Specter of reelection bids gets freshman attention

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 27, 1996 | by Lisa Leiter

A year ago, the 73 first-term Republicans in the House were viewed as a cohesive bloc. That has changed. While some say they never were so monolithic, Election Day worries may ultimately unite them.

"Whoever thought we could do this in two years was stupid," said freshman Republican Rep. George Radanovich of California, peering out from under his Ray-Bans in front of a House office building on a sunny spring day. "I think it will take closer to 10 years," the term limit he has set for himself.

The class president is talking about the freshman version of the so-called Republican revolution. Eliminating four Cabinet departments. Selling some congressional buildings. Reforming the way Congress operates. And his statement, unintentionally but only half-jokingly, insults some of his colleagues for whom the GOP "Contract With America" once seemed incomplete. They are the 25 or so feisty, reform-minded newcomers -- dubbed the New Federalists -- who wanted more and wanted it immediately.

One of the group's leaders, Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, told Insight last year that they could slash and burn four Cabinet departments in two years. In a recent interview, he admits that he and his classmates tried to do too much too fast. Now many of the GOP freshmen sound more like the party establishment they so enthusiastically criticized at the beginning of the 104th Congress.

"Rome wasn't built in a day," he says. "We're not going to make these changes rapidly ... and perhaps we shouldn't. We need to take some time and talk to the American people and say, 'Here is why we're doing these things and we're doing it carefully, compassionately, skillfully.'"

That statement contrasts with sentiments conveyed in 1995 when these 73 commandos arrived on Capitol Hill -- most of them never having held elective office -- armed with strong convictions and ready to radically change the way the federal government operates. The media and pundits viewed them as House Speaker Newt Gingrich's personal army, a unified cadre of loyalists lacking minds of their own. But now that "they've been hit in the head with a 2-by-4 called reality," as Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute puts it, the mainstream inclinations of the freshmen are showing. Although almost all of them pledged allegiance to the contract, some have branched out with their own legislative agendas, concentrating on reelection. "They all limited their own terms, but they don't want to limit them to one," Ornstein says.

"People had this conception that we were one entity," says Radanovich, who is not an active member of the New Federalists. "The zeal remains but we were never together on some of the more divisive issues like abortion and the environment." House Republican Conference Chairman John Boehner of Ohio agrees. "The freshmen as a group ideologically don't look any different than the rest of us," Boehner says, adding that the reports of their marching in lockstep "never was a story."

That may be true, but the GOP leadership did not exactly foster independent thinking among the freshmen. There was Wisconsin's Mark Neumann, who led 54 of the freshmen in opposition to the defense-appropriations conference report because his amendment was removed. The leadership threw Neumann off an Appropriations subcommittee in retaliation; when the freshmen protested, he was given a Budget Committee seat as a peace offering. Despite coaxing by the leadership on another occasion, Indiana's Mark Souder and John Hostettler voted against reopening the government during one of the shutdowns. Their dissent prompted Gingrich to cancel fund-raising appearances for them. "There's certainly a lot of internal peer pressure," Ornstein says, "especially if what you're doing is taking purity to the next level and defying leadership."

The steady softening of the freshmen's "our-way-or-no-way" attitude is illustrated by the recent 399-25 vote for a 1996 budget, with only 10 GOP freshmen in opposition. In September, however, the New Federalists and other conservatives had penned a letter to Gingrich demanding that the federal budget be balanced in seven years and meet projected first-year savings targets, that the deficit not be increased and that the Department of Commerce be eliminated or they would not support it. In the end, only two of the four requirements were met -- the projected first-year targets and that the deficit not be increased.

During the government shutdown at Christmas, critics note, the freshmen were like children who didn't find the presents they wanted under the tree. Now they're acting more like grown-ups. "So we didn't get everything we wanted. "Brownback says. "Most people have come to terms with that."

When it comes to campaign reform, Linda Smith, who won in 1994 as a write-in candidate, won't give up. She's aggressively spearheading a bipartisan campaign-finance-reform effort -- much to the dismay of the Republican leadership -- after forcing House Majority Leader Dick Armey to move gift-ban and lobbying-reform legislation to the House floor last fall. She has 36 signatures on a discharge petition -- which enables members to bring legislation to the floor against the will of the leadership if 218 members support it.