John A. Lawrence - The Class of 74: Congress After Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship

THE CLASS OF 74

THE CLASS OF

CONGRESS AFTER WATERGATE AND THE ROOTS OF PARTISANSHIP

JOHN A. LAWRENCE

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS

Baltimore

2018 Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 2018

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lawrence, John A., 1949 author.

Title: The class of 74 : Congress after Watergate and the roots of partisanship / John A. Lawrence.

Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017022924 | ISBN 9781421424699 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781421424705 (electronic) | ISBN 142142469X (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 1421424703 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: United States. Congress (94th : 1977-1979) | United StatesPolitics and government19771981.

Classification: LCC JK1059 94th .L39 2018 | DDC 328.7309/047dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017022924

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

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To the members of the House Class of 1974, whose service provided the story line of this book and whose generous participation enabled me to write it. I am grateful to them and to the congressional staff, journalists, and others who have trusted me with their recollections of campaigns and service in the House of Representatives.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

This book is the outgrowth not only of extensive research but also nearly four decades of service on the staffs of two extraordinary members of the US House of Representatives: Rep. George Miller of California, for whom I worked for 30 years as chief of staff and staff director of two committees, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I served as chief of staff for eight years. After leaving Capitol Hill, I entered an academic track that had been interrupted following graduate school in the mid-1970s, teaching at the University of Californias Washington Center with the goal of providing students with a pragmatic understanding of the history and operations of the Congress.

I also was interested in combining my Hill experience and perspective as a history PhD to write about what often seems an unwieldy and chaotic institution (as it sometimes is). The Class of 1974 presented an unusually rich topic for study. Although this large cohort of freshmen legislators was much scrutinized and analyzed upon its arrival on Capitol Hill, inadequate scholarly attention has been paid to its contribution to the democratization of the House and the promotion of critical legislation. Too often, the members of the Class have been collectively labeled the Watergate Babies, a moniker that both trivializes their significance and overlooks the remarkable diversity of their backgrounds, outlooks, and actions. One trait, however, largely unified them: this was a group of politicians who came to Washington not simply to occupy seats in Congress but to change the world, and they believed they could.

I began the four-year-long process that led to this book by immersing myself in the scholarly literature on Congress in the mid-1970s, including important work by Burdett Loomis, Julian Zelizer, Norman Ornstein, and David Rohde, among others. I examined contemporaneous accounts of journalists who tracked the successes and failures of the 94th Congress, and I studied the debates on the key issues that consumed the floor.

Most uniquely, I was able to conduct extensive interviews with nearly 40 members of the ClassDemocrats and Republicansconcerning their congressional careers, as well as with other members, staff, reporters, and other Washington insiders. Because I arrived as a House staff member contemporaneously with the Class, I had known many of them over the years and had formed working relationships characterized by trust and mutual respect. Although in some cases decades had passed since we had been in touch, these long-standing relationships afforded me the unique opportunity to elicit their recollections and analyses of the experience of running for and serving in Congress at so crucial a time in the history of both the nation and that institution. Few Class members had written about their time in Washington; many professed incredulity that anyone would still be interested in their recollections, which were invaluable in enriching the story of those turbulent years and how they helped shape our contemporary political environment.

Most statements attributed to interviewees have appropriate citations. However, in some cases, frank statements were made with the understanding of anonymity, and, in those cases, no reference is provided. Audio files and handwritten notes of these interviews have been deposited in my papers in the Library of Congress and will be available to researchers in the future.

Lastly, this book focuses almost exclusively on the House of Representatives. This singular focus is not due to my bias toward the house in which I worked, but rather because most of the significant change during the 94th Congress occurred in the House. The biennial revision of House rules, as opposed to the continuing rules of the Senate, provided far greater opportunity for a sizeable incoming class, along with veteran reformers, to effectuate significant modernization and democratization. There were important reforms in the Senate as well, in particular modifications to the filibuster rulesbut, for that account, readers must look to other sources.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I deeply appreciate the unwavering intellectual and personal encouragement of my wife, Professor Deborah Phillips of Georgetown University, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of this project, of my own long service as a House staff person, and of my belated admission to the ranks of productive historians.

In addition, I wish to thank members of the community of congressional scholars, which has welcomed me into its ranks and has encouraged my efforts, including this book. In particular, Professors Julian Zelizer of Princeton University and Frances Lee of the University of Maryland have provided invaluable assistance, as have Matt Dallek of George Washington University, James Grossman of the American Historical Association, and Helen Shapiro of the University of California.

I also want to thank my agent, Lauren Sharp of Aevitas Creative, who was an invaluable source of guidance and advice along the way, and my editor at Johns Hopkins University Press, Elizabeth Demers, and her staff. In addition, I appreciate the careful attention to editing provided by Carrie Watterson, as well as the assistance of the Office of the House Archivist and the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Thanks also to the librarians at the Library who assisted me at desk 221 of the magnificent Main Reading Room.

For their invaluable early guidance of me as a scholar, I want to thank my dissertation advisor, Leon Litwack of Berkeley, and posthumously, my undergraduate mentor who remarkably saw promise in my potential as an historian, Geoffrey Blodgett of Oberlin College.