Class Consciousness

The House Republican freshmen: always aggressive, sometimes obnoxious, hardly mono lithic

Rick Henderson from the January 1996 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

The Coaching Staff. The freshmen repeat their revulsion with the Washington establish ment like a mantra. But the people the freshmen picked to lead their class, the coaching staff, aren't government greenhorns. As one former congressional staffer with close ties to several freshmen puts it, the leaders of this class "have a maturity that forces them to leaven their oppo sition to Washington with their knowledge of the way the legislative process works."

Take class president Roger Wicker of Mississippi. As a 16-year-old, he was a page for Democrat Jamie Whitten, who retired last year after 22 terms in the House. Wicker, who was also a state senator and a staff member for then-Rep. Trent Lott, won Whitten's old seat.

Class vice president Mark Edward Souder worked for Indiana Sen. Dan Coats for four
years, eventually becoming Coats's deputy chief of staff. One of the two freshmen liaisons to the House leadership, Sue Myrick, was mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina; the other, David McIn tosh of Indiana, was the executive director of Vice President Dan Quayle's Council of Competi tiveness.

"Even-tempered" is the way the former Hill staffer describes the class leaders. They rarely lose their cool (in public, anyway), and while they may push some initiatives the party leaders can't stomach, they recognize that, to have any influence, they must remain loyal to the Republi can bosses.

For instance, a group of 30 "New Federalists" led by Kansan Sam Brownback put together task forces that drafted proposals to abolish the Departments of housing, Energy, Education, and Commerce. The GOP leaders agreed to bring forward only the Commerce plan this year. Rather than making a public stink, the freshmen rallied around a proposal drawn up by freshman Dick Chrysler (Mich.), who ran the Commerce task force. Chrysler's planwhich unlike a competing proposal by veteran porkbarrel pol Bud Schuster (R-Pa.) would do away with the department won the blessing of Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley (Va.).

The Free Agents. Several freshmen, however, have shown little interest in preserving traditional congressional decorum. Neumann, a home builder, has engaged in shouting matches with constituents at town meetings. Texan Steve Stockman claimed that Attorney General Janet Reno committed premeditated murder during the Waco raid. Californian Andrea Seastrand de fended a balanced-budget amendment on the House floor by reading verse written in the style of Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham. ("They will not try a balanced budget, Sam I am./They will not try it with a mouse./They will not try it in the House.") And then there's Sonny Bono.

There are a few outliers in this class. Some may just have an overactive sense of humor, such as Steven LaTourette of Ohio, who "hired" humor columnist Dave Barry to work as a press aide and speechwriter for a week. Yet others have taken stands on issues that have made the party elders a bit uncomfortable.

Occasionally these mavericks perform like garden-variety big-spending politicians. LaTourette voted against the House budget reconciliation because he objected to cuts in the Earned Income Tax Credit and Medicaid. Georgian Saxby Chambliss joined three other GOP renegades on the Agriculture Committee and voted against chairman
Pat Roberts's Freedom to Farm Act. (See "Bummer Crop," December 1995.) Linda Smith kept the leadership from privatizing the Bonneville Power Administration, saying she would not sup port privatization "if it is going to destroy the economy of our region."

Other freshmen, however, have opposed their leaders on matters of principle. Judiciary Committee member Steve Chabot, from Cincinnati, defied Lamar Smith (Tex.), chairman of the immigration subcommittee, and tried to remove an employment telephone verification system, tied to a national worker registry, from Smith's immigration-control bill. (See "Bringing the Border War Home," October 1995.) Chabot referred to the provision as "dialing 1-800-BIG -BROTHER." When his anti-registry amendment failed by a 15­17 vote, he promised to try to remove the verification system from the bill when it reached the House floor. "I wasn't sent here to add to the power of the federal government or add to the burdens on working Americans," he said after the vote.

Chabot was also the only committee Republican who voted to split the immigration bill into two measures: an enforcement bill to control illegal immigration, and a separate set of limits on immigration visas. This amendment also failed, but he hopes party leaders will split the bill before it reaches the floor.

Georgian Bob Barr, a former CIA analyst and U.S. attorney, has also given Judiciary Com mittee Chairman Henry Hyde (Ill.) a few headaches. In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Senate rushed through a sweeping new anti-terrorist bill by a vote of 91­8. But the House could never bring its own version, which Hyde championed, to the floor.

Hyde was stymied by a collection of privacy and civil liberties advocates, gun owners' groups, and the Congressional Black Caucusthe same coalition that temporarily derailed the 1994 crime bill. Barr was the coalition's most vocal Republican spokesman, expressing concerns about provisions that would make it easier for law enforcement agencies to tap telephone calls without first getting a court order. He also set off alarms about the bill's overly broad definition of terrorism, which would have made most crimes committed with a firearm federal offenses, and might have allowed police to define some domestic disputes as acts of terrorism. And he got Southern representatives, including some Democrats, on board by questioning the bill's expan sion of the use of federal troops for routine law enforcement. By late September, Hyde admitted he couldn't get a majority to vote for the bill and removed it from consideration.

Barr, whom Gingrich appointed to head a task force on firearm policies, has experience as a federal prosecutor that could make him a formidable critic of criminal justice excesses. Gregory Nojeim of the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that Barr could inherit the mantle worn for three decades by former FBI agent Rep. Don Edwards (D-Calif.), who was a thorn in the sides of overreaching federal law enforcers until his retirement from the House in 1994.

Many of these free agents may not be rogue actors after alla potential problem for Gingrich and company. The free agents instead may be defenders of the GOP agenda whose loyalty is divided by the infamous Perot voters. In the spring of 1994, The Evans & Novak Political Report suggested that the Democratic districts most ripe for a Republican takeover were those whose voters gave at least 60 percent of the 1992 presidential vote to George Bush plus Ross Perot.

Sure enough, 23 of the 52 seats that changed hands followed this formula. (See chart.) And Perot received a higher percentage of the vote in 18 of these districts than he did in the nation as a whole. Peter Roff, political director of GOPAC, the Republicans' political action committee and candidate-training organization, says most of the self-identified Perot voters are Reagan Democrats and Reagan independents for whom procedural reforms are often as important as reducing the overall size of the federal government. Perotistas constitute a crucial segment of the Republican coalition, but if the GOP's congressional majorities hinge on the Perot voters' sup port, such issues as term limits and campaign-finance reform may crowd entitlement and tax overhauls off the agenda.

As unlikely as the 1994 GOP takeover may have seemed when it happened, congressional Republicans had a chance to prepare for it. They started gaining strength when the Senate sus tained a filibuster of President Clinton's stimulus package in 1993. The death of the Clinton health care plan, which came as the Contract was being born, made a Republican victory that November seem possible. As Newt Gingrich prepared to take charge of the House, he brought several party firebrands under his wing: Dick Armey, Ohio's John Kasich, Pennsylvania's Bob Walker, and, naturally, the Gang of Seven all of whom have offered invaluable help to the new speaker.

The class of '94, however, may pose a different challenge. Seventy-three legislators hailing from disparate districts are difficult to keep on the same page. Maintaining a majority is tougher than assembling it in th