concern also emphasized by congressional scholar Richard Fenno (1997). Staffers and senior members freely admitted that many of the 104th freshmen were political neophytes when they arrived. They idealistically saw themselves as policy-makers, but did not grasp how difficult it is to make good policy. Freshmen backed up this assessment. Some pointed out that a good number of class members had little idea initially how to introduce a bill. Another freshman observed that once they acquired a bare bones understanding of the system the freshmen were “like a group of kids in a candy store that couldn’t stop eating.” He went on to say, “We had all this power. So, we tried to do everything at once. And we thought we had more of a philosophical majority than we did.” One staffer even said her boss did not know what the acronym “GOP” meant prior to running for office. Several staffers observed that the need for learning went beyond the freshmen. Even experienced House Republicans faced important challenges. Now, “instead of throwing bombs, they had to learn how to catch and dismantle them.” In the words of another, “Republicans had developed a pattern of attacking the institution for forty years; consequently, when they came into power they were uncertain what to do. The skills they had honed were no longer relevant.” Many had bunker mentalities, and were largely without knowledge of “the majority party levers and psychological ropes.” A good number of the freshmen were small business types, suspicious of Washington, and deeply troubled by its political operations. Suddenly, they were

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the government, and many of them did not know how to move from the role of critic to engineer. (105th freshman) Our party moved so fast in the 104th Congress that we were not able to articulate what we were doing. We made it possible for the Democrats to succeed in putting their spin on what was happening. A majority party can get caught up in getting things done rather than explaining actions. A minority party can just scurry around and create problems. (104th freshman) I had never served in a state elective office when I wasn’t in the majority. My biggest surprise in coming here was how unprepared folks were to be in the majority. They had no idea. Most of them had never been in a majority in any incarnation. I don’t think I initially understood how important it was to be in the majority because I had never been in the minority. (Legislative director) In our traditional minority role, we were accustomed to being able to yell our opinions without being heard by the media. Once we gained majority status in the House, we made the mistake of yelling loudly and using controversial rhetoric. The media reacted like we were using a megaphone. We soon discovered that the press listens more closely to the majority party. We discovered the importance of using majority party language.

The Learning Curve As an Explanation for Congressional Action In explaining what happened in the 104th Congress, many freshmen and staffers chose to position the need for learning and the effect of the learning curve as more important to policy outcomes and internal House politics than institutional structure, House rules, leadershipmember relations, distribution of power, or party relations. All of these considerations are undoubtedly important, but they exerted effects that were modified by the nature of what the large GOP freshman group was learning as time passed. (This is a significant oversight on the part of most political scientists.)13 In the first session some of the freshmen thought it was their way or the highway. By late in the second session many were beginning to understand that they did not have the kind of mandate they initially thought (Sinclair 1997, 26, 28). They

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also learned that parochial interests can be very important to legislators’ reelection bids, committees serve important purposes, and bipartisan legislating can be a very good thing. When they saw that “every dinosaur they went after had a huge constituency to support it,” they began to grasp the need to master “political chess” and “get some issues off the media’s radar screen.” (Experienced legislator) At first the freshmen thought everything was black and white; then, they began to realize the public does not see things this way. They began to understand the need of making a place at the table for the minority party. (Chief of staff) The freshmen are increasingly aware of the importance of constituency service and casework. They are beginning to appreciate incumbency advantage, and are learning how to cultivate it. (Legislative director) In the early going, the freshmen were excessively reliant upon campaign staffs; now, they are hiring people with more credentials and experience.14

Learning to Be Incrementalists One important part of the learning process regards the value of the incremental approach. This is an area of learning that Fenno argues crippled the 104th freshmen because it was so late in coming (Fenno 1997, 46). Gradualism in policy-making seemed unethical to many of the freshmen in their early service because it gives an excuse to legislators to stay a long time to get the job done. In the minds of many freshmen, long service equals careerism, and careerism in legislative service results in members of Congress going native in Washington, D.C. When one opposes the idea of big central government, then one is not comfortable with the idea of legislators remaining for a long time in a circle of associates whose view of the world revolves around what the central authorities can do to solve private problems. Thus, when freshmen talked about the benefits of learning to govern, they often offered reservations, like “in most senses learning to govern is a good thing.”

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(Chief of staff) We are beginning to appreciate that reducing government is like eating an elephant: When it comes time to put the idea into action, one must do it one bite at a time. Some programs were twenty years in the making, and it may take equally long to wean the public from their dependence on these programs. (104th freshman) We’ve had a lesson in practical politics that says we can’t force our way and accomplish our objectives overnight. We have to be more deliberate in how we handle things politically and legislatively.

Learning the Importance of Public Relations Work Forty years of minority party service accustomed Republicans to explaining their votes largely in terms of opposition to Democrats’ goals of increasing the number and size of government programs. Following the 1994 GOP win of the House, public relations demands upon Republicans suddenly increased. The public and media wanted to understand the rationale behind the majority party’s approach to crafting legislation. The public also wanted to know where the Republicans were not trying to go—since the public does not immediately trust a new party in power. But, many of the Republicans did not understand this. Republicans did realize that owing to constraints that produce strategic and circumstantial voting on some bills there is a need to justify votes to the public. Nevertheless, with such a rapid pace in the first session of the 104th Congress, some of the freshmen fell down in getting out their explanations. Republicans, accustomed to talking to businesspeople about profits, did not adequately comprehend that the Democrats would bring to the public various emotionally based arguments against scaling back their regulations. Republicans had to learn the hard way to generate their own emotional arguments, and not ones based upon the idea of money lost. Many members of the GOP struggled to learn that successful majority party governance requires intensive efforts to sell the public on certain ideas. When a majority party fails to sell its plans, then minority party arguments become more credible to the fencesitting segment of the public, sometimes frightening them into opposing the plans of the majority party. Furthermore, the majority party must cultivate the focused support of the constituency groups that stand to

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benefit the most from new legislation. Republicans erred when they took for granted that the business community would help them promote arguments for reducing environmental regulations. They also failed to discern that many people in business want stiff regulations, and may even benefit by them to the degree regulations create cost barriers that new competitors must surmount. As President Clinton learned when pushing his national health care agenda, what the public wants in theory does not necessarily accord with what the public wants when it comes to taxation or limitations upon personal choice. The freshmen came to the House believing that the public was tired of excessive government regulations, especially in matters of environmental regulatory policy. The mistake the Republicans made was listening too much to their business constituency, and allowing their sensitivity to small business owners to cloud their objectivity regarding how the general public would react if they felt one party might open the door to increased pollution in order to increase wealth for a core constituency. Republicans had to learn the hard way that although public sentiment has taken a philosophical turn that is somewhat conservative, the public remains programmatically liberal when it comes to preserving the benefits to which they are accustomed. Furthermore, Republicans faced the public relations challenge of learning how to deal with a public accustomed to social problems being addressed through government programs. Republicans aim to put increased responsibility on the shoulders of private citizens, but the public is not always ready to accept added responsibilities. Learning to Avoid Shortcuts The freshman wanted to go fast in fleshing out their new policy agenda. Many of them forgot for a time that one of the reasons the public put them in power was because people were tired of seeing the minority party steamrolled in legislative politics. This oversight was compounded by a career-linked blind spot for many Republicans. A substantial number of the freshmen operate their own businesses, and tend to trust the perspectives of people who represent business. Somewhat blinded by occupational bias, Republicans made the mistake of allowing industry lobbyists to put their language directly into bills the GOP introduced in the House. This created a serious perception problem for the GOP among people who became aware of the matter. It was a mistake

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politically as well as policy-wise. Politically, it showed that Republicans were inexperienced leaders, in too much of a hurry to change policy, naive concerning how they would be taken advantage of by the business lobby, and insensitive to the fostering of comity that comes from allowing the other party to have input at the early stages of bill development. Policy-wise, it led to poorly crafted legislation that departed from established policy too radically, or set business interests ahead of the general public’s interests. Now, with continued learning, even some of the most conservative members of the 104th Republican freshman class are beginning to appreciate that the Founders may have known what they were doing when they formulated a system of government with checks and balances to slow down all types of revolutionary change. The public can change only at a reasonable pace without being convulsed in the process. Republicans championed this concept when the Democrats were in control. Some even argued that one of the fundamental concepts of political conservatism is very gradual change. But when the conservatives came to power, they wanted to find every shortcut available and push their preferred changes forward at a breakneck pace. It was a double standard, and some of the freshmen came to realize it. Not all interviewees saw the freshmen as being in a huge rush. A few staffers argued that the freshmen had the appearance of being very impatient because they did not understand how to work their agenda in the committee system. Consequently, they tried to do too much on the floor, and often fought their battles with excessively strong language. In the 105th Congress they are learning to work successfully in committees; hence, they are not creating as much of an impression of trying to go around the system. Learning to Appreciate What Senior Members Bring Some observers remarked that the 104th freshmen did not want much guidance from older members. They had the answers. Some acted like prima donnas. Most seemed excessively self-aware. Many of the freshmen did not seem to understand why the party could not achieve its objectives quickly without wasting effort on a complicated legislative process. Apparently, it did not occur to many of them that their policy dogmatism could lead to situations of total impasse, possibly jeopardizing the party’s majority status in the House.

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Legislative Learning (Senior member) In the first six months freshmen would say, “Well, Mr. Chairman, I didn’t come here for the status quo, I came here to make changes; let the politics take care of themselves.” I would respond, “Okay, but if we lose your seat, and if I do not have your vote to make me chairman, you will have to bear part of that responsibility. Your voting affects our ability to set the agenda. So, wake up and be a team player, at least to some extent.” After the government shutdown, one could be a little more pragmatic with these people.

One staffer for a moderate Republican argued that it is too simplistic to view the freshmen as being dogmatic just because they had a high opinion of their importance. His position is that in the first session party leadership stimulated this kind of dogmatism in the freshmen. “Leadership had to be hit in the head with a two-by-four to see that another approach was needed.” In sympathy with this view, a senior Republican who had taken some heat from the freshmen pointed out that it is not realistic to expect freshmen to know how to deal with opposition without months of experience. He said, “There is more pressure upon new legislators today than when I started. As the newcomers learn, the quality of their work will improve. To be an accomplished legislator takes time.” CONCLUSION It is evident that learning how to legislate effectively is important for House newcomers, especially those without previous political experience. Nevertheless, it appears that members of the 104th freshman class are making progress in learning to be productive legislators. The learning process is not neat and tidy: It is at times erratic and uneven across class membership. Over a year after the two government shutdown episodes, a small minority of the freshmen and senior staffers wish the party had taken a firmer line and kept the government shut down. They believe that with a better public relations effort by Republicans, Clinton would not have gained the high ground in public opinion, and eventually would have caved in to Republican requests. They see little risk that a budget win accomplished in this way might generate even greater public opinion backlash than what occurred. On the other hand, learning is evident in that a large portion of the 105th sophomores are becoming incrementalists while holding on to their basic

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objectives. Some will stay only through the 106th Congress, having promised to retire after three terms. Others say they will leave after six terms. Impatience remains a distinguishing feature of at least half of the class, with over 60 percent of remaining class members voting for six-year term limits early in the 105th Congress (Doherty and Katz 1998). Nevertheless, as the interview data reveals (and a recent CQ special report confirms [Doherty and Katz 1998]), members of the class are increasingly able to reflect on past errors and appreciate tempered approaches to legislative service. This member introspection and public candor is an important indication of significant legislative learning. There is a risk in making evaluations about political learning, namely, that it is easy to see progress and change as an indication that whatever came before was relatively unproductive. Such a judgment may be unfounded, especially in light of the fact that the 104th Congress successfully addressed a large number of reform and policy issues that had been thorns in the side of Congress for years. What if the 104th freshmen had arrived on the Hill as incrementalists and deal-makers? What if they had not been risk-takers who insisted on change without delay? (Indeed, sixty-four Democrat freshmen came to the House in 1992 proclaiming to be reformers, but when they took a largely incremental approach, more than 25 percent were booted out in 1994 elections [Hook 1995a].) Although the inexperience and stubbornness of the 104th Republican freshmen made them look inept on some policy fronts, in other areas their unwillingness to bow to Washington politics as usual forced change. Thus, an argument can be made that the freshmen mission, combined with adequate numbers and legislative learning, resulted in a good deal of policy success. Fenno argued in Congressmen in Committees (1973) that political ambition in terms of the reelection goal was inadequate by itself to explain member behavior in Congress. My research shows the importance of the policy-making goal to member behavior among 104th GOP House freshmen. Nevertheless, there is evidence that legislative learning for some inexperienced Republican legislators may provide a constraint on how large a continuing premium is placed on the policy-making goal. This study finds that legislative learning leads toward a philosophical justification of compromise and incrementalism in legislative endeavors. Incrementalism, in turn, creates the necessity of longer stays in Congress in order to accomplish policy agendas. The effect is to partially restore the status of the reelection goal among

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some junior members as a necessary complement to the policy goal. On the other hand, interview data also supports Fenno’s finding that some legislators persevere in seeking policy-making opportunities as the focal point of their legislative endeavors. NOTES 1. Fenno’s study of Senator Dan Quayle (1989) illustrates how learning contributes to the development of legislative leadership skills. But, as some of Fenno’s other studies on senators show, legislative learning is complex, and some types of learning cannot be taken for granted. In reviewing Fenno’s works, Shafer (1994) writes that “Quayle and Specter are eager to learn, but Quayle picks up a lot, quickly, while Specter learns bits and pieces.” Shafer also concludes that Domenici and Andrews resist being taught, and Andrews eventually fails because he cannot discard early and obsolete learning. Fenno’s studies show the importance of legislative learning on the individual level. My study endeavors to apply Fenno’s general finding to the level of group politics. 2. One of the better known studies of freshman learning was a fourmonth two-wave panel study of the 91st House freshmen (Asher 1973). Asher twice interviewed 65 percent of the freshmen of both parties to assess freshman changes of attitude toward legislative norms identified by Matthews (1960) and others. The study’s goal was to see if applied learning affected freshman perceptions about the nature and value of specialization, reciprocity, comity, committee work, and apprenticeship. Asher did not find much learning of legislative norms, and concluded that modern freshmen appreciate appropriate norms before entering Congress (see Rohde 1988). Asher also noted that the 91st freshmen possessed above-average state legislative experience. 3. The present work argues that greater attention should be directed to the study of large majoritarian freshman classes, especially ones with a sense of mission or mandate. Large, aggressive, and politically inexperienced freshman classes can upset the knowledge equilibrium in the chamber. When a significant portion a majority party’s members have no legislative experience, any idealism they have regarding how their Conference should operate and proceed is likely to impinge upon the caucus’s actions. 4. The phrase “legislative learning curve” is intended to convey the idea that learning is cumulative and synergistic. New members may have a good deal of general knowledge about the institution and good policy, but it takes time for members to properly assemble piecemeal knowledge, as well as to learn discernment, strategy, and diplomacy in implementing their ideas.

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5. According to Katz (1997) the Contract promised eight procedural changes on the first day of the 104th Congress. 6. The Senate version of the CAA (S2) amended eleven statutes to apply to Congress: Age Discrimination in Employment Acts of 1967; Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; Civil Rights Act of 1964; Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988; Fair Labor Standards Acts of 1938; Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993; Labor-Management Dispute Procedures; Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970; Rehabilitation Acts of 1973; Veterans Re-employment Act of 1993; Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (CQ Almanac 1995, I–33). 7. There is considerable debate regarding the extent to which lobbying affects legislators. Ginsberg and Green (1986) see substantial direct effects for contributions from lobbying organizations, whereas others, like Wright (1990), find only modest or complex relations. Grenzke (1989) and AustinSmith (1995) argue for complex and often misunderstood effects, and Herndon (1982) and Gopoian (1984) emphasize that the benefits of access serve important purposes for lobbyists. Evidence continues to grow that lobbying and the contributions of lobbyists do make significant differences on some issues and in some contexts (Smith 1984; Denzau and Munger 1986; Fowler and Shaiko 1987). The tendency of popular literature is to depict lobbyists as having excessive access to legislators. Thus, 104th GOP freshmen came to Congress uncomfortable with the supposed influence of lobbyists on the institution. They intended to change this without delay, and did change it at the margins with lobbying reform legislation. 8. Conservative Republicans often claim that a slightly guided free market offers the best solution to many types of environmental problems. Instead of regulations they would like to see more incentives for private solutions. For an introduction to this literature see Anderson and Leal (1991) and Gray (1993). A more orthodox treatment of the politics of environmental policy can be found in Rosenbaum (1991). Landy, Roberts, and Thomas (1990) provide a crossover work by criticizing the methods of the EPA. A fine overview of leading environmental policy debates can be found in Kraft and Vig (1994). 9. This overview follows the fine outline of House activity on environmental legislation provided by Allan Freedman in CQ Weekly. 10. As one journalist observed, “The collective lesson of the last two elections seems to be that voters do not like extremes: Clinton was punished in the 1994 elections for policies that were too liberal, just as Republican lawmakers suffered a voter backlash in this [1996] election” (Koszczuk 1996c).

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11. The initial class count of seventy-three includes Frank Riggs, who served in the 102nd Congress, left the House, and returned in the 104th. The fifty-nine member 105th GOP sophomore class slipped to fifty-seven members by early 1998 (Doherty and Katz 1998). Sam Brownback climbed to the Senate. Sonny Bono died in a downhill skiing accident, and was replaced in the House by his wife, Mary Bono. 12. The ideological diversity of staffers in the offices of 104th House freshmen can be explained like this: On an ideological left/right scale of one to ten (where ten is the far right), a member with an eight rating will probably have middle-level and junior staffers that fit in the six to ten range. However, chiefs of staff and legislative directors will fit very close to the member’s ideological rating. Some of the diversity may be intentional from a human resource standpoint (to help with constituency services); but much of the diversity is likely unplanned and due simply to the challenges of finding people with both the right skills and closest ideological profiles. 13. Fenno’s (1997) “Learning to Govern” demonstrates the critical importance of legislative learning, but stops short of the conclusion that learning is an independent variable that political scientists can and should study along with other variables like goals, perceptions, rules, norms, structure, leadership, and partisan balance. Nevertheless, Fenno’s fine observations and arguments help prepare the way for the examination of learning to play a larger role in future legislative studies. 14. In part, the dependency of the freshmen upon party leadership in the early going was due to a shortage of experienced staffers that freshmen could hire—granted, some freshmen did not initially want staffers with Washington experience. The freshmen’s campaign personnel were loyal but had little conception of what to do tactically. They had no knowledge of the history of the Hill’s policy wars. Normally, a loss of institutional memory among staffers empowers representatives relative to staffers; however, most of the freshmen were so inexperienced themselves that this leverage did little for them. The real winners in terms of influence were the relatively small number of Republican staffers who had years of experience.

CHAPTER 11

Putting the 104th Freshman Class into Perspective

The freshmen of 1994 were more self-conscious of their class than any other class since the 1974 Watergate Babies. (Senior Gingrich aide)

RESEARCH FINDINGS CONFIRMED IN CONGRESSIONAL LITERATURE The secondary literature (newspapers, nonacademic journals, and magazines) provides images of the 1994 Republican freshmen consistent with this project’s research findings. This consistency prevails across the New York Times, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Magazine, Business Week, and similar sources where high-quality reporting is the standard. These sources indicate that during the 104th Congress the GOP freshmen were so driven by a sensed policy mandate that they took considerable risks to advance their policy agenda. They sought to build class coherence on behalf of their perceived mandate, and used Contract “principles” to find guidance for their actions (Hook 1994). Members on the right flank of the 104th GOP freshman class were exceedingly wary of Washington, and generally remain that way as 105th sophomores. During their first term, many of the freshmen were perceived by journalists to be “suicide bombers” and “true believers who behave as if they have nothing to lose.” An influential minority was depicted as “petulant

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in their refusal to compromise,” as manifest in their determination to stick by their original failed wish to eliminate several Cabinet departments (Henneberger and Gray 1997; Weisman 1997c). Some members of the 1994 class still insist that the real mistake with the GOP’s 1995 partial government shutdown is that House Republicans did not preserve the shutdown until Clinton capitulated (Doherty and Katz 1998). However, most of the class wishes the shutdown had never occurred, and desires to avoid similar incidents in the future. The importance of the class is widely acknowledged in the secondary literature. This class is one of only three majoritarian freshman classes in the House since 1950 with at least seventy members—the others being 1964 (seventy-one Democrats) and 1974 (seventy-five Democrats). The 104th class obtained a large measure of credit for providing political pressure that helped keep the Republicans on a reform course (Clymer 1997b). They were perceived as “the driving force” behind the Republican agenda (Dunham 1996), and as much more involved in the political process than previous classes (Morgan 1995). They were even portrayed as the muscle building testosterone of the House Republicans (per political scientist John Pitney Jr. in Dunham 1996, 27). Jack Kemp called them “the most important people in Washington” (Seeyle 1994). All of this was not lost upon the freshmen: They grew to have “an acute sense of their place in history” (Toner 1995), and bought into their own media publicity (Gibbs 1996). Some legislators felt this sense of group importance resulted in the freshmen becoming Newt’s Frankenstein, a perception that was aided by freshmen’s repeated statements that they were willing to stand up to their leadership and senior members (Gray 1995a). One freshman, Zack Wamp, was quoted in the New York Times as saying that “freshmen are more important than senior members, unless they are committee chairs or leadership” (Clymer 1995). The early penchant of the class was to choose “confrontation over compromise” (Dunham 1996), which was well noted by many journalists (Browning 1995; DeParle 1996; Hook 1995a; Hall 1996). Nevertheless, whereas many members of the class claimed principle in opposing compromise and incrementalism during the first session of the 104th, some gradually adopted this approach out of sensed necessity (Tumulty 1995; Koszczuk and Cassata 1996; Hager 1997). Sue Myrick, who said she would not compromise her principles, did establish a track record of adaptation when strongly called upon by

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party leadership (Bradsher 1995). Wishing to support this kind of teamwork, Roger Wicker (first president of the 104th GOP class) remarked, “Half of us were in the political process in one form or another before we came here. We’ve demonstrated the ability to compromise and negotiate several times this year” (Toner 1995). Also, after Wicker’s one-year leadership term expired, the class chose a second president, George Radanovich, known to favor consensusbuilding and some compromise (Koszczuk 1996a). Furthermore, in the 105th Congress there are signs that some of the social policy conservatives are becoming open to the idea of at least packaging their agenda in more moderate frameworks (Carney 1997a). Still, many members consider compromise an unhappy chore. Representative Mark Sanford remarked that the most frustrating thing about the House is how much compromise and logrolling is necessary to get anything done (Clymer 1997a). Part of the reason the 104th freshmen had so much difficulty with political compromise is because many members viewed themselves as more principled than pragmatic—perhaps overlooking the possibility that this might be an unforced choice (Tumulty 1995). Early in the 104th Congress, Speaker Gingrich repeatedly urged his troops to do the principled thing and complete the Contract mission in the 100 days promised (Hook 1995c). It made an impression on the new legislators. The freshmen were said to have surprised even business and industry backers with their emphasis on principles (Dunham 1996). Mark Neumann (R-Minn.) is said to have told members of the Appropriations Committee that they should place a higher premium on principle than on passing legislation to operate the federal government (Cohen 1997). Congruent with this, many of the freshmen claimed to stand “on principle” as a justification for the shutdown of some government offices just before Christmas 1995 (Clymer 1995). But, not all observers were convinced that these freshmen were principled, especially in their private lives. Richard Cohen (1995) noted a fair number of instances where freshmen preached one standard and seemed to live another—a theme that continues to draw some attention because of the class’s considerable divorce rate (Doherty and Katz 1998). But, in matters political, the class did make an enormous effort to stand by its declared principles, generally adjusting them only at the margins in the face of reelection risks. As one journalist noted, “Flexibility that doesn’t sacrifice bedrock principle is their new byword” (Dunham 1996, 31). Now,

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in the 105th Congress, “pragmatism” is also working its way into their vocabulary (Doherty and Katz 1998). Initially, the class had a strong perception of a mandate (Browning 1995; Hall 1996; Shear 1995), especially with regard to the theme of changing Washington (Gray 1995b). They held a high sense of mandated mission (Browing 1995), and took pride in being Washington outsiders (R.Cohen 1995; Merida and Cooper 1994). Henry Hyde, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, noted this and remarked that the 104th freshmen “came in empowered by this forty-year turnaround and everyone felt his or her mandate was wider and deeper and stronger than it really was” (Hall 1996). The idea that the freshmen overestimated their mandate has been reinforced in various articles, including one in the New York Times centered on the early second session home district work of four GOP freshmen (Brownback, Wamp, Smith, and McIntosh). The Times research suggests that the sense of a mandate associated with the 1994 elections was much more difficult to find midway through the 104th Congress (NY Times 1996). The dieback of the mandate perception was furthered by the 1996 congressional elections. Although Republicans broke their historical pattern by retaining control of the House, they garnered only 48.9 percent of the House vote compared to 48.5 percent for the Democrats (Cook 1997). Retention of the chamber suggests that the 1994 GOP win was more than a disavowal of Clinton, but the closeness of the total vote cast in 1996 does not fit with the picture of a public conveying a mandate (Gruenwald and Kalb 1996, 3225). Now, there is a growing sense of a mandate for bipartisanship (Doherty and Katz 1998, 162). Most of the GOP freshmen wanted to push policy sharply rightward in the 104th Congress (Dunham 1996; Hook 1995b). To accomplish this, they felt compelled to maintain as much class cohesion as possible (Taylor and Dewar 1995). Evidence of this is seen in the fact that seventy-one of the seventy- three freshmen supported at least 94 percent of the thirty-three bills identified with the Contract with America (Moen 1995). Furthermore, the cohesion largely persisted, with only ten GOP freshmen (among the many locked in competitive reelection races in 1996) showing a breakdown in party unity scores during the 1996 campaign season (Salant 1996b). Other evidence of cohesion is seen in the extraordinarily high level of networking among GOP freshmen (Hook 1995a), including camaraderie after hours (Clymer 1997a). The New York Times reported that after the 1994 congressional elections, the GOP freshmen wanted “to join in some sort of blood

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oath that they will stick together as a bloc to push through their own agenda” (Seelye 1994). Halfway through the first 100 days one CQ journalist wrote that “the new GOP majority has been so cohesive and disciplined that it makes the ‘Reagan Robots’ of the 1980s look like free spirits” (Hook 1995d). The House Republicans voted unanimously on 73 of their first 139 roll-call votes, and only 13 of these votes showed more than 10 defections (ibid.). Toward the end of the first session Shear (1995, 2647) commented that “the solidarity on display among the House’s Republican freshmen has been awesome for its single-minded coherence and its unprecedented longevity.” Shear contrasts this high coherence with the low coherence observed by Burdett Loomis in his study of the influential 1974 Democrat “Watergate Babies” class (Shear 1995, 2647).1 But, in many other respects the classes were similar (Loomis 1988). Neither class felt overly beholden to leadership, yet the thinking of both classes was shaped by one influential person—John F.Kennedy for the 94th freshmen, and Newt Gingrich for the 104th freshmen. Neither freshman class had much political experience, both classes received fast tracks to committee power, and both classes changed the distribution of power in the House by reason of their votes. Each class was blamed for a loss of comity in the chamber, and both received a great deal of media attention (Loomis, 1988, 9, 33, 41, 47, 87). But the 94th freshmen saw ambition and member enterprises as the path to policy-making power, whereas the 104th freshmen saw cohort teamwork as the key. Part of the difference is attributable to the operational vision that Newt Gingrich imparted to the 104th freshman class. Evidence suggests that some of the Republicans’ cohesion was due to shared experiences prior to and during the 104th Congress (Owens 1997, 267). But it is the Contract that draws the most attention in explaining the development of freshmen cohesion (Dunham 1996), especially among the bloc of about fifty conservatives in the class (Shear 1995). Although the cohesion among the 104th freshmen was sufficient to produce about-face decisions by Gingrich at times (Shear 1995), many think the cohesion began breaking down midway through the 104th Congress (Moen 1995, 6; Salant 1996a). The decline of cohesion is increasingly evident in the 105th Congress, although class unity is still high by historic standards (Doherty and Katz 1998).

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The 104th freshmen had such a strong sense of policy mission that they were said to exude the “kamikaze approach to electoral politics” (Shear 1995, 2650).2 George Will (1995) observed the same thing, but called it “negative ambition,” and wondered if it could last. One veteran GOP moderate said of the freshmen, “Their strength was their willingness to lose the next election. That’s what gave them the moral authority that no one else could match” (Koszczuk 1996a). When national public opinion polls turned against the freshmen during the early part of the 1995 government shutdown, their plan was to forget popularity on the national stage. They still had support back home, and that was good enough for most of them (Toner 1995). Take conservative ideologue and 104th freshman J.D.Hayworth, for example. After barely surviving his reelection race in November 1996, and winning less than half of the vote, he was asked if he intended to pull in his horns and temper his conservatism. His response? “Ooh, let’s wring our hands and be chastened…. Does it change who I am? No” (Brooke, 1996).3 Along this line, Dunham (1996, 27) quotes 104th GOP freshmen David Funderburk as saying, “We know why we were sent here, and we will act regardless of the consequences…. If there is a price, so be it.” (For Funderburk, who was not reelected in 1996, there was a price.) The idea that the freshmen knew exactly what the nation needed pervaded their rhetoric. “We’re dealing with a very sick patient, and you can’t wake him up in the middle of surgery and ask how he’s doing,” said freshman Zack Wamp (Dunham 1996, 27). But Dunham notes that many Americans do not like this approach, with three-fourths objecting to freshmen tactics in a poll of 755 adults conducted shortly after the 1995 government shutdown. Widely acknowledged was the willingness of many of the 104th freshmen to resist party leadership for the sake of their policy agenda (Browning 1995).4 As soon as the 104th Congress convened, one CQ journalist quoted a conservative analyst (Paul Weyrich) as saying that if Gingrich retreats from conservative principles at any time, “he’s not going to have as compliant a group as Reagan did” (Hook 1995b). Sure enough, a year later another journalist declared that Gingrich ran into the buzz saw known as the House Republican freshman class (Dunham 1996). Wicker, the class’s first president, stated that there was “a determination with the class not to be like some of the other so-called reform classes”—that is, co-opted by the leadership (DeParle 1996, 40). This class, Wicker said, refuses to be “Housebroken” (DeParle 1996, 40). Browning (1995) attributed part

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of this tendency to the entrepreneurial backgrounds of many freshmen and their independent streaks. But, more importantly, the freshmen perceived themselves as the conscience of the Republican Conference (Browning 1995), and as Gingrich’s ideological stewards (DeParle 1996). Freshman John Shadegg is quoted by one journalist as saying about Gingrich, “I haven’t tried to build a close personal friendship…. I studiously avoid doing so in an attempt to keep some personal distance, to keep my edge so I wouldn’t be reluctant to pick fights because I don’t want to cause trouble for a friend” (Lewis 1995). Granted, Gingrich had his own purposes for the class, and often used the freshmen as a foil in his negotiations with the Democrats (Gibbs 1996). But the freshmen were not content to be foils. As early as their first month in the House, the freshmen were threatening to wreck Gingrich’s plans unless he took their wishes into account (Gray 1995a). They were still at it in August 1995, when seventy of them pushed Gingrich into pledging to earmark some savings for deficit reduction purposes (Clines 1995). By late October, the freshmen had held up five appropriations bills, and threatened to hold up more unless House negotiators agreed to protect their policy positions (Gray 1995b). And when 1995 came to an end, the freshmen were still active in the same tactics, forcing the Speaker to back away from a budget deal he was negotiating with the President (Clymer 1995). A year and a half later, the same pattern continued, with some members of the 105th GOP House sophomore class planning to push ahead with their own tax-cutting agenda without consulting Republican leadership (Gray 1997). According to one journalist writing in 1995, “All year long, chroniclers of the Republican revolution have asked who is doing the leading, Mr. Gingrich or the self-assured first-termers” (Clymer 1995; italics added). Others noted that Gingrich and other central leaders found their actions constrained on some occasions by the energies of the 104th GOP freshmen (Owens 1997, 269; Cassata 1996).5 In 1995, the freshmen talked about a symbiosis with the Speaker. In fact, the Speaker was viewed as their staunchest advocate (Hook 1995b). But, after the government shutdown failed, the symbiosis evaporated between Gingrich and the far right flank of the Conference. This occurred when Gingrich moderated his policy posture, and in so doing gave an excuse to freshmen in ideologically moderate districts to do the same (Toner 1995; Salant 1996a). Gingrich even gave House members in less conservative districts

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private permission to run against him if it would help their reelection campaigns (Koszczuk 1996b). Still, some of the moderate-leaning freshmen thought Gingrich conceded too much to the conservative wing of the class in 1995, and failed to discipline them when compromise was needed (Clymer 1995). In reality, the freshmen were not entirely undisciplined by Gingrich. Members who voted against Gingrich when he sought to reopen the government after the shutdown found that Gingrich retaliated by canceling his appearances at their fund-raising events (Egan 1996). After the 1996 elections, the seat margin of the House Republicans narrowed to the point that less than a dozen rogue Republicans could tip the balance of power to the Democrats. In this environment, Gingrich found himself in the difficult position of trying to keep the moderate wing of the party on board, as well as the far right wing of the 105th sophomore class. Seeing the moderates as more likely to side with the Democrats than the conservatives, the leadership-minded Gingrich began singing a more centralist tune in the 105th Congress (Marx 1997a). He also began empowering informal moderate leaders with a broad view of the GOP mission (Cohen 1997). He openly acknowledged that a larger majority for House Republicans would trim the power of moderates and turn the House toward more conservative policies. Gingrich said that if he was given twenty more votes he could deliver “the whole loaf” (Marx 1997b). And the whole loaf is exactly what the conservatives sought. Early in the 105th Congress, a significant portion of the sophomores expressed dissatisfaction with Gingrich because they wanted him to be more aggressive in promoting reductions in taxes and government programs (The Economist 1997). Not only did Gingrich face discontent on the fiscal front, but he also created resentment among some conservative junior members in trying to moderate his public image by courting the attention of some high-profile liberals (Brooks 1997). By July 1997, a short dozen of the most conservative junior members of the GOP House Conference were dangerously frustrated with Gingrich’s lack of energy and focus in promoting a conservative agenda. They were also distressed about the crippling of his public image due to his earlier brinkmanship on sensitive matters with ethics ramifications (Koszczuk and Carr 1997). Consequently, they began to formulate and spread the idea of a coup to replace him—a coup that failed to materialize when key members of Gingrich’s leadership group got cold feet and backed out (Connolly, Broder, and Balz 1997). If the coup

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attempt had been successful, the downfall of Speakers Reed and Cannon would have been exceeded by Gingrich’s dramatic fall (DeParle 1996). Recognizing his vulnerability, Gingrich began lecturing his own troops about the importance of sticking together on procedural votes, using events from the Cannon era to make his point that disunity on procedural votes is action against leadership (Koszczuk 1996b). Understandably, these lectures may have done more to propel thoughts of overthrow among some members than to assuage such ideas. Like a cold fog, unrest in the Republican camp swept beyond members on the right side of the Conference, resulting in the assessment that “the leadership’s goodwill with the troops is drained, leaving the rank and file skeptical of its decisions” (Koszczuk 1996b). Journalists, just like academics, recognized that Gingrich’s jeopardy was brought on not only by stylistic concerns and public gaffes, but because of Gingrich’s aggressiveness in consolidating power in the Speaker’s office. Among the freshmen, some began saying that although Gingrich generally acted like he was leading a democracy, he was increasingly switching to a dictatorial approach (Gibbs 1996). Yet, in attempting to create a coup, some of the most conservative members of the Conference came off as though they wanted to dictate their preferences to their colleagues. In the final analysis, it may be that the radical freshmen were more damaged than the Speaker in attempting to grasp and exercise a great deal of power. Team play has been a continuing theme in the House GOP Conference, and Gingrich’s failures may seem less threatening to unity than a coup attempt, especially to members who fear that with no Republican consensus on a replacement for Gingrich, a coup could risk turning over control of the chamber to the Democrats (Koszczuk 1997b). According to Owens (1997), one of Gingrich’s main objectives at the outset of the 104th Congress was to centralize policy-making power, and thus give the party more control. Gingrich moved so far in the direction of conditional party government that “full committee chairs in the 104th House became sort of line managers obligated to seek the permission of central leaders before making subcommittee appointments or setting agendas” (ibid., 253). Gingrich even said that it would be better if standing committees were eventually replaced by task forces (ibid., 261). He and Armey succeeded in persuading most committee chairs to keep most bills in close alignment with the Contract. Owens argues that their intervention in these matters was substantially greater than that demonstrated by Democrat leaders in

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earlier congresses and, that Armey constantly declared, “A contract is a contract…You have to remain true to the Contract.” (Owens 1997, 257). (In so doing, he echoed part of Gingrich’s opening remarks to the 104th Congress on January 4, 1995.) Yet, when in the public eye, Republican leaders talked increasingly about “common-sense polities” rather than the Contract—a behavioral adaptation leading some to believe that Republican leadership increasingly came to view the Contract in terms of internal party management (Doherty 1996). In consolidating his operational power, Gingrich helped the freshmen get nine of ten open seats on Commerce, seven of eleven on Appropriations, and three often on Ways and Means (DeParle 1996). Gingrich packed committees with his “shock troops,” and required letters of loyalty from the thirteen subcommittee chairs (cardinals) of the Appropriations Committee. He put term limits on committee chairs, abolished their power to cast proxy votes, and often required committees to seek his guidance on bills or even rewrite them (DeParle 1996; Morgan 1995). He even circumvented committees with his task forces. Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde made his subordinate status clear with the tongue-in-cheek admission, “I’m really a subchairman” (DeParle 1996, 40). Although at times during the 104th Congress Gingrich spoke of himself in his leadership role as “a freshman” (DeParle 1996), he was no novice when it came to leadership skills, especially skills that involve giving people ideas and inspiring them to act.6 Some journalists, as well as Republican House members, give Gingrich a lot of credit for making possible the 1994 Republican takeover of the House. Gingrich ran the GOP political action committee (GOPAC) from 1986 to 1995, and recruited many of the freshmen.7 He helped them with fund-raising, provided strategic advice and issue briefings, and provided cassette tapes for their training (Dunham 1996; DeParle 1996; Taylor and Dewar 1995). Gingrich said that GOPAC aimed at undertaking “the largest, and most encompassing recruiting, training, and funding effort ever attempted by any group” (Walker 1995). Representative McIntosh said of GOPAC that it was “the first group to capture the imagination of conservatives at the grass roots, and excite them about retaking Congress.” (This goal stretched the organization’s tax-exempt status according to Walker [1995]). The work of GOPAC was quite oriented toward small business owners (Grant and Hage 1995). Much of the strategy was connected

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to the distribution of audiotapes in which Gingrich explained the key strategies of running for Congress, sought to inspire quality candidacies, and endeavored to articulate conservative principles. The audiotapes were Gingrich’s connection to countless local politicians, including the first president of the freshman class, Roger Wicker (DeParle 1996, 40). The tapes inspired a “can-do” attitude, and gave legitimacy to attitudes suspicious of Washington—attitudes that would be revealed in 1994 congressional campaign slogans, like Zack Wamp’s catch phrase “Wamp Congress” (Toner 1995). Overall, the GOP House members elected in 1994 learned a great deal in their first term about the difficulties involved in trying to change the system without creating unanticipated adverse effects in the process. They aimed to improve government by cutting down on the number and size of House committees, but learned that the change undercut their goals of increasing the ability of committees to closely oversee government agencies (Freedman 1997a; 1997b; Carney 1997b). In another instance, they pushed through a gift ban only to discover that it impaired their ability to develop the kind of relationships with lobbyists that facilitates the acquisition of useful information (Cloud 1996). They came to Washington claiming that they would return power to the states; but in order to accomplish parts of their social and financial agenda they had to give more power to the federal government in some areas (Hosansky 1996b). They planned to change campaign funding, only to discover that the contemplated reforms would diminish their control of their electoral prospects, thus reducing the attractiveness of incremental policy-making (Salant 1996c). Overall, although it can be argued that political learning helped most of the class move away from the far right, it can also be argued that some of that move was necessitated by Clinton’s move toward the political center (Hosansky 1996a). The 104th freshmen also learned some hard lessons about internal House politics, or “inside baseball.” As Representative Sonny Bono explained, they did not realize that a significant portion of their power as a class was derived from a choice made by Gingrich and Armey to portray the class as a bloc of votes over which they had little influence (Gibbs 1996). The freshmen began believing their own press. In the process, they forgot that without the goodwill of leadership, the class’s reputation and power could be eroded. Even Gingrich complained privately (early in the 105th Congress) that the 104th freshman class

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had forgotten how much he had done for them (Koszczuk 1996a). But, on the positive side of the ledger, many members of the class developed a new view on the value of incrementalism late in the 104th Congress. As Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) stated, “I think we are changing our tactics…. People understand that if you can’t get the whole loaf, you get as much as you can and come back the next day and try again” (ibid.). Primary Research Compared to Secondary Literature Observations from the secondary literature paint a rich picture of the 104th freshmen that accords with the statistical and interview data in this project. The message is consistent on all the main themes that explain the behavior and cohesion of the class: risk-taking, the importance of class, a tendency toward confrontation over compromise, an emphasis upon principle on behalf of policy-making, and an effort at sustaining cohesion. At the center of the explanation rests the observations that the perception of a mandate influenced the class to take an aggressive role in the GOP Conference and in floor action. This mandate perception was empowered not only by the rhetoric of party leadership and the wording of the Contract, but also by the historic nature of the Republicans’ acquisition of House control in 1994. As useful as the secondary literature is, it does not explain everything about the class that is important. The secondary literature inadequately reveals the scope of the mandate perception in terms of mandate components. By contrast, the present study allows for a ranking of mandate conceptions as well as a measurement of mandate breadth (Tables 5a and 5b on pages 93 and 94 respectively). In respect to 104th freshman decision making, the secondary literature does not provide a clear differentiation between the relevance of the Contract and the influence of party leadership. However, primary research findings provide these comparisons as well as others (see Table 7, on page 98). Primary research finds a very important role for subgroups in the freshman class, and also observes a considerable influence for the House Conference (see Table 8, on page 101). The secondary literature misses much of this. Furthermore, primary interview data points to a critically important role for freshman class staffers operating with strategic organization, whereas the secondary literature almost entirely overlooks this consideration. The result of this oversight is that the secondary literature misses a fundamental

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way in which the class holds together, uses its resources, monitors House activity, and prepares for tactical interventions. The secondary literature falls short on this dimension because it caters to a readership that is overly concerned with high-profile electoral personalities and relatively uninterested in the activities of the worker-bee staffers. Finally, the secondary literature is not theoretical in the sense that political science uses theory. This literature does not explain member ambition, principal-agent relations, or legislative learning in the context of institutional evolution. (Of course, this is not its mission.) These differences aside, the general implications of the secondary literature for my study are positive with respect to findings and to reinforcing of the basic themes that give the 104th class its identity. THE EVOLUTION OF THE 104TH GOP HOUSE FRESHMEN People change, and so do legislative classes. According to Richard Fenno, there is evidence that some party-wide learning took place among House Republicans in the 104th Congress (Fenno 1997, 50). During interviews for the present project, an attempt was made to discover how much change was perceived by members and staffers to have taken place in the class in the space of two and a half years. One member of the class indicated he had changed, and was now more interested in committee work than in policy-making through class organizations. A senior staffer observed that the “mission from God” conviction among some class members had retreated along with the “we can do no wrong” mentality that pervaded the class. Some members feared that a portion of the class was beginning to go native, undermining the ability of conservatives to push their agenda by means of class teamwork. One conservative member acknowledged this, saying, “From the beginning my feeling has been that as time passes it will become increasingly difficult to fulfill our promises.” But, a very influential staffer observed that even though the class is losing unity and optimism as sophomores, and some of the members are even becoming cynical about creating meaningful change, a core group of over thirty members in the class still have close-knit working relationships. In general, interview data supports these contentions. (Legislative director) The 104th freshman class no longer has the “storm the halls and all vote for Plan A” mentality or energy. The direction is deal-oriented now. Politics for the 105th

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Legislative Learning sophomores involves fighting for credit—this is one reason why there is less cohesion on the Balanced Budget bill. People’s experiences in the 1996 election have tempered them. Now, they need some credit-claiming activities if they hope to stay in office over the next six years. (Veteran staffer) To the outside world it looks like some of the 104th freshmen are moderating as sophomores. But, looking at the matter from the inside, one sees that the changes are mostly stylistic. For example, freshmen are doing more behind the scenes rather than making a scene on the floor. (104 th freshman) Many of us find ourselves drawn into committee work, and find ourselves trying to mind the store at home. Constituent services are more important now, and the entire atmosphere is different. Still, we attempt to get together as a sophomore class.

What Does the Future Hold for the Class? Another matter concerns what interviewees thought would become of the 1994 class over time. Although there was general agreement that time would reduce both class identity and cohesion, there was a fair amount of conviction that networking between class members would continue at a higher level than networking between members who were not class peers. Additionally, there was a sense that many members of the 104 th class would retain a greater degree of interpersonal closeness than has been the case with preceding classes. (Senator) The 104th GOP freshmen in the House will continue to be a different kind of class than most. I was one of fifty-two Reagan Robots in 1980. We were able to help change the budget. The class of 1980 that came in with Reagan was very dedicated. In spite of the fact that we lost twenty-six members with the recession and the Social Security stuff, our class still has an identity. It still gets together, and it still has a little newsletter to keep up with people. There is a closeness when you come in with a sweeping change or the crest of the wave. Classes like these don’t happen too often, but they do happen. The classes of 1974, 1980, and 1994 all qualify in this way. The 1994

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Republican class will stay together over the years, keep up on each other, and remember that very special spirit. (Senior legislator) Unlike most other freshman classes in the House, this one is not likely to dissolve so completely into the party in the chamber. It is a big class. Party leaders were deferential because of its cohesiveness and political power. The 104th class is likely to be influential in the years to come. (Influential legislator) The camaraderie and the sense of historic importance that the freshmen brought to Washington will stick with them for a long time, and they will remain fairly close. As the future rolls forward, they will not be as cohesive. Some will leave Congress. But, they will always feel they were a little piece of history.

BROAD CONCLUSIONS: THE SURVIVAL OF THE CLASS To what degree does the 104th freshman class continue to exist in its sophomore term? If the class has changed, in what ways does it’s original legacy survive? Is there lasting consequence to this class? What makes a class meaningful? Based upon observations and arguments from interview findings and survey data, there are at least a half-dozen ways in which the 104th GOP freshman class has continuing consequence for legislative activity and politics in the U.S. House. The class has continuing relevance due to the high survival rate and pattern of survival among members. Most of the 104th Republican House freshmen did not have much difficulty retaining their seats in the 1996 elections in spite of early autumn uncertain prospects for the class (Dunham 1996). The 104th freshmen were able to return fifty-nine of seventy-three class members to the House for the 105th Congress. This 80 percent survival rate into the second term compares favorably to a 64 percent average survival rate into the second term for five other large partisan classes since 1946 (Barnett and Loomis 1997). Of the freshmen survivors, only seven won by less than two percentage points, and only one-fourth of the surviving class won by fewer than five percentage points. The average margin of victory for successful 104th freshmen was over sixteen percentage points, with one-third of the surviving class winning by at least twenty percentage points. Members of the conservative “Gang of Eleven” tended to

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win by more than the class’s average margin. Although the 1996 congressional elections produced a House leadership and Republican Conference that was more cautious than in the 104th Congress, the wide margins of victory for many members of the 104th class reinforced their determination to stay with their aggressive mission. The 1996 elections had several ramifications for the class. First, the class’s geographical, ideological, and organizational profiles were retained. Freshman class losses were distributed across all four regions of the country. Ideologically, the class lost a few moderate-leaning conservatives as well as strong conservatives. Organizationally, with the exception of three or four members, the freshmen who lost were not among the class’s more influential members. In terms of opinion and policy leadership, the class retained its vibrancy and identity. Even if the balance between conservatives and moderates, or back-benchers and class leaders, changed slightly, the overall loss of members was not great enough to significantly alter the composition of the class. With class composition intact, and with survival at 80 percent, the 105th GOP sophomore class remains representative of the initial 104th group, and provides substantial continuity for the class. As Fenno notes, “When political scientists estimate the influence potential of legislative parties or party groupings, we pay special attention to their size and to their cohesion on policy matters” (1997, 22–23). In terms of raw size, no other ideological or operational community of House members can come close in size to the fifty-nine member freshman-turned-sophomore GOP class. If one follows the guidance of members and staffers that about 60 percent of the class retain cohesive bonds (about thirty-five members on the average assessment), this is still the most consequential influence group in the House. (It is also noteworthy that a number of other junior members have a strong tendency to align themselves with the class.) Based upon present conditions, it appears that the survival rate of 104th members will continue to be strong into the foreseeable future. There is the question of whether the 1996 elections changed the 104th House freshman class other than reducing its size by 20 percent. Basically, the election modified the operating environment for the class. Both parties claimed victory: Democrats won the presidency handily (49 percent to the GOP’s 41 percent), whereas Republicans held onto the House and netted a couple of additional seats in the Senate. There are two important effects of congressional seat changes on House conservatives. First, the GOP added nine freshmen to the Senate. Most

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of these freshmen are strong conservatives. The result is an ideological mix for Republicans in the Senate that is much closer to the existing ideological balance for Republicans in the House (Greenblatt and Wells 1996, 3233). Second, although Republicans placed thirty-two freshmen in the House (most of whom were conservatives), a net loss of nine House seats for Republicans increases the ability of the GOP’s House moderates to play the narrow seat margin (226–206 on November 9, 1996) to their advantage (Gruenwald and Kalb 1996). Although the Senate was a frequent roadblock to House right-wingers in the 104th Congress, the GOP’s narrow margin of House control in the 105th Congress creates a similar challenge. Thus, the net effect of the 1996 congressional election on the class and its prospects for policy-making influence was modest. The class has continuing relevance due to formal organization and persisting class identity. The 104th freshman class exists formally as the 105th sophomore class. The class has a formal organization with officers and occasional meetings. Nevertheless, it is true that the formal sophomore organization does not have anywhere near the robustness of planned activities and member participation that was seen in much of the 104th Congress for the freshman class. If it were necessary to argue for the continued relevance of the 104th freshman class only as it pertains to the political consequence of the 105th sophomore class organization, the argument would fail. A fair assessment of the class in this respect was given by one member who said the class has gone “poof.” However, the formal organization of the GOP House sophomores is not the real class but the symbol of it. The class continues to operate as a network of members who became accustomed to working with one another because of the bonds of their initial class relations. With this kind of informal organization intact, the class does not need a symbolic structure to survive. Yet, the fact that the class wishes to retain the symbol, as well as the organizational machine in case of need, is constructive of the concept of continuing class existence. In this respect, it will be instructive to see if the class continues to retain an organized class symbol into its junior year and beyond. (The Watergate Babies class of 1974 maintained such an organization for five years [Loomis 1988].) In sum, the continued formal organization of the class is the least important aspect of its continued existence, but still not without relevance when considered in conjunction with other aspects of class continuity.

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There is a clear perception of continued class identity among the two-thirds of the class that remains fairly cohesive. Equally important, other members in the House (and the Senate) continue to think of this group as a class. This was the case with nearly every nonclass member interviewed. If anything, some members of the class have less confidence in the continuance of their class than members and staffers not connected to the 1994 class. Members of the class tend to place a heavy emphasis upon the idea of cohesion when thinking about the continued existence of the class. In comparison, nonmembers are not as focused upon the cohesion of the whole class as they are upon the fact that significant numbers of the class continue to strategically organize themselves for political purposes. A certain mode of thought has become entrenched among nonmembers of the class when dealing with individual representatives who belong to the class. The thought is that “he or she is a member of that class.” The tendency is not to stereotype the individual on the basis of region, ideology, committee, or personality as much as it is to stereotype on the basis of association with the class. This phenomenon is not without consequence. For one thing, it suggests that other members of the House feel like class identity is more predictive of what one of these individuals will do than other rubrics. Second, this shorthand way of categorizing individuals suggests a pattern of thought developed through repeated experience with members. Third, this labeling tendency implies a communicative norm: People believe they will be understood by others when using this descriptive tag. Combined, these factors suggest a high level of original and continuing class identity. Thus, it can be argued that class identity makes an important perceptual contribution to continued class relevance. The 104th GOP freshman class continues to exist through friendships and working relationships among class members. The scope and intensity of the friendships is owed in large measure to the intentional effort of members and their staffers to draw themselves together as a strategic political force and association of camaraderie during their first term. When the 104th freshmen arrived in Washington, their earliest relationships were with one another and party leadership. They ate together, went out together as individuals and as married couples, spent time together laying plans and discussing values, and revealed to one another a great many personal things about their lives. Much of this activity far surpasses what one expects in political association. The relationships that formed in many cases were not predicated upon

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hopes of vote trading or attempts to get into circles with people of influence who could further one’s career. Nor were the relationships merely social in the sense of personality attachments. Essentially, the freshmen perceived the building of close friendships as a way of furthering the shared policy objectives of the class. Continued class relevance through subcommunities is another important element of class survival. The community of the 104th GOP freshmen gradually lost its cohesion during the first term, especially in the period following the aborted government shutdown. Nevertheless, the class continued to survive, in part, because it functioned through its component parts. Class members were heavily involved in communities like the New Federalists, CATS (Conservative Action Team), the Family Caucus, Blue Dog Republicans, and several lunch groups. Since many of the class members participated in more than one group, linkage existed among the groups. This nicely augmented communication within the class. Furthermore, since class members formed the backbone of several of the groups, the groups were perceived by some as representations of important class interests. Each community possessed a philosophical or policy orientation; thus, each group became a vehicle by which members could share and develop plans, as well as transmit a sense of their interests to nonclass participants who would take these ideas back to their own circles of influence. The class could have existed without the subcommunities, but the regular meeting schedule of these groups helped ensure that members had regular opportunities to converse with one another in matters where they shared basic agreement. The groups fostered intensive interaction between members resulting in a higher level of ideological melding than would exist absent these organizations. Perhaps the component of continued class existence least understood and appreciated by political scientists (and most in need of future study) is the effect of interaction between the members’ office staffs. The 104th GOP freshman class had the advantage of class-wide staff organization, as well as continual personal interaction that was nearly as high as that enjoyed by members. This situation of networking, cooperation, and interactive support may have been due, in part, to the fact that new members drew heavily upon their campaign staffs in creating their Washington office staffs. The result was a group of staffers generally unattached to Washington, and highly desirous of interfacing with others who shared similar sentiments about politics and policy

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changes. The inexperience of many staffers created an openness among them. Most felt a strong need to learn, and were deeply interested in the dissemination of useful information within their ranks. They banded together not only because most shared the revolutionary ideas of the members they served, but also because of a strong sense that even as the freshmen were finding political power through cohesiveness, they, too, could cultivate power and influence by duplicating this pattern. Since most of the freshmen offices were staffed by individuals representing a modest range of ideology, almost every office had members who were highly comfortable with the conservativedominated staff organization that met weekly. This organization was led by staffers from 104 th freshmen offices, as well as overwhelmingly populated by staffers from these offices. It opened its meetings for commentary and debate by all participating staffers. Nevertheless, natural talents and knowledge soon made a dozen or so staffers into opinion leaders, and these became the backbone of the organization. Most importantly, the staff organization regularly concocted plans by which it could support the work of the conservative bloc within the 1994 class. For conservative staffers who worked in moderate-leaning offices, this meant trying to create as much understanding as possible between teammates holding contrasting viewpoints. An influential member of the staff organization explained one of its operations. It was striking to see the amount of initiative shown by these individuals independent of any prodding or organization by higher powers. This is the unheralded class of 1994. The influence of the freshmen in the House owes much to the vision and energy of these staffers. (104th senior staffer) We have a sophomore appropriations watch that we started as a 104th freshmen project. The reason we ran it is because leadership told us they could not give us the Conference Reports. And we wanted to read the Conference Reports. Leadership said, “The Conferences don’t give us this information, so we can’t do anything.” So, what we did was to assign experienced staffers to the job of watching appropriations bills. Their job was to figure out what was in each bill. In one case we cross-referenced the conferencees with the projects to see if any of the special projects were given to the conferencees’ districts. By watching these bills like a hawk we provided not only a lot of motivation to the appropriates to keep the bills

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clean, but we also provided leverage to the House GOP leadership in negotiating with the Senate. House leadership could say, “There is a crazy group of freshmen who will take down any bill that has pork barrel projects in it.”

Class reputation (an amalgamated consideration) is a final element of continued class survival. The 1994 freshmen enjoyed a high-profile reputation because of class size, formal organization, a sense of identity, a vast network of close personal relationships, robust subcommunities, and a high level or organized and strategic staffer interaction. Regardless of actual limitations upon class cohesiveness and member cooperation, the reputation itself is powerful enough to cause other holders of power to pause and consider the freshmen’s role before taking action. In the 104th Congress, the reputation of the freshmen was probably bigger than life, but some would say “not by much.” In the 105th Congress, the reputation is clearly more significant than the unified action of the class. This creates a situation where blocks of a dozen or so freshmen can act together and create the impression that there is a larger block of supportive votes waiting in the wings. Thus, small groups of policy entrepreneurs in the class find the class reputation to serve as useful leverage in ongoing political maneuvering. Eventually, the power of reputation will break down if not backed up by concerted class action. The influence of the class will diminish across time; however, if Republicans continue to hold the majority, and if the seat margin between Republicans and Democrats remains narrow, it will not take a large block of cooperating members to exert a significant effect on the party’s efforts. In the meantime there has been a fracturing in the class over careerism, incrementalism, regional politics, and considerations of how readily to support leadership initiatives. Also, there is the factor that as sophomores, the 104th freshmen are increasingly blending with third-term and fourth-term members. Furthermore, the 105th GOP freshman class is drawing off some of the attention formerly focused on the 104th freshmen. However, the 105th Republican freshmen are not considered to have a focused interest in the kind of cohesive class action that is widely associated with the 104th freshmen. In sum, even in the face of limitations, the 104th GOP freshmen still have group identity three years after being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

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WHAT WE LEARN FROM OBSERVING THE 104TH FRESHMEN There are a number of worthwhile observations to take away from a study of the 104th GOP freshman class. First, an understanding of coalition politics coupled with an ability to impart to people a shared operational and policy vision is an enormous power in a closely divided House. Newt Gingrich showed this ability during the first ten months of the 104th Congress, and in the process made his political hammer— the GOP freshmen—seem larger than life. But Gingrich was not alone in comprehending the importance of group efforts. Before long, aggressive and policy-ambitious members of the class were building their own groups. The goal: prevent leadership from going native and undermining the Conference’s commitment to the objectives in the Contract. Second, the 104th Congress makes it evident that party platforms and campaigns can matter, especially when the rank and file pledge themselves to planks on which there is shared understanding of how the aims are going to be converted into legislation. The Contract with America proved to be one of the most remarkable Conference organizing and guidance tools that party leadership has used in modern congressional experience. Granted, Fenno (1997) may be correct in arguing that there are hazards in using campaign instruments as party caucus management tools. Yet, in spite of the complications, the Contract gave GOP leadership the ability to put a large body of new members to work on behalf of prized goals. Third, perceptions of a public mandate can exert a remarkable energizing and galvanizing effect on relatively inexperienced legislators. Once legislators claim a mandate, it is difficult for them to back away and release it. Yet, they may have to back away from the mandate claim as they instigate legislative actions that alert segments of society to risks the new policies pose to their vested interests. As the experience of the 104th GOP freshmen indicate, the policy-making propositions of the 104th class did not stir up great opposition, but their legislating of those convictions did. This demonstrates a normal political phenomenon in which change seems more attainable during the planning and promotion stages than during the enactment stage. In an electorate that is closely divided, it does not take an outcry from too many interests before the appearance of a mandate falls prey to the vigor of opposing concerns. Also, mandate perceptions among new politicians are naturally excessive

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because they hear primarily from the support segments of their constituencies while they are on the campaign trail. Once in office, new legislators begin dealing with constituents who belong to the opposition party. In the process, they come to understand a greater diversity in people’s preferences. New members also have to learn that the public wants benefits without costs, and will settle for social sanity and a good economy rather than pursue risky-appearing reforms and policy innovations with partially unknown consequences. Fourth, observations of the 104th GOP freshmen reinforce the idea that checks and balances are good for both parties, and for all interests within the parties. Senior members need to have their security and career interests checked by the policy ambitions of junior members. Newer members need to feel the restraint of senior members’ institutional memories lest policy agendas repeat earlier mistakes. In the case of the 104th freshmen, the quality of their policy-making was improved when the incrementalist approach of senior members kept them from hastily pushing through some legislative changes that the freshmen themselves admit (in retrospect) would have been inferior to the product produced by a more dialogue-oriented bipartisan process. Furthermore, the junior members had to learn that the inertia in the system can be a valuable check upon naive good intentions that are framed with less than the full picture in view. Fifth, the experiences of the 104th GOP freshmen make it apparent that leadership will not allow itself to be owned by a faction when it has to have the support of a Conference majority to stay in power. Leadership will not be the full agent of any coalition that cannot guarantee its survival. In the first ten months of the Congress, the highly conservative junior members thought that party leadership belonged to them. However, as some members of the Republican Conference drifted toward more moderate stances, GOP leadership saw fit to make adjustments. Thus, there is something to be said for the idea that in its work as an agent, party leadership is continually reassessing where the power lays in the principal, and how effectively that power can be marshaled toward pressuring leadership to respond to its will. Finally, it appears that the citizen legislator profile does make a material difference in how members perceive their roles in Congress and how they go about their business. Self-declared term limits seemingly contribute to a discipline by members where a premium is placed on policy-making goals relative to reelection goals.

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Furthermore, members who declare a wish to soon return to former careers may in the process of these declarations free up their staff members to innovate and develop aggressive policy positions. If staffers believe that the representatives they work for do not prize their congressional offices above all else, staffers may be more willing to suggest policy objectives that carry relatively high risk yet also offer more opportunity to change the political status quo. POINTS ARGUED AND SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE I have argued that the 104th GOP House freshman class demonstrated sufficient identity, mission, organization, cohesion, and impact upon policy-making and party politics to be worthy of study as a consequential political unit. Each component of the argument has been established using interview findings and survey data, with secondary support coming from journalistic and academic literature. An Influential Class It has been shown that the 1994 Republican class had an identity apart from junior members in general, and that this identity gave the class an extraordinarily high profile in the House Republican Conference, in the chamber, in the Congress, and in the media. The class’s sense of mission is especially notable, being facilitated by the GOP’s historic win of the House in 1994, a perceived public mandate, the sponsorship and attention of party leadership, and the Contract with America as a campaign platform and an inspirational foundation for policy-making. The class enjoyed formal organization with regular meetings, structure, extensive networking, and strategic action on behalf of shared interests. The class also benefitted from informal organization carried out through subcommunities and staff activities. Although the class demonstrated declining cohesion after the first year, its overall unity during its full first term was high by any standard. In combination, these considerations produced a class that exerted a dramatic influence upon internal reform, policy-making, and party politics in the 104th Congress. There is general agreement among leadership staffers, class members, and congressional observers that the attitudes and actions of the class contributed significantly to a relatively confrontational and partisan 104 th Congress. The GOP freshmen pursued nonincremental changes, and often pressured party leadership on

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behalf of class objectives. The class’s insistence on sticking with the Conference’s original mission as set forth in the Contract changed the nature of GOP leadership negotiations with House Democrats, the Senate, and the nation’s President. Through the media attention the class received, the freshmen even influenced the nation’s perceptions of the new Congress. All of these considerations point to the importance of the class for scholars who study legislative behavior and institutional change. Nuanced Challenges to Ambition Theory The argument made here on behalf of the importance of the class is well-situated in the context of two channels of legislative theory: ambition theory and principal-agent theory. Ambition theory proposes that the behavior of members of Congress is better understood through goal assessment than through other means. The present work challenges the idea of ambition theory that legislators’ “goals” are the fundamental independent variables in theory construction. This work understands that perceptions inform goals, especially among legislators who wish to be responsive to their constituents. Specifically, it is argued that the perception of a public mandate caused the 104th freshmen to put a premium on their policymaking goals. Furthermore, a perception of growing public opposition to legislative careerism caused them to discount political career aspirations relative to other goals. Nevertheless, with the qualification that perceptions inform goals, the position here is that legislators’ goals are important in constructing theory about legislative behavior. A second nuanced challenge is provided to the widely accepted idea that the reelection goal explains more about legislative behavior than any other goal. (Granted, ambition theory as configured by some scholars does allow other goals to exert considerable influence.) The most prominent view is that legislators will not accept serious risks to their reelection interests in order to advance policy-making goals. It is not argued that this conclusion is incorrect for the entire Congress, but that it is insufficiently qualified. It is flawed in the respect that it slights the important effects that a large policy-driven coalition—like a freshman class—can have upon legislative outcomes. The present research demonstrates that the majority of 104th GOP House freshmen chose to consciously elevate their policy-making goals above their reelection interests for much of the 104th Congress because they were

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trying to apply the concept of principled legislating to the idea they possessed a public mandate for policy change. Granted, they did compromise policy goals at the margins late in the 104th Congress. But, for most of their first term, their legislative behavior was not best explained by their reelection ambitions but by their policy-making objectives. My argument leads to a modification of goal-ordering (for this coalition) in terms of prominent legislative theory. Yet, it nicely accords with the underemphasized theoretical arguments of Fenno on variation in member goal-ordering on a committee-by-committee basis. This revised goal-ordering conception carries significant importance, since the class exerted a major influence on policy-making in the House. Furthermore, the 104th term during which the freshmen exerted their influence is one of the most consequential in the past four decades. Thus, even though the 104th GOP freshman class is an atypical class, its impact upon the institution of the U.S. House is disproportionate to the length of its first term. Others have made similar arguments with regard to the 94th Democrat “Watergate Babies” and 97th Republican “Reagan Robots” freshman classes (Hook 1995b; Loomis 1988). Outsize effects means that these classes take on special significance in legislative studies even though they are not the norm. Qualifications Provided to Principal-Agent Theory The second area of theory addressed by the present research is principalagent theory. Generally, this theoretical framework positions the rank and file as principals (or a principal) and the Conference leadership as agents—the Speaker being the prime agent under today’s House rules. This theoretical approach fits in with the conditional party government concept in which leaders have a good deal of discretionary authority, but only so long as they are responsive to the wishes and goals of the chamber’s majority party membership. The research findings on the 104th GOP House freshman class support principal-agent theory written large, but challenge it with the need for more nuanced explanations. Gingrich’s central involvement in orchestrating the revolution in the House produced a situation where he, as Speaker, became a principal of sorts, and the junior members of the Conference became his agents. To a large degree this was the case for the very important first 100 days of the 104th Congress. The situation demonstrates one way in

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which competition can develop for the principal’s role, and shows that the direction of the relationship is subject to change. Competition among would-be principals also developed in another way, that is, between factions in the rank and file. Following several missteps by the Speaker, and his increased cooperation with the moderate wing of the party, some of the freshmen became discontent with the nature and extent of powers delegated to the Speaker. Consequently, they sought to become the conscience of the Conference. They began pressuring Gingrich to redistribute some of his decisionmaking responsibilities. Some of them voted against Gingrich on crucial procedural votes, and nearly a score began planning his (unsuccessful) overthrow. These episodes illustrate that the Speaker-as-agent is not the agent of just one principal (a monolithic rank and file), but an agent of various principals (factions) in competition. Furthermore, a breakdown in unity among party leaders just before the coup attempt shows that multiple agents are possible, at least over the short haul. Interestingly, the 104th GOP House freshmen played a central role in the establishment of the initial principal-agent relationship for House Republicans, as well as in the evolution of the relationship. This reinforces the potential importance of legislative theorists understanding freshman class behavior. An Argument for Group Power in Constrained Environments In making the preceding arguments, one notes that legislative scholars’ emphasis upon the leadership and committee power may not may not be sufficient to explain the actions of Congress in some environments. In some contexts—like the 104th Congress—room must be made for the influence of coalitions and freshman classes. Coalition power is sensitive to the size of the seat margin held by the party in the chamber. Class power is sensitive to the level of organization and shared mission among key staffers in member offices. The 1994 and 1996 congressional elections have empowered cohesive classes and well-organized coalitions because of narrow seat margins for the majority party. If this situation continues to exist, party leadership and committees will continue to be held hostage to group politics. I have endeavored to show that although organizations do not have to be formalized to exert important influence, organizations do have to demonstrate that they can maintain cohesiveness among members and effectiveness in politicking that comes from political learning.

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Conference members’ perceptions about the ability of newer members to learn may impact the ability of junior members to expand their influence in the chamber across time. Even more importantly, the willingness of new members to learn, and their ability to master the art of political negotiation and bargaining may explain more about policy outcomes in the chamber than rules, committee composition, or even strategic member calculations.8 This suggests that the theoretical framework utilized by many legislative scholars is incomplete and in need of refinement. The present research takes some needed steps toward remedying these oversights, and demonstrates the potential value that exists in studying freshman classes in the House. The findings in this project demonstrate that in the case of the 104th Congress, legislative behavior and internal House politics were significantly affected by members’ perceptions of a public mandate, considerations of class cohesion, class conceptions of the fiduciary responsibilities of party leadership, a perceived contractual obligation to the public, member inexperience, early class-member bonding, professed ideals conceived as principles, opposition to political careerism, and a process of legislative learning. All of these considerations shaped member goals, and contributed to the formation and persistence of one of the more influential groups of House politicians in the modern era. Therefore, a rich and robust conceptualization of the causes of freshman behavior in the 104th Congress is warranted. MATTERS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH There are a number of interesting issues that are raised by this research project. Some of the work can be done only as Congress continues to evolve. First, there are questions about the long-term survival and influence of members of the 1994 Republican class. Once the basic questions are addressed, other interesting ones arise. The class could be broken down into subgroups and ideological cohorts. Research could seek to find the rate at which the members of different coalitions move into the party’s power positions. This area of research might shed light on the importance of early friendships and networking to rapid political advancement. Control variables could include productivity in the chamber as measured by bill-writing activity, bill sponsorship, speech production, media attention, or artifacts of party loyalty. Second, there are questions that revolve around comparisons between classes. One could examine the rate at which members of

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various freshman classes move up the party ladder, and how the success of class members connects to the political image the class created during its freshmen term. Along this line, it would be useful to measure the extent to which networking between class members outlasts the networking that develops between members irrespective of class. A variation of this theme would be to check voting records by class to see if classes represent political movements that result in lasting policymaking tendencies. Associated questions relate to the nature of the relationship between the political environment and the type of classes that are generated. This last effort would seek to broaden the application of Fenno’s Congressmen in Committees (1973). Third, important to the long-term value of the findings shown here is an assessment of the degree to which self-proclaimed citizen legislators remain true to their pledge. It would be useful to know which term-limit advocates convert to careerism, and under what kind of circumstances. How much do core principles change across time, and with what can we correlate changes in so-called principles? Related to this effort is one that would explore the question of whether legislators who proclaimed mandates as junior members (and then recanted) will later proclaim mandates as senior members if their party gets a big win that increases seat margins. Is the mandate claim subject to legislative learning? Is it a reflection of uncontrollable political enthusiasm? Or, is it a strategic but risky tool that will be employed whenever short-term power benefits can be grasped? Fourth, there is a need for comparative research on freshman classes. How often are classes cohesive? What is the basis of cohesion for various classes? How important is informal leadership as compared to formal leadership in influential freshman classes? Can junior classes be highly influential without direct empowerment by leadership? What determines the ability of classes to generate influential internal communities? Fifth, there are questions that pertain to power relationships between junior classes and classical power bases. When class power increases, does committee power decrease? When class power increases, what happens to leadership power, and under what conditions? Also, there is room for inquiry about what happens to legislative productivity in the House when junior members are rapidly promoted into the House’s policy-making structure. In sum, a great deal of worthwhile research remains. Hopefully, some of the

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accomplishments of the present project will contribute to the success of future research endeavors. NOTES 1. The 1974 and 1994 freshmen majority classes both rode in on “a wave of revulsion against politics as ususal.” The Watergate Babies were co-opted by the system. Seduced by money and perks, and unable to work together for long, they ended up creating anarchy. They struggled against established committee barons (Taylor and Dewar 1995), and took from leadership the power to make committee assignments and gave it to the party caucus. The power vacuum that was created was filled by committee and subcommittee chairs. By contrast, the class of 1994 is centralizing power in the Speaker because “they believe he can lead their push for radical change” (Gleckman 1996, 32). 2. The House GOP freshmen offered a joint resolution in 1995 for a lifetime limit of twelve years of service for representatives in each chamber (Moen 1995). 3. At the start of the second session, 60 percent of the freshmen were considered high risk with regard to reeelection prospects (Dunham 1996). “These people are from districts that are not as conservative as they are,” says Carleton College political scientist Steven E.Schier (in Dunham). 4. An interesting measure of the staying power of agenda-centered conservatism in the 104th freshman class is reflected in the attendance of fifty of the seventy-three House freshmen at a two-day strategy-mapping retreat in Baltimore in late January 1996. The retreat was sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and Empower America, the two conservative groups that had put together part of the orientation program for the freshmen a year earlier. The message the freshmen heard was tough: Al Dunlap (the CEO that radically downsized employment at Scott Paper Company) announced that the freshmen should have kept the government shutdown instead of relenting, and should try to balance the budget in one year instead of seven. William Bennett, former Education Secretary and U.S. drug czar, preached the same kind of “no compromise” message on social policy. Supposedly, the freshmen had not gone far enough. The journalist covering the event says it was like a Marine boot camp: The freshmen “were being ripped apart from the outset by tough-talking drill instructors, but left with the notion that they are invincible” (Gray 1996). 5. One of the constraints on Speaker Gingrich is the Family Caucus. The caucus was organized by 104th freshman Tom Coburn and sixteen GOP newcomers on April 6, 1995. A month later the caucus had not yet consulted with Speaker Gingrich. The caucus claims to exert influence on over about eighty House members. Representative Souder says this group has the

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numbers, and Gingrich understands caucus politics. Interestingly, the caucus bans senior members (Grann 1995). 6. Repeatedly, Gingrich attributed his success to “vision, strategy, projects and tactics,” as well as a commitment to listening, learning, helping, and leading (DeParle 1996). In the early going, members of the leadership team, like John Boehner, boasted of Gingrich’s listening skills (DeParle 1996). But, when the most highly conservative junior members found Gingrich listening too much to moderates, they no longer gave him a “good listener” rating. 7. Only one-fourth of the 104th freshmen Republicans brought previous legislative experience to Congress (Dunham 1996), and only half held elective office in a political environment (DeParle 1996; Hall 1996). This contrasts with the 103rd class, in which about three-fourths of members had held elective office (Merida and Cooper 1994). 8. Generally, the consequences of the legislative learning process will be more prominent in the U.S. House than in the Senate. Furthermore, policymaking ambition is more likely to be risk-oriented and aggressive in the House than in the Senate. This observation is owed not only to the more conservative nature of Senate rules and norms, but also to the fact that House members are younger, less far along in their political careers, and more apt to be able to surround themselves with large peer groups that share their time of entry and initial mission inpetus.

Epilogue

THE 104TH GOP HOUSE FRESHMEN ENTER THE 106TH CONGRESS In the year and a half that has elapsed since the completion of primary data gathering for “Legislative Learning,” the 104th GOP freshman class has decreased modestly in size while becoming somewhat more careerist (Milbank 1999). Although a natural process of deterioration in formal class organization is evident, a majority of class members continue to demonstrate a sense of class identity and camaraderie. According to staffers I spoke with in late 1998, most of the 104th Republican freshmen continue to be possessed with ideals they link to the Contract with America. However, President Clinton’s continued popularity in the midst of his troubles has many members of the class wondering if their original hope of an enduring Republican revolution may have been unrealistic. There is talk among staffers that some class members may not run for reelection in the year 2000, not so much because of term limit philosophy but because of a disenchantment with the politics that accompany narrow margins of House control. Backing up to the summer of 1998, House Republicans were hopeful that the combination of Clinton’s sex scandal problems and historic weakness for the president’s party in congressional midterm elections would result in dramatic gains of House and Senate seats for Republicans. There was talk of a filibuster-proof Senate (sixty seats) for Republicans and a move to a bolder style of legislating in the House than evident in the 105th Congress. However, when Clinton’s job approval rating remained strong as the 1998 elections approached, Republicans began realizing that their hopes of increased power might

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be empty. Indeed, a net loss of five seats for House Republicans and no net gains for Senate Republicans left junior House Republicans complaining again that leadership had let them down. This time, the complaint was that Gingrich bet too much on the imagined vulnerability of Clinton’s image, and in so doing, neglected to give high visibility to the policy agenda of conservative Republicans (Largent 1998). The fact that House Democrats were able to elect twenty-three new freshmen in an off-year election, compared to just seventeen new House freshmen for the Republicans, seemed to confirm to many Republicans that the party’s media strategies were misaligned. Soon after the election, conservative junior House Republicans made the argument that if their 228–206 margin of control in the 105th Congress made it difficult to move forward on some parts of their agenda, the new narrower margin of 223–211 would make it nearly impossible. In view of the growing assertiveness of Republican House moderates, there would be little choice but for bipartisan compromise. One recalls that this is not the vision that moved most members of the 104th class to seek congressional election in 1994. Thus, disappointed members needed a whipping boy after the 1998 elections, and Gingrich, as Speaker and Conference braintrust, made a natural target. According to several Republican staffers, conservative Republicans who complained against Gingrich did not think he would make their day—and then cast a cloud over the GOP House Conference—by resigning his House seat as well as the Speakership. In making such a dramatic move Gingrich shocked the entire nation. He left some people wondering if radical action is a purposeful Gingrich strategy or an uncontrolled personality trait. But, before the full consequences of the Gingrich resignation could sink in, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Representative Robert Livingston (RLa.), was taking a clear lead in the contest for the soon to be vacated Speakership. No sooner had the nation begun to adjust to the idea of a Livingston Speakership, then Livingston shocked his party and the nation by announcing he would not stand for election as House Speaker in early January 1999. Livingston found himself caught in the delicate situation where, if he accepted the Speakership, his own marital infidelities would be revealed to the nation by Hustler Magazine’s Larry Flynt. Livingston claimed his decision to step aside was based upon his desire to set an example for President Clinton, as well as to spare his wife and family from further embarrassment. However, some staffers suggest that Livingston’s decision was

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prompted, in part, by much of the same reasoning that moved Gingrich to give up his House Speakership: a loss of support by conservative House members. Nowhere was this loss of support more critical for Gingrich than among members of the 104th GOP House class. According to staffers I spoke with, Livingston understood that socially conservative House Republicans would not support as Speaker someone with a deeply marred record of sexual conduct, especially in the midst of an impeachment hearing that conservatives hoped would lead to the ouster of President Clinton. Thus, with Livingston pulling back, and other House leaders dodging the spotlight, House Republicans had to look deep into their ranks to find a fence-mender that could pull Conference factions together. This explains the unlikely rise to center stage, and the 106th House Speakership, of the relatively unknown seven-term Illinois legislator, Dennis Hastert. The bearing of this story is not without consequence: it reveals, again, the continued strategic power of the conservative Republicans elected to the House in 1994. The 104th Republican freshmen were cast in a central role in Gingrich’s empowerment as Speaker in 1995. They strengthened his hand when he played the policy game for their ends and cooperated with him on almost all matters until the budget negotiation fiasco at the end of 1995 (Largent 1998). These were the same freshmen who frustrated Appropriations Chairman Livingston in 1995 with their independent conduct in support of class member Mark Neumann. When disenchantment with policy compromise began to gnaw at many members of the class in 1997, some entertained a plan for a rule-based coup to force Gingrich out of the Speakership. These were the individuals who told the press that they intended to hold the feet of party leadership to the fire, that they feared weakness on the part of their leaders more than anything else, and that they would rather lose based on principle than win diluted victories that left big government intact and scandal unaddressed. In light of these considerations, it should come as no surprise that these same willful House members continue to play a critical role in House affairs. As the 106th Congress gets underway, the most conservative members of the 104th class can claim to have influenced both the selection of a new Speaker and the will of the House to move forward on its Clinton impeachment inquiry. In sum, recent events reinforce the idea that House classes can matter in party affairs and political outcomes.

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THE NEW CLASS PROFILE The Republican House class of 1994 survived the 1998 congressional elections largely unscathed. Only two members of the class were defeated in bids to retain their seats: Jon D.Fox (R-Pa.) and Rick White (R-Wash.). Representatives Fox and White were both moderate-leaning conservatives that hailed from districts where Democrats have been strong in recent years. Representative Fox lost his race by a 47–52 margin while Representative White lost by a 43–51 margin. Based on post-election conversations with staffers for 104th GOP House freshmen, there is a perception that the policy-specific moderation of Fox and White cost them the energetic support of some segments of the far-right in their districts. At the same time, there is a sense that the weakening of the Republican revolution of 1994 is increasingly putting Republican House members in some districts in difficult situations. Some House Republicans dare not be stridently conservative because the moderate-to-liberal bloc is too large in their districts; yet, they risk losing the enthusiastic support of the far right if they are not vigorous on behalf of a very conservative policy agenda. The class’s loss of Fox and White, although disappointing to class members, is not as consequential to class dynamics as the inability of the class to advance any class members to the Senate in 1998. Only one class member, Sam Brownback (Kans.), has reached the Senate, and he accomplished that feat in his sophomore term. Three other class members were unsuccessful in their 1998 attempts to follow Brown-back’s lead: Representative Mark Neumann (Wis.), Representative John Ensign (Nev.), and Representative Linda Smith (Wash.). All three individuals were highly visible in the class. Neumann was a class leader on budget issues and Ensign a prominent class figure on western land policy. Smith was visible not as a class leader but because she defended her ideological conservatism with such relish that some members of her own class were unsure of how to react to her. Ensign lost his bid for the Senate by less than a percentage point (48–48). Neuman, also, lost a close race (48– 50). Smith’s wider margin of defeat (42–48) suggests that some of her former supporters were experiencing second thoughts. In addition to the three who lost 1998 Senate bids, several other original members of the class will not be present for the 106th Congress. Frank Riggs (Calif)—a member of the 104th class who also served in the 102nd Congress—withdrew early from an intended Senate race. Jon Christensen (Neb.), one of the youngest members of the class, was

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defeated in Nebraska’s May 12 gubernatorial primary. Finally, Sonny Bono—killed in a bizarre snow skiing accident—has the name of his congressional office enterprise carried on by his wife, Mary Bono. How does it all add up in survivorship for the class? If one takes a traditionalist view and does not count Mary Bono as carrying forward a 104th class enterprise, the freshman class is left with fifty members in the House and fifty-one members in Congress, including Senator Brownback. Granted, this number does not include quasi-104th GOP House freshman, Tom Campbell (Calif.), who entered the House on December 12, 1995 (mid-term) after having served two earlier terms (1989–1993). (See Table 11.) A fifty member cohort in its third term is huge—nearly 20 percent larger than most partisan freshman House cohorts in their initial term during the 1968–1998 period. If the original class is calculated as consisting of seventy-three members, and if fifty-one class members survive at the start of 1999, the class is left with a survivorship rate of 70 percent entering the 106th Congress (Table 12). This rate of survival is relatively high when compared to other large influential House classes in the last half century (see Barnett and Loomis, 1997). The five classes to which the 104th GOP class is comparable showed an average survival rate of 49 percent into members’ third congressional terms. Equally interesting is the fact that the average large, partisan class loses just one-third of its third term members by the arrival of the sixth term. If the 104th GOP freshmen were to duplicate the average third term to sixth term survival rates of other classes in Table 13, the Republicans would end up with thirty-four members in the year 2004. At thirty-four members, this cohort would be 80 percent as large in its sixth term as the average size of dominant freshman cohorts in their initial House terms in the 1968–1998 period. Thus, if survival for the 104th class is average going forward, the class will exert a historically high influence well into the start of the twenty-first century. One argument that explains some of the continued adherence of the class to their policy agenda is that most surviving members of the class are enjoying relatively solid margins of voter support in their districts. On average, 104th GOP House freshmen came away with more than 62 percent of the vote cast in their 1998 races (see Table 12). Six class members enjoyed uncontested bids for reelection. Only five class members who won their 1998 House elections came away with close wins (i.e., “close” meaning less

284 TABLE 12: Percentage of Vote Won in 1998 Elections by GOP House Class of 1994

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TABLE 13: Large, Partisan Classes Since 1946: Survival Entering Junior Term

than 55 percent of the vote cast). These five were Representatives Bass (53%), Bilbray (49%), Chabot (53%), Hayworth (52%) and Hostettler (52%). There is no geographical pattern that links the five. Likewise, there is no ideological thread to tie these members together since two are relatively moderate by class standards (Bass, Bilbray), and two appear very conservative (Hayworth and Hostettler). If the five 104th GOP freshmen who lost congressional races in 1998 are added to the five with close races, this still leaves only ten members out of fifty-six pre-election class members (18%) who did not come away from the election with their House enterprises easily validated in their districts. It is of some interest to consider the status of the seventeen districts that ceased to belong to 104th GOP House classmates prior to the consummation of the 1998 elections. One recalls that of the twentytwo now absent original members, twelve were defeated in 1996 House races, and two in 1998 House races. (Thus, slightly more than a third of those who have left the class have exited in some manner other than standing for House reelection and failing to win.) But, more important is the observation that after the 1998 votes were in, Republicans controlled only four of the seventeen districts that 104th classmates earlier gave up (see Table 14). Furthermore, with regard to

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the other thirteen districts controlled by Democrats, these districts were won on average with 60 percent of the vote in 1998. TABLE 14: Defeated in 1996, Retired, or Deceased^ Members of the 104th GOP House Class

Election results for 1998, such as the ones portrayed in Table 14, suggest that some of the losses suffered by 104th Republican freshman in the 1996 elections may have been largely a return to equilibrium in districts that lean Democratic. Congressional scandals and antiincumbent sentiment in 1994 may have loosened some Democratic seats where Democrats voted out some of their own so that they could put in more desirable party members just two years later. The point is that with the 104th GOP class losing only two incumbentdefended House seats in 1998, the class’s continuing influential status looks quite possible.

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Finally, Republican staffers are talking about a developing breakdown in opposition to careerism among nearly half of the class’s members. Notably, a few members of the class are openly declaring themselves careerists (Milbank 1999). Indeed, the idea of careerism is gaining new currency with some 104th GOP class members who are observing the arrival of a 106th GOP House freshman class where all seventeen members claim significant political experience (Chen 1998). Nevertheless, there is a continuation of belief among the majority of class members that the Contract with America remains relevant, and that House Republicans have an obligation to Republican constituents to stay the course, if possible. At the same time, Clinton’s continued popularity in the face of personal difficulties is creating a good deal of doubt among Republican pragmatists that anything other than bipartisan compromise is possible. Consequently, some members of the class are pushing the argument that it is better to have a series of constructive compromises in the 106th Congress than to aspire to a grand Republican policy agenda that results in the public inviting Democrats to take charge of the 107th Congress. To this, the conservatives reply that without a strong policy agenda, the public will see no reason to retain Republicans as the House majority. Thus, although the whole loaf and half loaf debate continues, the half loaf viewpoint is gaining ground as the class matures in its changing political environment.

Appendix A

INTERVIEW LIST 104th Freshmen (*104th last Congress served)

Other Members of Congress Deal, Nathan (GA) Hancock, Mel* (MO) Lofgren, Zoe (CA) Meyers, Jan* (KS) Moorhead, Carlos* (KS) Roberts, Pat (KS) Roth, Toby* (WI) Snowbarger, Vince (KS) Vucanovich, Barbara* (NV) Walker, Bob* (PA)

Bass, Charles (NH) Bilbray, Brian (CA) Brownback, Sam (KS) Burr, Richard (NC) Chenoweth, Helen (ID) Chrysler, Dick* (MI) Coburn, Tom (OK) Ehrlich, Robert (MD) Funderburk, David* (NC) Hayworth, J.D. (AZ) Hostettler, John (IN) Jones, Walter, Jr. (NC) Martini, William* (NJ) McIntosh, David (IN) Nethercutt, George (WA) Neumann, Mark (WI) Ney, Robert (OH) Sanford, Mark (SC) Scarborough, Joe (FL) Seastrand, Andrea* (CA) Tate, Randy* (WA)

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Senior Staff Members of 104th Freshman Class Offices LA=legislative assistant; COS=chief of staff; PS=press secretary; LD=legislative director AZ AZ CA CA CA CA FL FL FL GA GA GA IA ID IL IN IN KS KS MS NC NC NE NH NJ NV NY NY OH OH OK OK PA PS SC

Sean Noble, Sr. LA—Rep. John Shadegg Glenn Buberl, COS—Rep. J.D.Hayworth Frank Cullen, PS—Rep. Sonny Bono John Woodard, COS—Rep. Brian Bilbray Tom Pile, LD—Rep. George Radanovich Beau Phillips, PS—Rep. Frank Riggs David Stafford, LD—Rep. Joe Scarborough Eric Gustafson, Sr. LA—Rep. Mark Foley Stuart Burns, LD—Rep. Dave Weldon Rodney Whitlock, COS*—Rep. Charles Norwood Dan Levinson, COS—Rep. Bob Barr Rob Leebern, COS—Rep. Saxby Chambliss Jonathan Traub, LD—Rep. Greg Ganske Keith Rupp, COS—Rep. Helen Chenoweth Chris Guidry, LD—Rep. Ray LaHood David Holt, Sr. LA—Rep. David McIntosh Nancy Juday, LD—Rep. John Hostettler Paul Ryan, LD—Sen. Sam Brownback Matt Schlapp, COS*—Rep. Todd Tiahrt Chris Pedigo, LD—Rep. Roger Wicker Hal Weatherman, PS—Rep. Sue Myrick Jim Dornan, COS*—Rep. Richard Burr Mark Fahleson, COS—Rep. Jon Christensen David LeLand, COS*—Rep. Charles Bass Carl Thorsen, Sr. LA—Rep. Frank LoBiondo Scott Sensing, LD—Rep. John Ensign Dennis Lambert, LD—Rep. Sue Kelly Kelly O’Meara, COS*—Rep. Michael Forbes David DiStefano, COS—Rep. Robert Ney Michael Riith, LD—Rep. Steven LaTourette Marie Wheat, LD—Rep. Steve Largent Pam Pryor, Dep. COS—Rep. J.C.Watts Kristen Naney McSwain, LD—Rep. Jon Fox Doug Graham, PS—Rep. Phil English David John, LD—Rep. Mark Sanford

Appendix A SC SC TN TN TX VA WA WA WA WA WA WI WY

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Ziad Ojakli, COS—Rep. Mark Souder Kevin Bishop, PS—Rep. Graham Lindsey Bob Castro, LD—Rep. Zach Wamp Roger Morse, LD—Rep. Van Hilleary Clay Sell, LD—Rep. William Thornberry John Hishta, COS—Rep. Thomas Davis Doug Riggs, LD—Rep. Richard Hastings Kevin McDermott, PS—Rep. Jack Metcalf Leslie Dunlap, LD—Rep. Rick White John Dutton, LD—Rep. Linda Smith Ken Lisaius, PS—Rep. George Nethercutt Brad Hunt, LD—Rep. Mark Neumann Marian Marshall, LD—Rep. Barbara Cubin

*Note: Chief of staffs (COS) marked by asterisks carry the traditional title of Administrative Assistant (AA) within their offices.

Interviewees Not Listed

• Leadership staffers • Staffers for 105th freshmen • Staffers for Democrats GENERAL OBSERVATIONS Immediately following the 1994 elections, Congressional Quarterly reported a House Republican freshman class of seventy-four members (11/12/94). However, Susan Brooks (California district 36) was not seated; thus, the actual original class size was seventy-three members. This number includes Steve Largent (seated 11/29/94) and J.C.Watts (seated 1/9/95) of Oklahoma. The rest of the class was sworn in on January 4, 1995. Of the seventy-three 104th Republican House freshmen, twelve were defeated in the 1996 elections, and two (Cooley, Greene) did not run for reelection. One member (Brownback) went to the Senate. This leaves fifty-eight of the seventy-three members of the 104th GOP freshmen in the House at the start of the 105th Congress. In January 1998, Rep. Sonny Bono (Calif.) died in a snow skiing accident, reducing the size of the class to fifty-seven members.

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Interviews were conducted in fifty-two of the fifty-nine target GOP offices (88%) by the end of May 1997. Concerning the interviewing of staff in members offices, 44 percent of the interviews were with legislative directors, 30 percent with chiefs of staff or administrative assistants, 12 percent with press secretaries, 6 percent with senior legislative assistants, and 8 percent with other staff members such as special legislative assistants or staff attorneys. All told, I conducted forty interviews during a March trip, and forty-seven interviews during a May trip, for a total of eighty-seven in-person interviews. Included in these interviews were meetings with staffers in the House Speaker’s Office, and the Office of the Majority Whip. The balance of my interviews were conducted by telephone.

Appendix B

RESEARCH DESIGN AND DATA ACQUISITION All of the 104th Republican House freshman offices were invited first by letter and then by phone in early 1997 to participate in a study of the 104th freshman class. The invitation explained the nature of the research, and requested a first-round interview with a senior staffer, a second-round interview with a legislator, and the completion of a brief survey instrument. All offices received an equal chance of being included in the study pool. The general approach was to obtain, if possible, the participation of an office without having to use references or assistance from other offices. Generally, the chief of staff was the first staffer sought out, followed by the legislative director or press secretary. Most offices that agreed to first-round participation reserved the decision about providing a second-round interview until the time of the initial appointment. The effective limitation upon interviews with senior staffers was the willingness of offices to cooperate with the project. Once rapport was established with senior staffers, the major limitation upon opportunities to interview legislators was an inability to remain in Washington until appointments could be scheduled. Most offices give greater priority to constituents than to researchers. In instances where cooperation from 104th freshman class offices could not be obtained on the basis of the written research proposal and follow-up phone calls, an attempt was made to secure cooperation after I arrived in Washington. In approximately a half-dozen cases, interview or survey participation was secured through the intervention of staff members from 104th freshman offices where my credibility was established. This latter strategy, although only a minor element in

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my study, was useful in getting interviews with some offices that had erected barriers to academic studies. In all instances I endeavored to respect the time constraints and other interests of staffers and members so as not to detract from the ability of other political scientists to obtain future interviews. Two legislators from my home state of Kansas (Representative Vince Snowbarger and Senator Sam Brownback) kindly accommodated my research endeavors by allowing me to work out of their offices while I was in Washington. The interviewing trips to Washington took place in March and May of 1997, early in the 105th Congress. The 1994 freshmen and their staffers were still keenly aware of the events of the 104th Congress, yet were more analytically reflective than they could have been a year earlier. Another benefit of the timing relates to the development of insurrections against a moderating leadership by conservative 105th sophomores during March and again in May. These confrontations stimulated interviewees to express useful opinions about the relations of junior members and leadership. A few final phone interviews with members and staffers took place during the early summer, as well as phone interviews with former members of the 104th Congress. Interviews generally lasted about thirty to fortyfive minutes. Most representatives were willing to talk longer than anticipated. The research design called for interviews in Washington with senior staffers in at least half of the offices of 104th GOP House freshmen surviving into their second term. The plan also called for interviews with at least fifteen members of the original class. The plan aimed at legislator selection based upon the willingness of senior staffers to arrange appointments or, in the case of former members, their own willingness to cooperate. At the same time, an effort was made to ensure that the mix of member interviews would be representative of the geographical and ideological mix of the class. This was done by asking senior staffers where various members stood on the class’s ideological spectrum, and then pushing on occasion for interviews that could contribute to a representative sample. The survey instrument was designed to generate a great deal of information from relatively few questions. The idea was that a tenquestion survey could be marketed to legislators with more success than a lengthy one. The goal for the survey was to obtain participation from at least thirty of the fifty-nine target offices. In all areas of data gathering, the research design goals were surpassed. Twenty-one

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members of the 104th Republican House freshman class were interviewed, senior staffers were interviewed in the vast majority of targeted offices, and survey instruments were completed by senior staffers and members in forty-seven of the fifty-nine offices. Out of fifty-nine offices, only five chose not to participate in any part of the study. In most cases the senior staffers who received the survey completed it, although in some cases senior staffers gave it to members to complete. The research design called for enrichment interviews with nonclass members, and these were provided by staffers in House leadership offices, as well as by veteran members of the House. The pool of experienced legislators included some who remain active in the 105th Congress, and some who left office after the 104th Congress. No identifiable opinion differences were observed between any of the groups. In interviews with staff members in March, I generally took brief notes, which were refined after appointments. However, interviews were taped toward the latter part of the trip. In May, most interviews with staffers, as well as all interviews with legislators, were taped. I discovered that once credibility is established, interviewees appreciate being asked for permission to tape interviews. Taping gives interviewees greater assurance that their views will be reproduced accurately. On a few occasions, in-person interviews were followed up with supplemental phone interviews. During interviews I endeavored to ask questions that would flow nicely into and around the dissertation’s hypotheses, but I also exerted care not to direct the line of discussion so closely as to reduce the ability of participants to bring into focus important considerations that my line of questioning overlooks. Knowing that tight data comparisons could be constructed with the survey instrument, I saw no advantage in using a rigid approach to interviews. The brief survey consisted of ten questions on both sides of one sheet of paper. The survey was limited in scope to increase the likelihood that offices would complete it. Seven of the questions were multiple choice, with four of the seven having an open option so as not to force the answer choice. The other three questions involved ranking the importance of seven to nine options, with an extra unrestricted option in two of the cases. It can be argued that a few questions that allow respondents to rank answer options can cover more territory than a larger number of multiple-choice questions. Yet, because option-ranking questions require more concentration

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and reflection on the part of respondents, they were used sparingly. Question order was arranged so as to help participants understand the rationale of the survey. An attempt was also made to avoid “question set” response problems. Nearly all survey participants completed the entire survey instrument. As previously observed, an effort was made to ensure that the interview and survey samples would be representative of the 104th GOP House freshman class. (Granted, the high homogeneity of the class reduces the risk of a nonrepresentative sample.) All surviving class members (105th sophomores) were given an equal chance of entering the study. This applies to the initial contact by mail and early follow-up endeavors. Toward the end of the study, scheduling priority for member interviews was given to a few offices where participation was useful in building geographic representativeness. In regard to 104th GOP House freshmen who lost their reelection races in 1996, all but two were contacted and given invitations to participate in interviews by phone. (Two former members did not make themselves available for contact.) Although survey forms were not sent to former members, the participation of five of these individuals strengthens the study. Sample representativeness was checked by analyzing the political experience of participants, as well as the ideological and geographic profiles of full participants, partial participants, and nonparticipants from the freshman class. No significant skewing was observed in these groups. With regard to ideology, a five-point scale was created and a confidential ranking was assigned to each member based upon CQ information, as well as profiles of class members constructed by several senior staffers. In regard to geographic representativeness, class membership was divided into four regions: East and Northeast, South and Southeast, North Central and Midwest, and West. Representativeness of the sample was also studied in terms of political experience at the state level. The representativeness is not surprising in view of the large size of the main study group relative to class size.

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Index

Please note that references in BOLD refer to the primary source in the text for that item. abstractions: ideological, 138, 146, agenda: policy, 50, 57, 62, 137, 242– 43 altruism, 50–51 amateurs: political, 85 ambition: distrust of, 29, 43 exonerated, 34, 36, 49 political, 4, 27, 29, 34–35, 42–43, 48, 51–52, 135, 146, 234, 271–72 American Dream, 69 Arnold, R.Douglas, 34, 45, 160 attitudinal theory, 36 balanced budget issue, 16, 126, 128, 140, 172, 260, 276 balancing theory: voters check excesses, 165 bargaining in the House, 16, 185, 274 behavioral theory, 3, 28, 127, 217 bipartisanship, 74, 101, 157–58, 225, 227, 238, 250, 269 Blankley, Tony, 42, 161–62

Buddy Hall, 176, 181 business: Republicans cater to, 49– 50, 126, 240 campaigns: plausible importance of, 84, 146–47, 268 careerism: in Congress, 30, 32, 38, 43, 46– 47, 69, 143, 146, 238, 269 strategic noncareerism, 40, 44–46, 81 casual relationships: member behavior, 39–40 change: evolutionary in Congress, 35, 42, 51, 60, 85, 179, 241, 259 character: as an issue, 130–31 checks and balances, 5, 241, 269 class as community, 168 Clean Water Act, 225 Clinton, President: capable, 16–17, 217, 228, 257 conflict with Republicans, 95, 101–2, 125, 139–40 personal difficulties, 59–61, 155– 56 coalition politics, 55, 57, 169, 268, 273 coattails, presidential, 165

327

328 cohesion: limits of, 173 collective action problem, 188, 203, comity: in the House, 73, 87, 136, 163, 241, 251 committee assignments: reasons for, 205–6, 214–15 committee relationships: importance of, 173, 259 committees: members’ behavior within, 38–41 common sense politics: motto among House Republicans, 64, 151 communications: internal in the House, 78, 87, 265–66 community: sense of in 104th GOP class, 176–77, 231, 265 compromise: political, 6, 14, 32, 44, 114–16, 126, 128, 131–33, 174, 194–95, 201, 219, 227, 248–49 conceptualizations: theoretical 7, 9–10, 27–35, 50, 56, 62, 107, 167, 191, 235, 270, 272–74 conditional party government: model, 13, 187 Congress: campaigning against, 131 historic norms, 87 the institution of, 67 unpopularity of institution, 59 congressional elections: 1994 races, 57–58, 158 1996 races, 158–59, 261–63 Congressional Accountability Act, 99, 220–21, 245 Congressional Review Act (1996), 13 conscientiousness, 131, 253 conservatism: traditional, 66 conservative junior House members: as rebels, 12–17, 20, 23, 203 peer empathy with, 9, 14, 22, 24

Index Conservative Action Team (CATS), 105, 175–76, 232, 265 Conservative Opportunity Society, 124 constituent services: performed by legislators, 32, 108–9, 128, 201, 238–39, 260 Contract with America: Democrats’ view of, 155 public knowledge of, 124, 146, 154–55 symbolic value of, 139, 147 importance of 56, 60–64, 69–72, 95, 101–2, 123–26, 129, 149– 50, 154–56, 250, 256 instrumental nature of, 125, 139– 44, 268 corruption: political, 162 coup plan: House Republicans, 8, 11–22, 137, 254–55 Davidson, Roger, 185 decision making: of legislators, 31, 42, 48, 100–3 delegates and trustees: conceptions of legislator roles, 43, 45, 51, 132, 230 Democrat House freshmen, 104th Congress: 10, 73, 77, Democrats: House, 4, 49, 57, 61, 85, 126, 145, 149–50, 185, 232 discipline: party, 186, 254 dissension: within GOP House ranks, 21 divided government, 165 Dye, Thomas, 9 Elazar, Daniel, 9 election results: interpretations, 65, 82, 159–62, 228–30, 262–63 electoral security, 4 elites: political, 104, 109–10 Endangered Species Act, 226 environment, political:

Index importance of, 38–41 environmental policy, 115–16, 223–28, 235, 245 euphoria of political victory, 74–76 exit polls: results from, 75 factionalism: within House GOP ranks, 6, 15 Family Caucus, 15, 176, 202, 232, 265, 276 federalism: as a Republican goal, 128 conceptual outline, 9 Federalist Papers, 56 Fenno, Richard, 28–29, 33, 38–41, 48–49, 55, 63, 83, 143, 149, 157, 167, 178, 191, 243, 259, 262 Fiorina, Morris, 33, 160 fiscal responsibility, 70, 159 Fowler, Linda, 33, 37–38 Frankenstein: Newt’s, 199–200, 248 freshman class: study standards, 10 freshmen as “Newtoids,” 200–1 Gang of Eleven, 12–22, 24, 231, 261–62 Gang of Four, 80 Gang of Seven, 24 generalizability of findings: on freshmen, 32–33, 43–44 generalizations: theoretical, 34, 37, 47 gift reform, 222, 257 Gingrich: as a freshman Speaker, 204, 256 esteemed by junior members, 17, 78–81, 101, 191, 201 exercise of party discipline, 12, 15, 209–10 leadership, 6, 13, 22, 127, 144, 190–95, 207–9, 251

329 leadership style, 15, 197–99, 255 listening skills, 79, 277 personal problems impinge on leadership, 15, 24, 173, 254 split personality, 209 strategy development, 66, 78–80, 124–26, 137–38, 141–42, 152, 170, 192, 196, 199–200, 255– 57 goal theory, 3, 28–29, 38, 48 goals: conditional nature of, 29, 45–46, 49–50 GOPAC: Gingrich’s involvement with, 24, 57, 256 government: downsizing, 72, 81, 83, 128, 154–55, 159–60, 239 government shutdown: partial, 12, 16, 134, 172, 190, 194, 210– 11, 242, 248–49, 253, 276 governorships: Republican gains, 61 Heritage Foundation, 63, 72–73, 120, 144, 276 House Republican Conference, 104, 106–8 House rules: importance of, 4, 222 housing programs: federal, 138 Hurley, Patricia, 169, 179 idealism, 23, 133, 235 ideological compatibility: members and staffers, 117–18 incrementalism: competing with purism, 132– 38, 174, 230 as a policy making strategy, 9, 14, 32, 133–36, 227, 235, 238–39, 242, 257, 269 incumbency advantage, 238 insecurity: electoral, 30 institutional efficiency, 187, 269 institutionalism: research concept, 4, 28, 37 insurrection: by disenchanted junior members, 12, 16–18

330 integrity: as an issue, 72, 95, 153–54 internal reform in the House, 95, 98–100, 128, 220–23, 227, 245 issue agendas, 125–26 Jacobson, Gary 160 junior members: power of, 192 justice, 5 Kincaid, John, 9 Krehbiel, Keith, 33, 184 land policy, 161, 226 language: of the majority party, 237 leaders: informal, 186, 252–54, 266–67 leadership: constraints upon, 8, 15, 46, 82, 127–28, 131, 136–37, 144, 190–92, 201, 209–14, 228, 253, 269, 273, 276 errors of, 16, 19, 163, 226, 228, 240–41 strategic centralization of power, 81, 106–8, 183–85, 192, 204–8, 254–55 leadership-agent relations: conditionality of, 189 legislative learning: consequences of, 23, 143–44, 218–19, 242– 44, 257–259, 274, 277 legislators’ perceptions: importance of, 41 lieutenants: Gingrich’s, 15–22, 63, 80, 173, 201, 206 lobbying reforms, 222, 245 lobbyists: special interest groups, 109–10 Loomis, Burdett, 23, 29, 34, 47, 49, 146, 158, 232–33, 251, 261, 263 Lutz, Donald, 9 Madison, James, 6, 27, 36 Majority Makers: class label, 55, 75, 170 mandate: claim as a strategic tool, 162

Index claim: by inexperienced members, 65, 152–53, 156–60, 268–69 media role in perception of, 152 misunderstood, 65–66, 224, 228– 230, 237 part of Contract language, 153 mandate perception, 45, 56, 66, 124, 150–62, 189, 192, 247, 250, 258, 268, 274 Mayhew, David, 27–29, 34, 38, 49, 160 Mayhew thesis: 33–34 media: national, 13, 62, 75, 104, 112–14, 238, 251, 271 member goals: conditional and constrained, 31, 45–46, 84 Mezey, Michael, 33 midterm elections, 165 minority party in the House, 6, 58– 60, 80, 133, 141, 187, 238 mission: idea of, 56, 130 moderate conservatives, 190, 193 moderates: House Republican, 7, 57, 80, 135–37, 154, 191, 194– 95, 222, 224, 230, 253–54 moral authority, 43, 70, 252 national issues platform: House Republicans, 57, 59, 72, 125, 141 negative ambition, 252 New Deal: FDR’s, 69 New Federalists, 15, 105, 176, 202, 232, 265 norms: traditional, 80, 218, 244 104th Republican House freshmen: business backgrounds, 64, 67– 68, 131, 240, 256–57 camaraderie among, 62–63, 71– 73, 169, 177, 232, 250– 51, 261, 264 citizen legislators, 43–44, 129, 142, 269 class as atypical, 33, 261–62, 272

Index class cohesion: 55, 62–65, 66–67, 91–93, 132, 142, 170, 234, 250–51 class identity, 75, 78, 90–91, 126, 144, 163, 248, 264 class organization, 7, 76–78, 168, 178, 233–34, 263, 270 commonalities among, 56, 62–63, 171–72 conditionality of cooperation, 189, 201, 210, 213 critical of party leadership, 12–18, 21 determination to exert an influence, 8, 13–15, 68–70, 74– 75, 79, 82, 127–31, 137, 144, 167, 170, 203–5, 273 differences among members, 63, 86, 170–71, 178–79 factions among, 7, 132, 235, 265, 267 going native, 47, 64 importance of, 214, 248, 267, 270, 274 independence from will of leadership, 13–14, 33, 71, 81– 83, 86, 140, 192–94, 201–3, 241, 248, 251–53, 273 legislative learning, 8, 63, 78, 124, 144, 217–219, 227–230, 235– 243, 257 mandate perceptions, 11, 41, 56, 124, 149–55, 156–63, 250, 268 mission, 30–31, 52, 56, 64, 68–70, 94–98, 124, 138, 224–26, 247, 250–52, 271–72 political inexperience, 8, 19, 25, 58–59, 62–63, 71, 73, 137, 143–44, 215–19, 236–37, 240, 244, 268, 277 popularity in Home districts, 14, 252, 261–62

331 principles, 8, 43, 46, 126–29, 136– 38, 143, 248–49 recruitment by leadership, 58, 71, 86, 256–57 risk-takers for the sake of policy, 31, 45–46, 252 self-awareness, 43, 64, 74, 106, 126, 167, 202, 241, 264 self-selection for candidacy, 86– 87, 130 strategies, 18–20, 68, 83, 133–35, 202–8, 232, 239, 243, 248, 267 survival, 158, 261–67 unity through shared experiences, 43, 72, 232 See also conservative junior members 105th Congress: the “do-nothing” label, 211 105th GOP House sophomores: activities of, 7–8, 11–23, 32, 263 orientation period for new members, 63, 72–73 Palazzolo, Daniel, 186 parliamentary motion: to vacate House Speakership, 18 parochialism, 132, 137 partisanship, 95, 227, 270 party line voting, 131, 250, perceptions as causal elements, 6– 7, 127, 271 persuasion: power of, 15, 212 pesticide regulations, 226 policy entrepreneurship, 60, 140 policy making: bottom up strategy, 82–83, 137, 143–44, 177 political realignment: possibility of, 60 political scientists, 3, 6, 28–42, 48– 53, 58, 84–87, 145–47, 158, 160, 163–66, 179–181, 183,

332 214–15, 217, 237, 244–46, 262, 265 politics as chess, 19 pork: political, 12, 37, 51, 128, 132, 146, 153, 174, 206, 267 power: effects of partisan division of, 187–88 sharing and competition, 7, 11, 17, 23, 64, 74, 79, 82, 141, 184– 88, 192–97, 200–8, 213–14, 222, 252, 269 President, U.S.: powers of, 86 principal-agent theory, 8, 17, 23, 127–28, 144, 149, 183–92, 212, 269, 272–73 principles: conservatives’ ideas of, 123, 125, 126–29, 142–43, 235, 272 in conflict, 180 private property, 5 promises: campaign, 8, 64, 73, 128, 131, 143, 149, 156–57 proxy voting, 221 psychological model, 36 public charity, 5 public opinion, 139, 190 public relations, 13, 78–79, 106–8, 124, 239–40 questions for political scientists, 274–76 rational choice theory, 4, 34, 37 Reagan, President, 13, 57, 68, 158, 162, 171, 223–24 Reagan Robots, 251, 260, 272 reelection goal, 29–32, 34–35, 41, 43–46 , 48, 114–16, 129, 144, 166, 203, 234, 271–72 regulatory reform, 128, 140, 160 Regulatory Flexibility Act, 160 religion: among House members, 176, 181

Index representative government, 4, 95, 164, 183 Republican revolutionaries, 175 Republicans: candidacies for Congress, 51 inexperienced as majority party, 222 policy platform, 123 research: future paths, 272–76 Rohde, David, 50, 160, 185–88 safe drinking water legislation, 226 Salisbury Conference, 1994: platform planning, 70, 125 scandal: in Congress, 60, 85 seat margin: ramifications of, 15, 23–24, 190, 212–13, 263, 273 secondary literature, 247–58 self-interest: of legislators, 29, 37, 45, 50, 129, 205 Senate, U.S.: 60–61, 86, 277 senior Republican House members, 9, 13, 109–10, 129, 141–42, 156, 174–75, 207–8, 221–22, 241, 248 shirking by legislators, 150, 166, 183 Sinclair, Barbara, 36, 127–28, 152, 183, 185, 188–89, 195, 237 single-issue voters, 14, 145, social malaise, 60 socialization: political, 179 sociological model, 28, 35–36 Speaker: as agent, 183–85, 273 staffers: committee, 104, 111–12 in member offices, 106, 168, 196, 233–35, 245, 258, 265–67 state legislatures, 5 strategic noncareerism: a political tactic, 40 strategy: Republican House leadership, 13, 57, 62, 66, 80– 83, 195–96

Index subgroups, 62, 78, 104–6, 120, 202–3, 231–32, 258, 265, 273 survey data, 89–118 task forces: in the House, 197, 208, 226, 255 taxation opposition, 172 term limits, 44, 142–43, 145, 214, 221, 243, 276 theoretical nuances, 29, 30, 47, 271– 72 theory: behavioral, 7, 55 early development of, 35–37 think tanks, 104, 108–10 tiger teams, 106 tolerance, 236 traditions, House, 184 truth: some say self-evident, 129

333 U.S. Constitution, 9 unions: role in politics, 65 voters: political knowledge and rationality, 85, 146–47, 164 voting behavior: of legislators, 31 Washington, D.C.: 104th GOP freshmen wary of, 63, 69–70, 247, 250, 257 Watergate Babies: 1974 Democrat House freshmen, 23, 56, 59, 146, 168, 208, 247, 251, 263, 272, 276 watershed election: 1994, 61, 65 whole-loafers and half-loafers, 131– 32, 133–36, 146, 195, 203, 254 zeal: among 104th freshmen, 203–4