Extensions Summer 2017

Nuclear Option

Separated Institutions

Gridlock

A Journal of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center

Congressional Review Act

Ryan

Summer 2017

Constituency Pressures

Tax reform

Gorsuch Immigration

Tuesday Group

Filibuster

Ethics

Health Care

Schumer

Executive Orders Investigations Minority Comey

Nominations

Infrastructure

Pelosi

Reconciliation

Obama

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Rules

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Freedom Caucus

Advise and Consent

McConnell

Russia

Trump 115th Congress Race

Messaging

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S CONGRESS PUZZLE

Established in 1979 by the Oklahoma Regents for Higher Education and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center is a nonpartisan institution devoted to instruction and scholarship related to the United States Congress. The mission of the Center is defined broadly in terms of academic inquiry into the history, structure, process, personnel, and policies of the Congress, and the relationship between the Congress and other agencies and actors in the American political system.

In the most general sense, the Center is concerned with the problems of modern representative democracy, as exemplified by the Congress.

In pursuit of this goal, the Carl Albert Center performs four principal functions. The first is the development of academic programs in congressional studies at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, which are sponsored in cooperation with the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Political Science. At the graduate level the Center offers a four-year, specialized fellowship program leading toward the doctoral degree. Each Fellow receives a fully financed program of study. At the undergraduate level the Center sponsors a research fellowship program designed to foster collaborative research between faculty and undergraduates.

Second, believing that professional research is the foundation upon which its academic programs rest, the Center promotes original research by faculty members and students into various aspects of politics and the Congress.

The Center encourages publication and provides its faculty and students with institutional and financial support to travel for research purposes and to present research findings at professional conferences.

The third function of the Center is the development of resource materials related to the Congress. The Center’s Congressional Archives, which are among the largest in the country, include the papers of more than 60 former members of Congress. Such prominent Oklahomans as Speaker Carl Albert, Dewey F. Bartlett, Page Belcher, Mickey Edwards, Glenn English, Robert S. Kerr, Sr., Fred Harris, Steve Largent, Dave McCurdy, Mike Monroney, Tom Steed, Mike Synar, and J. C. Watts have donated their papers to the Center along with such distinguished non-Oklahomans as Dick Armey, Helen Gahagan Douglas, and Carl Hatch.

Fourth, the Center actively strives to promote a wider understanding and appreciation of the Congress through various civic education programs. The Center sponsors conferences, speakers, television appearances, and the biennial Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture in Representative Government. The Center also publishes Extensions, a journal which focuses on issues related to the Congress. Taken together, these diverse aspects of the Carl Albert Center constitute a unique resource for scholarship and research related to the United States Congress.

The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center Director and Curator Cindy Simon Rosenthal Associate Director Michael H. Crespin Regents’ Professor Ronald M. Peters, Jr. Director of Administration Katherine McRae Director of N.E.W. Leadership Lauren Schueler Assistant Curator Nathan Gerth Archivist Rachel Henson National Advisory Board David E. Albert Richard A. Baker David L. Boren Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Joseph S. Foote Joel Jankowsky Dave McCurdy Frank H. Mackaman Thomas E. Mann Chuck Neal Michael L. Reed Catherine E. Rudder Hon. Tom Cole 4th District, Oklahoma ex officio Managing Editor, Extensions Chip Minty Minty Communications LLC Graphic Designer, Extensions Brandy Akbaran University of Oklahoma Printing, Mailing and Document Services

A Journal of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center

TABLE OF CONTENTS Summer 2017

Editor’s Introduction

2

President Trump’s Congress Puzzle

Special Orders

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Ronald M. Peters, Jr.

Procedural Politics at the Start of the 115th Congress Molly E. Reynolds

12

Congressional Democrats in the Time of Trump

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Racial Representation in the Trump-Era Congress

Matthew N. Green

Christian Grose

For the Record

22

Carl Albert Center Celebrates Founder’s Inspiring Career at University of Oklahoma

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News from the Center

Cindy Simon Rosenthal

Katherine McRae

Images courtesy of AP Images.

Extensions is a copyrighted publication of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. It is published twice each year and distributed free of charge.

To receive copies of Extensions, or to obtain permission to reprint, please contact Katherine McRae at (405) 325-6372 or e-mail to mcrae@ou.edu. Extensions also may be viewed on the Center’s website at www.ou.edu/carlalbertcenter.

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Editor’s Introduction

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S CONGRESS PUZZLE Ronald M. Peters, Jr. | Editor

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he United States Constitution creates what Richard Neustadt described as separated institutions sharing power. The founders’ objective was to disperse power. In this way, they thought, freedom and self-government would be preserved. All power collected in the same hands, said James Madison, is the very definition of tyranny. The political system they created immediately confronted a problem. The very arrangements that prevented tyranny also impeded collective action. Some mechanism was needed to coordinate political action across the constitutional divides, and the political party system emerged as the solution. One way to think about how the American constitutional system functions is to see it as an ongoing struggle between institutional inertia and partisan forces.

Over the past three decades, partisan forces have steadily eroded institutional norms that have preserved the constitutional balance the founders sought. The litany is by now familiar.

The congressional parties have become polarized. Centrist Democrats

and Republicans have been defeated at the polls or have chosen to retire.

The committee system has become dysfunctional. Congress regularly fails to enact annual appropriations bills. Politically inspired amendments have led to the widespread use of restrictive rules in the House and the Senate. Presidential nominations have been held up by both parties for partisan reasons, leading to the elimination of the Senate filibuster for all nominations. Senate Democrats turned the Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas into theater. Senate Republicans refused to consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland altogether. Major legislation has been enacted by partisan majorities.

President Clinton was impeached, President Obama heckled by a Republican member of Congress during the State of the Union address.

House speakers Jim Wright, Newt Gingrich, and John Boehner have been forced from office, and Speaker Tom Foley was defeated for re-election.

These disconcerting events in Washington are reflective of the

THE PROBLEMS THAT TRUMP HAS ENCOUNTERED IN HIS DEALINGS WITH CONGRESS ARE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CONTEMPORARY PARALYSIS. 2

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increasing divisions in the country along partisan, economic, cultural, and racial lines. Partisan interests have led both Democrats (motor-voter) and Republicans (voter ID) to seek to shape the voting electorate to their advantage. Both parties have engaged in partisan redistricting. Activists on the Democratic left (Move On) and the Republican right (Tea Party) have pushed both parties toward the ideological extremes. The Supreme Court has opened the spigot to flows of both light and dark money into local, state, and federal campaigns, often in service of special interests.

The internet has provided new avenues for both political participation and distortion. The truth is buried in the cacophony of digital voices. The mainstream media, now suffused by entertainment values, often provide insufficient counterweight to allegations of “fake news” and “alternative facts.” Voters reside in ideological bubbles, impervious to evidence running contrary to their biases.

Now comes Donald Trump, the real estate mogul, reality television personality, and “non-politician,” elected president of the United States. Trump has come into office by the Constitution’s Electoral College provisions, having won a minority of the popular vote. He campaigned as a disruptor and has sought to declare a mandate for change unwarranted by the narrow margin of his election.

As president, he has sustained the

president’s tax reform proposals have gained no early traction, and his campaign pledge to push through a major infrastructure bill has languished.

His budget appears to have insufficient congressional support.

The problems that Trump has encountered in his dealings with Congress are characteristic of the contemporary paralysis. The Republican House Conference is held hostage to its most conservative elements. The Freedom Caucus faction has proven itself consistently obstreperous. The Republican Senate majority is very narrow and, if the legislative filibuster is retained, the Democrats will have leverage to thwart the Republican agenda. These underlying factors are, however, exacerbated by the peculiarities of the Trump presidency. Trump is, of course, not really a Republican, and he has no apparent policy commitments.

He simply wants to get something done so that he can claim some credit for having done it. Having no fixed policy compass, he has allowed himself to be carried along by the currents that brought him into office, which generally flow through the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus base of the Republican Party. This has thus far limited his options in negotiating consensus among congressional Republicans. If there are ultimate deals to be had, they would lie toward the middle rather than toward the far right.

Congressiona Yet Trump cannot go Review Act there without jeopardizing his base support.

In fact, Trump is at present sustained mostly because retains Taxhereform substantial support among Republican voters in public opinion polls. While he has the lowest approval ratings of any new president

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Nuclear Option

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demeanor with which he campaigned, disdaining facts, demeaning adversaries, and disavowing positions he had previously taken. He had said that “I alone can fix it,” referring to the “mess in Washington,” and he was halfright: things are in a mess. But the only effective solution to the mess would require a leader who aspires to bridge the partisan gap, to bring the country together. That, in turn, would require a leader who has some idea of the direction in which he wants to take the country. On the evidence presented so far, President Trump has demonstrated neither the inclination or the ability to do that.

This has been made manifestly evident in his dealings with the Congress. His administration is off to the slowest start in decades with respect to substantial legislative accomplishments. The initial effort to pass health care reform (the American Health Care Act or AHCA) in the House was cut short when the Republicans could not produce the votes to pass the bill. The subsequent House passage of a revised bill was purchased by provisions that are unacceptable to many Republican senators. The bipartisan passage of an omnibus continuing resolution was widely regarded as a victory for the Democrats, who preserved their most important priorities. The

in modern history, approval ratings among Republicans have hovered at or just below 80 percent. Of course, 80 percent of the Republican electorate translates into no more than a third of the nation’s voters, and we may assume that many of these are party-line rather than Trump voters. Still, Trump’s support among his die-hard voters provides a reason for Republicans to be cautious in bucking him.

I have avoided noticing until this point that President Trump’s stumbles during the first four months of his administration make President Carter’s early administration look like the first 100 days of FDR or LBJ in comparison.

As I write, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel in charge of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections and related matters. This announcement comes on the heels of a series of missteps and misstatements by Trump and his surrogates, suggesting a chaotic administration. Amid the turmoil, cracks have begun to appear in the protective wall a Republican Congress can afford to a co-partisan president.

These difficulties are superimposed on the fractious foundations of Trump’s congressional relations. There will likely be consequences for the administration’s legislative agenda.

At a minimum, the administration will be distracted. Republican legislators may have electoral incentives to distance themselves from Trump. If his approval ratings, already historically low, diminish further, his leverage on Congress will decline. There is no evidence that congressional Republicans will be able to forge internal consensus on the major issues confronting the country without effective presidential leadership. When President Clinton was under investigation and, ultimately, impeachment, it was often said that he had a remarkable capacity to compartmentalize. In 1997, during the Starr investigation, he forged a

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bipartisan budget agreement that lead to the first federal surpluses in a generation. Such things are possible, but there appears little reason to believe that President Trump has the capacity or the temperament to do what is required.

If Trump does somehow manage to right his administration and offer a coherent legislative agenda, he will still face formidable obstacles presented by those separated institutions sharing powers. This issue of Extensions offers three articles that illustrate the difficulties he may face. In her article “Procedural Politics at the Start of the 115th Congress,” Molly Reynolds examines Trump’s prospects in the procedurally encumbered United States Senate. Unlike the majoritarian House of Representatives, the Senate offers numerous procedural mechanisms to the minority party. Much of the business of the House is done under unanimous consent, enabling individual Senators to delay legislation. While the filibuster has been eliminated for presidential nominations, it has been preserved for most legislation. And the Republicans hold a narrow two-seat majority. Under these circumstances, the Republicans have two paths forward: they can pursue the limited strategies that would enable them to govern by producing a majority within their own ranks, requiring near unanimity among Republicans.

Alternatively, they can seek bipartisan compromise sufficient to win the support of enough Democrats to break the inevitable filibusters.

So far, the Republicans have preferred the first strategy. As

Reynolds notes, their most significant early legislative achievements involved use of the Congressional Review Act to revoke some important Obama administration regulations. The law enables the Senate to pass this legislation by simple majority votes.

Budget reconciliation offers another majoritarian path. The congressional Budget Act requires only a simple majority vote for Senate passage of annual budget resolutions, but restricts the resolution’s scope and duration.

Only matters directly affecting federal revenues and expenditures are eligible, and federal deficits under the resolution can only be projected in a 10-year window. The Republicans aim to use reconciliation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act since they anticipate no Democratic support.

It will be difficult to produce a coherent policy by these means.

Will the legislative filibuster survive?

Thus far, Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have indicated that it will be preserved.

This will shape the political context in which important legislation such as tax reform and infrastructure spending will be considered. In fact, Reynolds argues, Senate rules and procedures offer opportunities to both the majority and the minority party, and legislative outcomes are likely to be driven by political forces. Under these circumstances, much depends upon the popularity and skill of the president in driving his legislative agenda. President Trump has a narrow and divided Senate majority, and early in his administration has appeared to

IF TRUMP DOES SOMEHOW MANAGE TO RIGHT HIS ADMINISTRATION AND OFFER A COHERENT LEGISLATIVE AGENDA, HE WILL STILL FACE FORMIDABLE OBSTACLES PRESENTED BY THOSE SEPARATED INSTITUTIONS SHARING POWERS. 4

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lack either the popularity or the skill to negotiate the Senate shoals.

It would seem Trump’s prospects in the House would be much better.

The House is a majoritarian institution, and the Republican majority, while not robust, is sufficient to provide some negotiating leeway. Yet President Trump has had a bumpy ride in the House as well. The initial failure of the AHCA was indicative of Trump’s challenges, and its eventual House passage revealed the price he must pay to move legislation there. If half of the Freedom Caucus members refuse to support a bill, the bill will not pass without Democratic votes. The internal fissures in the House Republican Conference that brought John Boehner down now plague Donald Trump.

And it is to these members, and their core constituencies, that Trump had appealed to in his presidential campaign. To pass the AHCA in the House, Trump had to move to the right.

As Matthew Green observes in his article “Congressional Democrats in the Time of Trump,” the Republican dilemma is shaped by the unified Democratic minority they confront.

In an institution in which the minority has almost no procedural power, it finds strength in unity. Green describes four basic strategies available to the minority party in the House of Representatives: electioneering, messaging, obstructing, and legislating.

Having been in the minority for 18 of the past 22 years, the Democrats have polished each of these strategies.

Essentially, all involve seeking targets of opportunity. These are often handed to them by the majority Republicans. The bungling of the AHCA roll out allowed Democrats to claim Republicans were both cruel and incompetent. The desire of the Republicans to avoid a budget confrontation enabled the Democrats to get most of what they wanted in the continuing resolution.

But these were transitory gains for the Democrats. The only way to really succeed in a majoritarian institution is to become the majority. In 2009 and

President Donald Trump talks to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington after the House pushed through a health care bill in May 2017. (AP Photo) 2010, it was the Republican House minority that refused to provide votes for vital legislation such as President Obama’s stimulus bill, the DoddFrank financial services reform act, and the Affordable Care Act. They were rewarded in 2010 by the voters.

In 2017, the Democrats offered no support for the AHCA and likely will be unified in opposition to other Republican legislation. They will force the Republicans to either fail to enact, or to enact and then own, their party’s legislative priorities. This strategy creates a dilemma for the Republican leadership, which must appease both its moderate and most conservative members. If the Freedom Caucus is intransigent, then moderates must somehow be brought along. In the case of the AHCA, moderates were asked to walk the plank, arguing that the House-passed bill would certainly be substantially moderated in the Senate. How often will members be willing to cast risky votes knowing that, in the end, their votes will not count for much?

The institutional accounts offered by Reynolds and Green are set against the backdrop of the demographic divide of the country. Christian Grose has

studied one dimension of that divide, race. In “Racial Representation in the Trump-era Congress,” Grose describes the increasing racial divide among House districts, with Republicans representing overwhelmingly white constituencies and most minority voters identifying as and represented

by Democrats. The steady increase in the number of minority voters has led to a corresponding increase in the number of minority representatives.

Yet as the districts are now drawn, the Republicans can sustain their majority in the House due in part to the concentration of minority votes in Democratic districts.

How does this packing of the minority vote affect legislation? The Republican House members (and many senators as well) represent essentially white constituencies. As Grose notes, President Trump made numerous racially-charged statements during his presidential campaign. These appeals to racial bias can only serve to cause further divisions between minority voters and the Republican legislative majority. The country is divided among several fault lines, none with deeper historical roots and none more consequential. Can America be made

great again by deepening the divisions within it?

President Trump faces difficult challenges in both the Senate (due to procedural encumbrances and a narrow majority), the House (due to divisions in the Republican Conference), and the country (due to racial and other divisions among the population). Any Republican president would face similar constraints, but Trump has compounded them. And for this, both he and the Republican Party should perhaps be grateful. Together they stumbled into power promising major policy changes that polls indicate are opposed by substantial majorities of the American people. It seems possible that the only worse outcome for the Republicans than a failed Trump presidency, might be one that somehow manages to succeed.

Thank You and Farewell As noted elsewhere herein, this is the last issue of Extensions I will edit. I retire after 42 years of active service to the University of Oklahoma, 38 in my association with the Carl Albert Center. I have much for which to be thankful and many to thank: my family and friends, my faculty colleagues, my co-workers, university administrators, center supporters, and students. Here, however, I want to thank and acknowledge the one person without whose support the Carl Albert Center would never have come into being. Carl Albert rose from the rural hills of southeastern Oklahoma to become a United States congressman, House whip and majority leader, and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

He served as Speaker during a turbulent period in American history. At all times, he demonstrated his dedication to the Congress, the United States Constitution, and the American people. He was highly intelligent, generous of spirit, and devoted to learning.

He touched many lives, including mine. As I ride off into the sunset, I carry with me satisfaction in knowing that the Carl Albert Center, like its namesake, will continue to have an enduring influence on the Congress and the people who come here to study it.

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Special Orders

PROCEDURAL POLITICS

AT THE START OF THE 115TH CONGRESS Molly E. Reynolds | Brookings Institution Molly E. Reynolds is a fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. Reynolds studies Congress, with an emphasis on the politics of congressional rules and procedure. She holds a Ph.D. in political science and public policy from the University of Michigan and was the 2016 recipient of the Carl Albert Award for the best dissertation in legislative studies from the American Political Science Association.

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expedited procedures. If the chamber adjourns sine die before the initial 60 days have expired, the clock restarts again on the 15th day of the next Senate session.

Under this process, a joint resolution of disapproval can be discharged from the Senate committee to which it has been referred after 20 days if at least 30 senators sign a discharge petition.

In addition, a motion to proceed to consideration of the joint resolution of disapproval is nondebatable in the Senate, and debate on the resolution itself is limited to 10 hours. Together, these procedures make it more difficult for a minority of senators to obstruct the CRA resolution, easing its potential for passage.

The fact that a CRA resolution cannot be filibustered in the Senate makes it an attractive tool for a congressional majority party that does not agree with the president. The disapproval measure, however, must either be signed by the president or EARLY ACCOMPLISHMENTS CAN BE TIED DIRECTLY garner the support of a twothirds majority in both houses TO DECISIONS BY THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY TO to override a presidential veto, making it difficult to use AVAIL THEMSELVES OF PARTICULAR PROCEDURAL in practice.

OPTIONS AVAILABLE TO THEM UNDER THE Prior to the start of the Trump administration, only INSTITUTION’S RULES. one rule had been successfully

he first several months of the Trump administration have demonstrated both the promise and limitations of congressional rules and procedure in helping a congressional majority and a co-partisan president move an agenda through Congress. It also has reflected the ability of a minority party to respond to the actions of the majority by using procedural tactics.

We have seen examples of these dynamics in both chambers, and involving a range of Congress’s responsibilities, including both legislation and nominations. Given early signs of Congress’s agenda for the months ahead, decisions the majority and minority make about how they will use the institution’s rules and procedures to their own respective ends are likely to continue to play an important role in the 115th Congress.

Several of the 115th Congress’ early accomplishments can be tied directly to decisions by the Republican majority to avail themselves of particular procedural options available to them under the institution’s rules.

Of the 29 measures signed into law by the president during the first 100 days of the Trump administration, 13 were resolutions disapproving of regulations promulgated by the Obama administration. Each of these measures was considered in Congress under special procedures prescribed by the Congressional Review Act (CRA) of 1996.

Under the CRA, once an agency issues a rule, it must submit that regulation to Congress and to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Congress then has a specified amount of time — 60 days of Senate session to overturn the rule using

SEVERAL OF THE 115TH CONGRESS’

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A protester with Democracy Spring demonstrates in Washington D.C. to oppose the Senate using the “nuclear option” to confirm Supreme Court Justice Nominee Neil Gorsuch on April 6, 2017. (AP Photo)

overturned using the CRA, in a similar institutional environment at the start of the George W. Bush presidency in 2001. The Department of Labor

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legislative action under the CRA. In addition, several of the rules rolled back targeted policy areas that are important to the Republican base, including gun rights, abortion, and federal regulation of education, creating potential credit-claiming opportunities during an otherwise light legislative period.

A second area in which congressional procedures proved important to the 115th Congress’ early accomplishments was in the context of the action on President Trump’s nominations, first to head cabinet departments and subsequently to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. In the case of cabinet nominations, Trump was already well-positioned vis-à-vis Congress, thanks to a change to the Senate’s precedents for considering all non-Supreme Court nominees adopted in 2013. Using a technique Gregory Koger calls “reform by ruling,”2 the Democrats, who then

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had issued an ergonomics regulation in November 2000, late enough in the Clinton administration to make it eligible for action by a newly unified Republican House, Senate, and presidency in early 2001.

The 115th Congress, however, chose to take up CRA resolutions with vigor. They began planning for how to use the procedural tactic in the aftermath of the November election. In December, for example, the Senate Republican Policy Committee (RPC) released a list of priorities for “Reining in Obama Regulatory Overreach.” 1 Between Trump’s inauguration and the end of April 2017, 15 CRA resolutions were adopted in the House, with 13 of them also passing the Senate and being signed by the president.

Roughly half of the items on the RPC’s list received some

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held a majority in the chamber, reduced the number of votes needed to invoke cloture on such nominations from three-fifths to a simple majority.

However, Trump’s initial confirmation process was not seamless. His first pick to be secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder, was withdrawn, and the confirmation of Betsy DeVos required a tie-breaking vote by the vice president, marking the first time that was ever required for a cabinet nominee. Notwithstanding, Trump and the Republican majority faced a potentially easier path to standing up a cabinet than previous presidents.

It is difficult, of course, to know whether Trump’s cabinet is more ideological than those approved under previous rules. Indeed, work on the post-2013 confirmation of federal judges finds that those approved after the procedural reform are not significantly more liberal. They were, however, confirmed “more often and more quickly,”3 suggesting that Trump may well have had an advantage over his predecessors, all of whom confronted at least the possibility of a filibuster of one or more nominees.

While Democrats lacked the ability to defeat Trump’s picks by withholding their votes on confirmation, their response to the nominees illustrates how even if the minority party cannot change the ultimate outcome, they can leverage their procedural rights to achieve political goals. At the committee level, for example, Democratic senators refused to attend a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee for the purposes of reporting to the floor the nominations of Steve Mnuchin and Tom Price. President Trump nominated Mnuchin and Price to head the departments of Treasury and Health and Human Services, respectively. The panel’s rules have recently required one member of the minority party to be present for a quorum to be present, so by boycotting the meeting, Democrats were denying the committee its ability to do business.

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The committee’s Republicans responded by voting to suspend the rule, sending both nominees to the floor where they were eventually confirmed, but Democrats still got their chance to claim credit with their base voters for attempting to obstruct Trump’s nominees. A similar effort to send signals to key electoral constituencies occurred when Democrats repeatedly insisted on using all 30 hours of post-cloture debate allowed for under the rules for many Trump cabinet nominees.

For some — DeVos, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt — this included extended, overnight “talk-a-thons” where Democratic senators spoke one after another on the Senate floor to raise objections to the nominee in question. Even though Democrats could not prevent the confirmation of various nominees, they were able to use the Senate’s procedures to accomplish certain goals.

The biggest procedural conflict in the 115th Congress’ opening months featured an all-night talk-a-thon— from Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley — and ended with a confirmation vote, to elevate Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Before that vote, however, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, initiated a very similar set of procedural steps to those used by Reid in 2013 to lower the threshold for invoking cloture from three-fifths to a simple majority. In short, the process involved McConnell raising a point of order on the floor of the Senate and

the presiding officer ruling against McConnell. That was followed by a vote of the full Senate to overturn the ruling and thus establish a new precedent for majority cloture on Supreme Court nominations.4 Beyond the potential policy consequences of having an additional justice appointed by a Republican president on the Supreme Court rather than one nominated by a Democratic executive, the Gorsuch confirmation episode illustrates a few important dynamics of procedural change in the contemporary Senate.

First, as Sarah Binder, Anthony Madonna, and Steve Smith argued in reference to an earlier brush with the so-called “nuclear option,” implementing — or avoiding — procedural reforms is fundamentally an exercise in coalition building within the chamber. 5 To successfully achieve reform by ruling, its proponents must find 51 — or 50, if the vice president is willing to break a tie — votes in favor of the change. If a sufficient coalition in favor of creating a new precedent exists, potential opponents of the procedural change must evaluate a particular tradeoff. Do they believe that a hypothetical world with new procedures is worse than one with the consequences that would come from agreeing to the underlying question — here, the Gorsuch nomination? If so, they can vote with the other side to accept the policy change without the procedural one.

As others and I have argued elsewhere,6 senators’ choices about procedure are rarely matters of principle, but rather based on their

SENATORS’ CHOICES ABOUT PROCEDURE ARE RARELY MATTERS OF PRINCIPLE, BUT RATHER BASED ON THEIR EXPECTATIONS ABOUT THE POLITICAL AND POLICY CONSEQUENCES OF HAVING THE ALTERNATIVE PROCEDURES IN PLACE.

the “nuclear option” is a high-profile example of this dynamic, we have seen it in other areas of Senate deliberation, including the restriction of amendment opportunities.

Given the decision by Republicans to invoke the “nuclear option” on Supreme Court nominations, some have speculated that the legislative filibuster may be the next procedure ripe for change during the 115th Congress. A number of both individual and collective incentives facing Senate Republicans, however, suggests that changes to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., gives a thumbs up after the Senate invoked the “nuclear option,” which cleared the way for a majority vote to confirm the rules or precedents Supreme Court justice nominee Neil Gorsuch in 2017. (AP Photo) for regular legislation are unlikely, at least in the short term. From the perspective Gorsuch’s ultimate confirmation. expectations about the political of individual senators, the existence Preferences revealed only after the and policy consequences of having of the filibuster can serve as an change to the precedents are not the alternative procedures in place. important source of personal power a perfect measure of how senators McConnell, then, needed to ensure and leverage that some senators actually felt; some Democrats who that 49 other Republicans saw the might be loath to give up, even if it might have voted yes in the presence political and policy benefits of getting came in exchange for policy changes of a 60-vote threshold might have Gorsuch on the Supreme Court as not achievable in the presence of the voted no in its absence since they greater than any political costs to rule. For more moderate members knew Gorsuch would be confirmed changing the chamber’s precedents. of the Senate’s current Republican without their help. The relatively At the same time, Senate Minority majority, eliminating the legislative small number of Democratic votes for Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., filibuster could put them in difficult Gorsuch does suggest, though, that needed to assess whether at least political circumstances. With the Democrats saw letting Republicans eight members of his party — the 60-vote threshold for cloture in trigger the “nuclear option” as number needed to get Gorsuch place, moderate legislators can avoid more politically advantageous than over the 60-vote threshold — found being the pivotal vote on certain delivering the votes to avoid a the nominee to be acceptable and measures about which they may be procedural change. would be willing to pay any potential ambivalent. In a hypothetical world This procedural showdown over political costs for confirming the where a simple majority could end Gorsuch marks the latest step in what nominee of a polarizing president debate, those same senators would Steve Smith has called the Senate’s to what some saw as a seat “stolen” find themselves the target of intense parliamentary “arms race.”7 The from a Democratic president. In the pressure. On one hand, they would end, all 52 Republican senators — minority party — always seeking to face demands that they toe the even those like Sens. John McCain, become the majority party again — party line and remain loyal to their R-Ariz., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and will exploit their procedural rights team. At the same time, a given bill’s Susan Collins R-Maine, who had been to achieve certain partisan political opponents would seize on the fact active on efforts to avoid reform goals. Eventually, if the majority party that their votes — and not those of by ruling in the past — considered feels that its ability to accomplish moderate members of the other, the benefits of getting Gorsuch on its own ends in pursuit of continued minority party — are pivotal and the court greater than any costs of majority status is being sufficiently subject them to intense lobbying. On changing the precedents. obstructed, it may respond by taking high-profile issues, moderate majority On the Democratic side, only extraordinary steps to limit whatever party senators would be the target three senators ended up supporting tactic the minority is using. While extensions | Summer 2017

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of the kind of efforts like those that led Republican Sens. Collins and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to oppose the Betsy DeVos nomination, generating the need for the first-ever tiebreaking vote by the vice president.

The majority party’s potential collective incentives for maintaining the legislative filibuster are also related to its ability to shift blame from members of the majority to members of the minority. As Frances Lee has argued, Congress has been characterized by close competition for control of the House and Senate since the 1980s; prior to that point, Democrats generally held both chambers (and, often, the presidency). 8 As both parties have come to see majorities in Congress as legitimately attainable after the coming election, they have prioritized not just legislative achievement but also generating situations in which they can blame the other party for undesirable outcomes. Having voters see the other party in a negative light can help deliver votes for your own party.

Lee notes that when one party controls the House, Senate, and the presidency — as Republicans do at present — they are under increased pressure to produce actual accomplishments rather than simply undercut the other side. But as Republicans’ experience with the budget reconciliation process in the

early months of the 115th Congress illustrates, when building consensus within the majority party is difficult, the ability to blame the minority party for what is ultimately the former’s failures can be a very attractive strategy.

Reconciliation is an optional component of the congressional budget process that permits certain budgetary legislation to move through the Senate under limited debate, preventing the possibility of a filibuster. At the start of the 115th Congress, the Republican leadership, eager to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA), resurrected a dormant congressional budget resolution from 2016 in order to initiate the reconciliation process.

Deliberation on the legislation did not go as smoothly as expected, however, with significant intra-party divisions among Republicans hampering progress in the House. The bill’s struggles in the House kept much of the focus off the upper chamber in the early months of 2017, but, as of this writing, the Senate has begun work on its own version. Should those efforts stall, the choice to embrace a party-line procedural strategy will limit the ability of the Republicans to blame the Democrats for any difficulties they experience moving the measure.9 The need to build a 60-vote coalition in the Senate can not only

THE USE OF THESE SORTS OF COMPLEX LEGISLATIVE PROCEDURES CAN ALSO HAVE IMPLICATIONS FOR THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONGRESS AND THE WHITE HOUSE, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE WHITE HOUSE IS OCCUPIED BY A POLITICAL NEOPHYTE WHO DOES NOT HIMSELF HAVE ANY LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE.

10

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provide political cover for a majority party that is unable to bridge internal divisions, but it can also generate situations where vulnerable members of the minority party are forced to take tough votes. Much has been made of the 10 Democratic senators who are up for re-election in 2018 from states won by Trump (five of whom are from states that Mitt Romney also won in 2012). It is unlikely that any Democratic senator would vote for a repeal of President Obama’s signature domestic policy initiative. However, on other issues, the need to build a simple majority rather than super majority could give cover to cross-pressured members.

Put differently, it is harder to portray individual minority party senators as being out-of-step with their constituents when their votes are not required for whatever action the majority party is trying to take.

Republicans’ experience with the reconciliation process thus far in the 115th Congress also illustrates a dynamic described by James Curry in his recent book, “Legislating in the Dark.” 10 Curry argues that House leadership often uses tools like short layover periods, self-executing rules, and bill complexity to structure the legislative process to give itself an informational advantage over its rank-and-file members. Under this logic, when rank-and-file legislators are more reliant on informational signals from their leaders, the latter will have more influence over the former’s behavior. In addition, leaders will see the advantages of restricting information when outside groups have a high potential for significant influence on the issue at hand.

Congressional leaders entered deliberations on the health care legislation with the potential for an informational advantage, thanks in part to the underlying complexity of health care as a policy area. In addition, electing to use the budget reconciliation process adds an element of procedural complexity, in particular, the interpretation and

application of the Senate’s Byrd Rule, which limits the content of reconciliation legislation in the upper chamber. Given the significant outside interest group attention to the bill, leaders had an incentive to extend these informational advantages even further. They, for example, attempted to keep the initial draft of the bill so closely under wraps that Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., staged a high-profile stunt to try to locate the text.

According to Curry, there are limits to this strategy of restricting information. For this approach to work, however, rank-and-file legislators must trust their party’s leadership and believe that leaders’ goals on behalf of the party are also what is best for individual members.

The behavior of potentially crosspressured House Republicans — those members who opposed the health care bill because of its potential consequences for their constituents — suggests that some legislators did, in fact, doubt whether what leaders saw as the best outcome for the party was also in their own best interest. When members question whether their leadership is looking out for them, they can become frustrated and try “to slow the process, maximize the deliberations, and in the eyes of legislative leaders, endanger the passage of legislation.” 11 The use of these sorts of complex legislative procedures can also have implications for the relationship between Congress and the White House, especially when the White House is occupied by a political neophyte who does not himself have any legislative experience. At a number of points in the opening months of the 115th Congress, President Trump claimed that an external constraint of some kind required legislative action on health care before Congress could take up a tax reform package. In February, for example, he claimed, in reference to a tax package, “I can’t do it until we do health care, because we have to know what the health care is going

to cost and — statutorily — that’s the way it is. So, for those people who say, ‘oh, gee, I wish we could do the tax first,’ it just doesn’t work that way.” 12 While there may be limits on the ability of Congress to address two reconciliation bills simultaneously, there is no requirement that a reconciliation measure addressing health care specifically be taken up before legislation dealing with the tax code. The choice to address the former before the latter was a political one, made by Republican congressional leaders in an attempt to maximize the number of filibusterproof bills it would take up this year in a way that was most politically advantageous to them.

Certainly, the strategy of taking up health care before tax legislation may well have been in President Trump’s political interest.

Regardless of whether the particular procedural strategy was optimal for both Congress and the president, however, it appears that Republican congressional leaders have an informational advantage over the White House as well as their own rank-and-file members. Given that President Trump lacks the approval ratings that literature suggests are necessary for persuading members of Congress,13 the fact that he is also disadvantaged informationally emphasizes the importance of the congressional leadership.

As Congress and the president seek to move forward into other legislative priorities in 2017 and beyond, choices like those discussed above about procedural strategies have the potential to affect the prospects for legislative success under unified Republican government.

Tax legislation, for example, is ripe with opportunities to use complex procedural tactics, including decisions about how to estimate the budgetary effects of a future bill. These choices can have both direct effects, like reducing the number of votes needed to approve something (as with the Gorsuch nomination), and indirect

ones, such as helping to create informational asymmetries between key actors.

Notes 1.

“Reining in Obama Regulatory Overreach,” U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee 6 December 2016 <https://www.rpc.senate.gov/ policy-papers/reining-in-obama-regulatoryoverreach>.

2.

Gregory Koger, Filibustering: A Political History of Obstruction in the House and Senate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

3.

Christina L. Boyd, Michael S. Lynch, and Anthony J. Madonna, “Nuclear Fallout: Investigating the Effect of Senate Procedural Reform on Judicial Nominations,” The Forum 13.4 (December 2015): 623-641, p. 623.

4.

For a discussion of this process in reference to the 2013 episode, see Valerie Heitshusen, “Majority Cloture for Nominations: Implications and the “Nuclear” Proceedings,” Congressional Research Service 6 December 2013.

5.

Sarah A. Binder, Anthony J. Madonna, and Steven S. Smith, “Going Nuclear, Senate Style,” Perspectives on Politics 5.4 (December 2007): 729-740.

6.

Reynolds 2017; Sarah A. Binder and Steven S. Smith, Politics or Principle: Filibustering in the United States Senate (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1997).

7.

Steven S. Smith, The Senate Syndrome: The Evolution of Procedural Warfare in the Modern U.S. Senate (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014).

8.

Frances Lee, Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

9.

Sarah Binder, “This is Why the Republicans Struggle over Obamacare,” Monkey Cage 9 March 2017 <https://www.washingtonpost.com/ news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/09/this-is-whyrepublicans-struggle-over-the-aca/?utm_term=. dd701fa45789>.

10.

James M. Curry, Legislating in the Dark: Information and Power in the U.S. House of Representatives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).

11.

Curry 2015, p. 194.

12.

Phil Mattingly, “4 Reasons Why Republicans Did Obamacare Repeal Before Tax Reform,” CNN, 9 March 2017 <http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/09/ politics/tax-reform-obamacare-congressrepublicans/>.

13.

George C. Edwards, “Presidential Approval as a Source of Influence in Congress,” in The Oxford Handbook of the American Presidency, eds. George C. Edwards and William Howell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 182-207.

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11

Special Orders

CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS

IN THE TIME OF TRUMP Matthew N. Green | The Catholic University of America

Matthew N. Green is associate professor of politics and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America. His research and teaching interests include congressional politics, political parties, political leadership, and American political development. He is the author of Underdog Politics: The Minority Party in the U.S. House of Representatives (Yale University Press, 2015) and The Speaker of the House: A Study of Leadership (Yale University Press, 2010), and coauthor of Washington 101: An Introduction to the City of Washington (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

T

he 2016 elections were a major disappointment for the Democratic Party.

Not only did it fail to win majorities in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, but its presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, lost unexpectedly to celebrity businessman and political neophyte Donald Trump. For the first time in a decade, the party would be in the “deep minority,” controlling none of the levers of the federal government.

Unsurprisingly, President Trump and congressional Republicans scored some significant political victories during the first several months of the new 115th Congress.

A number of Obama-era regulations were rolled back via the seldomused Congressional Review Act, for instance, and most of Trump’s cabinet nominees were confirmed.

The Senate also assented to the president’s choice for the Supreme Court, conservative justice Neil Gorsuch, after the chamber changed its rules to eliminate the requirement of a supermajority to confirm Supreme Court nominations. In late April, Congress cleared, and President Trump signed into law,

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an omnibus continuing resolution funding the federal government until September 2017. And in early May, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the American Health Care Act (AHCA), a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare).

These successes notwithstanding, it appeared to be Republicans, not Democrats, who were more often on the defensive in early 2017.

Federal judges had blocked two of the president’s executive orders, one halting funds to sanctuary cities and the other banning travel to the U.S. from several majorityMuslim countries. The omnibus

continuing resolution had reflected the spending and policy-making priorities of Democrats far more than of Republicans. Passing the AHCA proved to be a struggle— Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., had previously pulled the bill from the House floor because it lacked enough votes — and its future in the Senate was far from clear, leaving GOP promises to repeal Obamacare unfulfilled. Meanwhile, other major initiatives promised by Trump and congressional Republicans, including tax reform and infrastructure investment, had barely gotten off the ground.

ALTHOUGH THE MINORITY PARTY IN THE SENATE IS GENERALLY BELIEVED TO BE MORE INFLUENTIAL THAN ITS COUNTERPART IN THE HOUSE, TRUMP AND MAJORITY PARTY REPUBLICANS INITIALLY FACED MORE DIFFICULTIES IN THE HOUSE, NOT THE SENATE.

Figure 1. Number of Motions to Adjourn or Rise from House Minority Party, 1971-2016

This essay examines what role, if any, congressional Democrats played in the policy failures of the GOP during the first several months of the 115th Congress. Although the minority party in the Senate is generally believed to be more influential than its counterpart in the House, Trump and majority party Republicans initially faced more difficulties in the House, not the Senate. Accordingly, my focus is on House Democrats: specifically, what they did to combat the institutional power of the GOP, and whether those actions were responsible for its political stumbles. This examination in turn suggests some broader, more general truths about minority party politics in the U.S. Congress.

A congressional minority party has four major categories of tactics from which to choose when seeking to achieve its collective goals. 3 The first, electioneering, includes activities directly related to campaigning, such as fundraising and candidate recruitment. Both Republicans and Democrats in the House have stepped up their electoral activity dramatically since the 1970s. Though it is unclear the extent to which it has influenced electoral outcomes, the two parties — and especially the minority, which is always eager to be the majority — see it as essential that they recruit and

70 60

Motions to Adjourn

50

Motions to Rise

40 30 20 10 0

Congress (Years)

Figure 1: Number of motions to adjourn or rise from House minority party, 1971-2016

train congressional candidates and provide them with resources to win.

The second category of tactics, messaging, includes actions with the principal purpose of conveying positions or messages to the public.

For many, if not most, minority party 11 members, this is the most important and least constrained activity they can undertake. As one Democratic aide put it, “the only thing you have in the minority is your voice, and your strongest weapon is your message.”2 While floor speeches, press conferences, and statements issued via social media are among the most common messaging tactics that minority party members employ, they can “message” in other ways too.

For instance, in Infrastructure over a half-dozen cases since the 1970s, minority party lawmakers walked out from chamber proceedings as a protest against Minority the majority.

More recently, Messaging Democrats illustrated the converse:

Executive Orders

Investigations

Ethics

Schumer Comey

Pelosi

ealth Care

Obama

115th Congress

telegraphing their policy positions by refusing the leave the House floor.

When Republicans refused to bring up a gun safety bill in mid-2016, Democrats held a “sit-in,” televising speeches by angry colleagues via the Internet after the House went into recess and C-SPAN’s cameras were turned off.

The third type of minority party tactic involves obstruction, or efforts to block or hinder the majority party.

Obstruction is usually associated with the Senate minority, since it has the power of the filibuster, but the House minority can slow things down too. Figure 1 shows the number of times between 1971 and 2016 that the House voted on motions made by a minority party member to rise or adjourn — privileged motions that require a recorded vote, delaying floor proceedings. Though not common, there have been congresses in which they were used quite frequently, especially after a change in party control. In addition, since 1971 more than a third of them have been followed by some outcome favorable to the minority, such as a change in the legislative agenda or a bill’s delay or defeat. 3 The fourth way the minority party can influence political outcomes is via legislating: the crafting, revising, approval, or defeat of legislation. extensions | Summer 2017

13

Figure 2. Vote Victory Rate of the House Minority Party, 1971-2016 Republicans, it is far from clear that 18.0% those tactics were 16.0% responsible for the 14.0% Republican Party’s 12.0% 10.0% failures in the initial 8.0% months of 2017.

6.0% Take first 4.0% electioneering. On the 2.0% one hand, Democrats 0.0% conducted a great deal of successful fundraising. Donations Congress (Years) made in February to the Democratic Percent of Final Passage Votes in which Majority Party was Rolled Congressional Percent of Final Passage and Amendment Votes in which Majority Party was Rolled Campaign Committee Percent of Final Passage and Amendment Votes in which Minority Prevailed over Majority (DCCC), for example, totaled nearly twice Figure 2: Vote Victory Rate of the House Minority Party, 1971-2016 the amount from the same month two years prior. The Legislating by the House minority is failure, one sees that the minority is DCCC was also active in candidate less common than in past decades, far from powerless legislatively. recruitment and training, paying as both parties have become more Beyond the choice of particular attention to military polarized and the majority party has which tactics to employ, every veterans, women, and political 12 become less accommodating to the congressional minority party faces outsiders as possible candidates.7 policy preferences of its partisan a more fundamental strategic On the other hand, by the end opponents. But the minority is not decision: whether to use those of April the Democratic Party without legislative influence or tactics on behalf of cooperation had a less than stellar record in leverage. For instance, as Frances with the majority party, or in special elections, losing one race Lee and James Curry have noted, a opposition to it. There is a trade-off in Kansas and failing to win an substantial number of votes on the between these two options. The first absolute majority in Georgia. To be floor of the House remain bipartisan, involves making policy compromises sure, the Democratic candidates suggesting the minority does get its with the majority that, while yielding did surprisingly well in both races, way on legislation to some degree.4 greater influence over legislation, which were in strongly conservative Figure 2 provides further may weaken the minority’s ability districts. But the DCCC put only evidence for the House minority to publicly justify a change in token, last-minute resources into the party’s policy influence. The solid party control. The second option Kansas election, and although the line shows the percent of final means highlighting the differences Democrat running in the Georgia passage votes in the House from and conflicts between the parties, special election raised a whopping 1971 to 2016 that were “majority which can help improve the party’s $8 million in the first quarter of 2017, rolls,” or votes in which a bill passed reputation but at the cost of having a large percentage of it had been over the objection of a majority less policy influence.6 donated by groups and activists The question of cooperation of the majority party. These have unaffiliated with the DCCC. 8 versus opposition was resolved been exceedingly rare. “Rolls” on House Democrats also employed relatively quickly by Democrats either amendment or final passage extensive messaging early in the in the new Congress. Facing an votes have been more common, 115th Congress, but its impact was unpopular Republican president however, and either rolls or unclear. One example occurred who won a minority of the popular “disappointments” — votes in which during debate over the GOP bill to vote and pursued a deeply a bill or amendment failed despite repeal and replace the Affordable conservative agenda from the the assent of a majority of the Care Act. As each Republican get-go, it did not take long for the majority party — have been even member spoke on behalf of the party to choose the latter over the more frequent. 5 When one also legislation, a Democrat immediately considers measures that never come former. However, while minority rose to announce how many of the to a vote at all, because minority Democrats employed all four tactics Republican’s constituents would party opposition means their certain to oppose Trump and congressional 20.0%

14

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lose health care coverage under the bill. Yet even before Democrats began that targeted messaging operation, it was well known that Speaker Ryan was struggling to get a majority to vote for it, thanks to opposition from both the right and moderate wings of his own party.

Nonetheless, the bill eventually passed the House.

Democrats had slightly better success with the third tactic, procedural obstruction, notably against the repeal-and-replace bill. Insisting the legislation was being rushed through without hearings or an adequate analysis of its economic impact, minority party members on the Energy and Commerce Committee postponed committee proceedings by demanding the bill be read in its entirety. Democrats also made multiple motions to adjourn the House during floor debate in protest against the bill, leading Republicans to finally relent and end debate for the day.9 These tactics did not keep the bill from coming to the floor, but they may have helped impede consideration of the measure long enough for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to issue a damaging report that estimated it could cost up to 24 million people their health care insurance. Although Democrats failed to prevent the legislation’s eventual passage, Republican leaders felt compelled to push it through quickly before another CBO report could be issued.

Finally, in terms of legislating, by the April recess, House Democrats had introduced a sizeable percentage of bills (912, or 44 percent of the total) as well as floor amendments (69, or 67 percent of all amendments offered), of which 15 amendments (22 percent) were approved. Democrats also successfully negotiated with Republicans over the content of the omnibus continuing resolution.

Moreover, the minority’s refusal to lend votes for the Obamacare

repeal proved critical, denying Republican leaders a buffer to make up for the intraparty defections that proved too numerous to pass it at first. But not once during the first four months of 2017 had the Democrats “rolled” the majority by passing bills or amendments it disliked, nor had it been able to defeat bills supported by a majority of the majority party in a floor vote.10 Furthermore, much of the party’s legislating behavior was focused principally on messaging.

For instance, its first discharge petition — a method of forcing bills to go from committees to the House floor — targeted a bill that required the president to disclose his tax returns, a clear effort to keep the issue of Trump’s undisclosed returns in the public eye.

In short, though House Democrats were active, their activity was no more than modestly effective. How, then, can we account for their political successes against Trump and House Republicans in the opening months of the 115th Congress?

Evidence strongly suggests that minority party Democrats were politically successful because they received major assistance from three sets of actors. Ironically, the first was its partisan opponents in Congress. Indeed, congressional Republicans looking for a scapegoat for its early failures could do little worse than pointing the finger at themselves.

Consider the Republican Party’s decision to prioritize the dismantling of Obamacare. Eliminating the Affordable Care Act may be popular

with conservative voters, but by making it the top measure on its agenda, the party united minority Democrats against them, losing an early opportunity to bring up other measures (like tax reform or infrastructure spending) that might garner bipartisan support or split the minority party. That error was compounded when the original bill was hastily written without buy-in from rank-and-file Republicans, exposing a fatal split within the majority party between its moderates and conservatives.

Headlines about GOP disunity came to dominate the news; in the words of one former GOP congressman, “as a branding exercise for Republicans, it was a disaster.” 11 In order to finally pass the bill, the House leadership was forced to make concessions to the House Freedom Caucus, composed of highly conservative Republicans, and those concessions resulted in a bill that was widely criticized for eliminating health care insurance coverage for millions more than the original legislation. As Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi warned House Republicans on the floor, “every provision of Trumpcare (as the Democrats label the AHCA) will be tattooed on your forehead.”

The second ally of congressional Democrats was the Trump White House. President Trump provided little in the way of legislative guidance to Republicans in the House or Senate, and he proved to be a poor negotiator with key groups within the GOP conference.

His demand that the House vote on the repeal bill, even as it lacked

DEMOCRATS HAD SLIGHTLY BETTER SUCCESS WITH THE THIRD TACTIC, PROCEDURAL OBSTRUCTION, NOTABLY AGAINST THE REPEAL-AND-REPLACE BILL.

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15

Table 1. Comparing Recent Presidents’ First 100 Days support, failed to intimidate enough wayward lawmakers to vote for it.

Then, after Speaker Ryan pulled the original bill from the floor, the president oscillated between abandoning Obamacare repeal and keeping it front-and-center on the agenda, creating more confusion and uncertainty in his party. Eventually, Trump played a more positive role in persuading Republicans to vote for the revised bill, but his failure to do so sooner had cost his party precious time on the legislative calendar.

The Trump Administration undermined House Republicans’ messaging as well. Its focus on divisive issues like immigration kept other, potentially bipartisan policy matters on the backburner.

Stories about the president’s failure to disclose his tax returns and possible Russian interference in the presidential election, dominated the news, and Trump did his party no favors when he abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey in the midst of Comey’s investigation into the allegations of Russian ties to the Trump campaign. Stories of scandal in the White House even ensnared congressional Republicans: House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes, R-Calif., for instance, became tainted by allegations that he was protecting the president from an investigation into White House ties to Russia, and he eventually stepped down from the inquiry.

Negative media reports about controversial policy choices and possible presidential wrongdoing were compounded by a steady stream of stories about organizational disarray and staff infighting in the White House.

Reporters cited dozens of sources inside the West Wing who readily confirmed that it was rife with internal dysfunction and staffers jockeying for influence.12 On this score, it is worth comparing the Trump White House with that of George W. Bush — the last Republican president with unified 16

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Bill Clinton George W. Bush Barack Obama Donald Trump

Bills Signed Into Law

Executive Orders

Presidential Presidential Appointments Appointments Confirmed Awaiting Confirmation

Approval Rating

24

13

49

125

55%

7

11

35

50

62%

11

19

69

118

65%

29

30

26*

37*

42%

* As of April 25, 2017

Sources: Azari, “A President’s First 100 Days Really Matter,” Vox, January 17, 2017, Table Julia 1: Comparing recent president’s first 100Do days https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-presidents-first-100-days-really-do-matter/; Lisa Rein, “Agencies ‘stuck’ in staffing limbo,” Washington Post, April 26; The American Presidency Project; www.congress.gov; www.gallup.com. party control — which was praised town hall meeting held by Tom *for As of 25,and 2017. itsApril focus discipline early on McClintock, R-Calif. That scene and which, according to one official was soon replicated at dozens of at the time, was “utterly devoid of similar events hosted by incumbent self-seekers.” 13 Republicans throughout the spring All of these political and policy of 2017. While many lawmakers miscues did not keep Trump from handled their meetings with signing a sizeable number of bills patience and empathy, some treated and executive orders during his their constituents with disdain, and first 100 days in office. But many others avoided holding any town of them were small in scope, hall meetings at all, even at the and Trump lagged well behind risk of being criticized for hiding his predecessors in nominating from voters. members of the executive branch, Unhappy constituents did more hindering his ability to implement than just storm town hall meetings policy. His popularity rating also hosted by their Republican fell to the lowest level of any representatives. They flooded early-stage presidency in modern lawmakers’ phone lines to complain polling history, a drop which, in about the president and Congress’ turn, spread to Republicans in legislative agenda. They dedicated Congress, increasing their sense money, time, and energy to the of electoral vulnerability and special elections in the early months encouraging them to keep their of 2017. Independent groups also 13 distance from the president (see helped by organizing protests and Table 1). And, from the point of view creating websites that made it of minority Democrats, Trump’s easier to locate town hall events and poor poll numbers gave them even identify upcoming elections. less incentive to pursue bipartisan In short, many of the tactics cooperation.

House Democrats employed in the In addition to House Republicans 115th Congress were also used, and President Trump, a third set of with perhaps greater impact, by actors was helpful to congressional others. Citizens and advocacy Democrats: outside activists. groups engaged in considerable Wide-scale protests against electioneering efforts on behalf Trump occurred the day after his of Democrats running in special inauguration, but the first sign of congressional elections. Favorable broad-based grassroots discontent messaging was provided by voters towards Republicans in Congress protesting at raucous town hall emerged in early February 2017, meetings and, inadvertently, by when angry constituents booed congressional Republicans and the and yelled during a district Trump White House. Resistance by

a handful of House Republicans to legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act held up its consideration.

And the president and Republicans in Congress legislated — or, more accurately, failed to legislate — in ways that resulted in fewer conservative policy enactments than Democrats feared.

Does all of this mean that the minority party in the House of Representatives is largely unimportant? Though Republicans and outsiders were crucial in delivering Democrats some unanticipated victories in early 2017, there are three reasons that the activity of congressional Democrats has also been crucial, and may be even more so in the months ahead.

First, minority parties need to be active for the sake of their members and supporters. Serving in the minority in the House can be demoralizing and discouraging, and minority party lawmakers must believe that they are doing something to achieve their goals.

Minority parties that surrender initiative and energy to others are prone to internal conflicts and suffer from early retirements among their ranks. They are also likely to receive fewer financial contributions and depressed turnout at campaign events and on Election Day. Thus, the tactics Democratic leaders have employed have, at a minimum, maintained the morale and loyalty of their rank-and-file and sympathetic voters.

Second, since a minority party can never be sure which tactics might bear fruit, it is usually wisest for the party to be active across a wide variety of fronts.

As a congressman recalled when explaining his acts of resistance against the majority party, “you never are sure which tactic’s going to work, and ones that don’t work, you don’t remember.” 14 Though the maneuvers Democrats undertook in early 2017 may not have generated victories in and of themselves, it is still early, and there is good reason

to expect that their electioneering, messaging, obstruction, and legislating will engender successes in the future.

Finally, one cannot understate the key strategic decision made

by House Democrats not to help Republican legislators or the president. As I have noted elsewhere, minority party success often stems from the missteps and excessively partisan behavior of their opponents.15 Democrats made perhaps their smartest move by refusing to throw a political life preserver to Trump and the House GOP as they struggled to stay afloat in the sea of good governance.

By staying unified in opposition, Democrats denied Republicans the chance to claim that their legislative moves were bipartisan — and, as previously noted, it forced the GOP to find votes for bills within their own divided ranks and tie themselves to an unpopular, politically unskilled president. As the old saying goes, if your opponents are committing suicide, don’t stand in their way.16 It is too early as of this writing to say whether the victories of minority Democrats (and the setbacks of majority Republicans) are merely temporary or a bellwether for the rest of the 115th Congress. Either way, the events in Washington to date clearly underscore the fact that a minority party, even one in the deep minority, can garner unexpected political and policy victories—especially with the help of others.

Notes 1.

Matthew Green, Underdog Politics: The Minority Party in the U.S. House of Representatives (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015).

2.

Quoted in Green, 2015, op. cit. p. 71.

3 Green, 2015, op. cit.

4.

Frances Lee and James M. Curry, “Congress is far more bipartisan than headlines suggest.” Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, December 20, 2016, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkeycage/wp/2016/12/20/congress-is-far-morebipartisan-than-headlines-suggest.

5.

For more on majority rolls, see Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins, Setting the

Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). For more on disappointments, see Andrew J. Clarke, Jeffery A. Jenkins, and Nathan W. Monroe, “From Rolls to Disappointments: Examining the Other Source of Majority Party Failure in Congress,” Political Research Quarterly 70:1, 82-97.

6.

Charles O. Jones, The Minority Party in Congress (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1970); Green, 2015, op. cit.; Frances Lee, Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

7.

Matt Fuller, “House Democrats on Record-Breaking Fundraising Pace,” The Huffington Post, March 14, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ house-democrats-dccc-february-2017_ us_58c764e0e4b081a56deee921, and EdwardIsaac Dovere, “Democrats recruit veterans early for 2018 battle,” Politico, April 4, 2017, http:// www.politico.com/story/2017/04/veteranshouse-democrats-recruiting-236845.

8.

David Weigel, “Republicans undertake unexpected rescue mission in deep red Kansas,” Washington Post, April 10, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/ in-kansas-a-close-congressional-race-surprisesrepublicans/2017/04/10/8f0085e8-1e05-11e7ad74-3a742a6e93a7_story.html; and Simone Pathé, “Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff Raises $8.3M,” Roll Call, April 5, 2017, http://www. rollcall.com/news/politics/georgia-democratjon-ossoff-raised-8-3m.

9.

Congressional Record, March 8, 2017, H1618-1620 and 1940-1944; Jessie Hellmann, “Dems force reading of entire GOP healthcare bill to drag out committee markup,” The Hill, March 8, 2017, http://thehill.com/ policy/healthcare/322972-democrats-forcereading-of-entire-healthcare-bill-to-drag-outcommittee; Heather Caygle, “House Dems step up delay tactics against Obamacare repeal,” Politico, March 8, 2017, http://www. politico.com/story/2017/03/house-democratsobamacare-repeal-delay-235837.

10.

These data exclude non-majoritarian (i.e. suspension) votes.

11.

Tom Davis, “Get your act together, GOP, or risk your majority.” Washington Post, March 27, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ opinions/get-your-act-together-gop-or-riskyour-majority/2017/03/27/5cceca9e-1306-11e7ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html.

12.

See e.g. Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, and Ashley Parker, “Inside Trump’s fury: The president rages at leaks, setbacks and accusations,” Washington Post, March 6, 2017.

13.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 4/29/01, “The George W. Bush Administration: His First 100 Days,” p. 1E. 14.

Green 2015, op. cit., p. 19.

15.

Green 2015, op. cit., p. 182.

16.

See e.g. Tom Davis, op cit.

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Special Orders

RACIAL REPRESENTATION IN THE TRUMP-ERA CONGRESS Christian Grose | University of Southern California Christian Grose is associate professor of political science and public policy and director of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California. Grose’s research interests include political institutions, political representation, electoral behavior, and legislatures. He is the author of the award-winning Congress in Black and White: Race and Representation in Washington and at Home (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Grose is also a previous recipient of the Carl Albert Award for the best dissertation in legislative politics from the American Political Science Association.

D

onald Trump was elected president in 2016 with a narrow Electoral College victory and popular vote loss. His campaign for the presidency was one of the most explicitly racialized campaigns for president in contemporary U.S. history. Perhaps not since Democrat George Wallace’s 1960sera racially charged campaigns or Republican George H.W. Bush’s 1988 Willie Horton ad has the U.S. electorate been subject to such an overtly racially primed presidential campaign. For instance, at the opening of his campaign, Trump declared that Mexicans “have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Later in the campaign, he criticized an American judge’s ethnic

background, and praised white supporters for physically attacking a black protester at one of his rallies. The Trump campaign’s racial appeals were distinct in tone from Barack Obama’s 2008 “hope” themes and George W. Bush’s 2000 message of “compassionate conservatism.”

Will this racially charged atmosphere from the 2016 Trump presidential campaign affect legislative behavior in the 115th Congress? What implications are there for minority representation in the U.S. Congress in the Trump era? Descriptive minority representation has increased in the Trump-era Congress, but there is increasing racial polarization between Democraticheld and Republican-held House districts. Republican members of Congress continue to represent

EVEN WITH TRUMP’S ELECTION IN A CAMPAIGN THAT MADE EXPLICIT RACIAL APPEALS, THE PRESENCE OF MINORITY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS HAS REACHED HISTORIC LEVELS. 18

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overwhelmingly white districts that do not look much different than districts Republican members of Congress represented a quarter-century ago, while Democratic members of Congress increasingly represent racially and ethnically diverse constituencies.

This means that high levels of partisan ideological polarization in the 2010s-era congresses are associated with the increasingly different racial and ethnic demographics of constituencies represented by the two parties.

Following the 2016 elections, the number of minority members of Congress increased to historic highs. At the opening of the 115th Congress, 50 members of the House and Senate identified as African-American.1 This is a 39 percent increase over the numbers of African-American members of Congress in the 107th Congress, which was the first Congress of the last Republican president, George W. Bush. Similarly, there were more Latino and Asian-American members of Congress in the 115th Congress than in any previous Congress (39 Latino legislators and 15 Asian-American legislators).

These gains in descriptive

is, on average, more than three-quarters white and with no individual minority group above 10 percent of the district population.

Table 1: Racial populations of districts represented by U.S. House members, 115th Congress (2017) Republican House members

Democratic House members

White district population mean

77.3 percent

53.7 percent

Black district population mean

8.0 percent

16.0 percent

Latino district population mean

9.9 percent

20.4 percent

Asian-Amer. district pop. mean

2.8 percent

7.5 percent

Other, district population mean

2.0 percent

2.4 percent

Table 1: RacialThis populations districts represented U.S. the House Congress (2017) is perhapsofnot surprising given that,bysince civilmembers, rights era, 115th Democratic representatives’

electoral coalitions include racial and ethnic minorities, while Republican representatives’ electoral coalitions rely more on white voters. However, what is surprising is that as the country has become more Democrats and Republicans in minority members of Congress representation, defined as the racially and ethnically diverse, Republican members of the House continue to represent very white the U.S. House are ideologically has reached historic levels. These presence of minority members constituencies.

Tuesday Group

Gorsuch Immigration

Nuclear Option

farther apart than they have been increasing numbers may lead to of Congress in office, reflect the Theofincreasing the United States and is affecting the demographic since makeup the Civil of War. 2 Scholars have greater substantive symbolic growing diversity the Uniteddiversity within DemocraticThese Houseincreases districts, but not representation Republican House districts.

The country has become over and in the 115th Congress States electorate. noted bothless thewhite institutional the last 25 years, yet are Republican House today represent constituencies that are as whiteofasthis ideological andmembers beyond. In previous years, the in minority representation due electoral roots of African-American and1, duringpolarization in part Republican to the legal House requirement for electedpresence members 25 years ago.

As shown in Figure the first yearbetween of Bill the parties, Latino legislators has led todistricts greaterwith an average the creation of majority-minority as mostof Democratic members of Clinton’s presidency (1993), Republican legislators represented 77.4 percent levels of voting, bill sponsorship, districtswhite first population. imposed after the the House represent In 2017, that number is nearly identical, with Republican members of Congress, ondistricts that participation, 1990 census.

They also reflect consistently support Democrats average, representing districts with a committee mean 77.3 percent white population.3 constituency service, and federal residential living patterns, with and most Republican members of project allocation2 to Africanminority voters concentrated in the House represent districts that American and Latino constituents. urban areas. Gerrymandering has consistently support Republicans.

On the other hand, most racial also had an effect.

In the 115th Congress, the and ethnic minority members Even with Trump’s election in increasing partisan polarization of Congress are in the minority a campaign that made explicit among members of Congress Democratic Party in the 115th racial appeals, the presence of also parallels an increasing Congress. Thus, racial polarization between the the opportunity for parties in Congress. Republicans substantive actions by represent overwhelmingly white Constituency minority members of constituencies, and Democrats Pressures Congress may be limited. represent constituencies that Race In addition, the 115th are much more racially and Congress may be different ethnically diverse. than past congresses Table 1 shows the mean racial given Trump’s willingness and ethnic demographics for GOP to make explicit racial and Democratic House members appeals in ways not in 2017. The average Democratic Tax reform seen from presidents House member represents a district in decades. Minority that is almost split evenly between members of Congress, white and nonwhite constituents even in the minority party, (53.7 percent white; 16 percent may increase symbolic black; 20.4 percent Latino and levels of representation 7.5 percent Asian-American). In and “resistance” during contrast, the average Republican the Trump presidency House member represents a district above levels seen in that is, on average, more than previous eras. three-quarters white and with no

115th ongress Infrastructure

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19

Figure 1: Democratic House members have increasingly diverse constituencies, while Republican House members’ constituencies remain overwhelmingly white branches of government numerically over-represent white voters relative to their proportion in the population.

75 In the U.S. House, redistricting and the uneven geographic dispersion of 70 racial and ethnic minority groups are 65 institutional constraints for greater minority representation in Congress.

60 Further, the U.S. House’s majority party legislators represent districts 55 that are composed mostly of white voters. Compared to the U.S. House, 50 the U.S. Senate’s membership is 45 smaller, which means more white Clinton 1993-94 Bush 2001-02 Obama 2009-10 Trump 2017-18 voters are proportionally represented Democratic House Representatives Republican House Representatives

by U.S. senators than are minority voters. Further, in 2016, the Electoral Figure 1: Democratic House members have increasingly diverse College Meanwhile, Democratic House members’ districts have become much less white (going from almost 64produced a Trump victory. constituencies, while Republican House members’ constituencies remain percent white in 1993 to nearly half white/half nonwhite in 2017. The two parties’ members are simply coalition was mostly white, Trump’s overwhelmingly white representing different constituencies – the Democratic constituencies tend to reflect the growing diversity even as a more racially diverse in the nation as a whole – while the Republican constituencies remain overwhelmingly white. coalition of minorities and whites individual minority group above 10 Meanwhile, Democratic House handed The increasing racial differences in the constituencies represented by the two major parties in a popular vote victory to percent of the district population. members’ districts have become Hillary Clinton.

Congress has significant implications for representation, responsiveness and equality in the United States. perhaps not party surprising much less white, going from almost Republicans in the 115th Congress InThis 2017,isthe controlling of both elected branches of government numerically over represent white given since the civil rightsin the population.

64 percent white in 1993 to nearly face competing short-term and votersthat, relative to their proportion In the U.S. House, redistricting and the uneven era, Democratic representatives’ half white/half nonwhite in 2017. The long-term pressures regarding race geographic dispersion of racial and ethnic minority groups are institutional constraints for greater electoral racialinand two parties’ aremajority simply party legislators minority coalitions descriptive include representation Congress.

Further, themembers U.S. House’s and their constituents. In the short ethnic minorities, while different constituencies represent districts that areRepublican composed mostly ofrepresenting white voters. The U.S. Senate has a bias toward small,Republican House members term, which also means more white voters are proportionally represented by U.S. senators than are minority representatives’ electoral coalitions — the Democratic constituencies represent extremely white districts voters.

Further, in 2016, the Electoral produced a Trump Trump’s coalition was rely more on white voters.

However,Collegetend to reflect thevictory. growing diversity andmostly have no immediate electoral white, even as a more racially diverse coalition of minorities and whites handed a popular vote victory to what is surprising is that as the in the nation as a whole — while the reason to reach out to minority Hillary Clinton. country has become more racially Republican constituencies remain voters. In the long term, though, and ethnically diverse, Republican overwhelmingly white.

Republicans in the 115th Congress face competing short-term and long-term pressuresassuming regarding the United States continues members of the House continue to term, Republican The increasing racial differences race and their constituents.

In the short House members represent extremelyto white diversify, the Republican Party represent very white constituencies. in to the constituencies represented bylong term, districts and have no immediate electoral reason reach out to minority voters. In the will though, need to make some inroads assuming the United States continues Party in will need to make some inroadswhite voters to maintain or The increasing diversity within to diversify, the the twoRepublican major parties Congress beyond beyond white voters maintain or continue gaining seats in Congress.

Conversely, membersgaining seats in Congress. the United States is to affecting has significant implications for Democratic continue of Congress are unlikely to make seat gains in Congress unless they can appeal more to voters in these the demographic makeup of representation, responsiveness and Conversely, Democratic members overwhelmingly white constituencies.

Democratic House districts, but equality in the United States. In 2017, of Congress are unlikely to make not Republican House districts.

The the controlling party to ofwhites both similar electedto Trump’s seat gains in Congress unless they Will Republicans in Congress make short-term racial appeals country become less white overlonger-term implications? Scholars have studied when minority electoralhas strategy, or will they consider the last 25ofyears, yet make Republican members Congress racialized or deracialized appeals to minority groups.4 However, with House members today represent 3 constituencies that are as white as Republican House members elected 25 years ago. As shown in Figure 1, RAISES NEW AND IMPORTANT QUESTIONS OF during the first year of Bill Clinton’s RACE AND REPRESENTATION IN LEGISLATURES. presidency (1993), Republican legislators represented districts with THE CONFLUENCE OF PARTISANSHIP AND RACE an average of 77.4 percent white IN LEGISLATORS’ CONSTITUENCY COALITIONS population. In 2017, that number is nearly identical, with Republican PRESENTS NEW RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES members of Congress, on average, RELATED TO RACE AND REPRESENTATION. representing districts with a mean 77.3 percent white population. 3 White district popu. %

80

THE TRUMP-ERA CONGRESS

20

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Protestors against President-elect Donald Trump gathered near Central Park in November 2016 to protest racism and Donald Trump’s presidential win. (AP Photo)

can appeal more to voters in these overwhelmingly white constituencies.

Will Republicans in Congress make short-term racial appeals to whites similar to Trump’s electoral strategy, or will they consider longerterm implications? Scholars have studied when minority members of Congress make racialized or deracialized appeals to minority groups.4 However, with Trump’s explicit racial appeals — and the large majority of GOP members of Congress representing white Trump-supporting constituencies — might we see more racial appeals

by Republicans in the short term?

For instance, Rep. Steve King of Iowa has recently been criticized in the media for making an explicitly racial appeal to whites, but is he an anomaly or part of a broader pattern that may emerge?5 Scholars of racial representation should continue to examine racial appeals by members of Congress.

In addition, with Trump appealing to white voters using “white nationalist” appeals, will Republicans in Congress be forced to support Trump — and even his racialized rhetoric — because GOP House districts are so overwhelmingly white? Will Republican House members feel

constrained to investigate or speak out against Trump scandals given the types of districts they represent?

Interestingly, the first Republican to broach the possibility of impeachment in the wake of Donald Trump’s firing of James Comey in May 2017 was Rep. Carlos Curbelo.6 He represents a Latino-majority district in south Florida, and his constituency is ethnically atypical of most Republican constituencies.

Many Republicans in Congress are personally not fans of Donald Trump and were slow to support his campaign during the 2016 primaries.

Nevertheless, many Republicans in Congress publicly support Trump due to support for Trump among whites in their districts. Due to the racialized nature of the partisan divide in congressional seats, will most GOP members of Congress be constrained from speaking out against Trump’s more bombastic transgressions?

Conversely, will Democrats need to be less explicit in their own appeals and work to build coalitions of Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and whites in their districts through deracialized messages? Many Democratic members of Congress represent majority-minority districts or

white-majority districts where the winning coalitions include mostly minority voters and a minority of whites. Or will Democratic members of Congress increasingly engage in racialized appeals directed to constituencies of color, and will this limit Democrats’ ability to win in more heavily-white constituencies that are needed to expand Democratic control of the House?

The Trump-era Congress raises new and important questions of race and representation in legislatures.

The confluence of partisanship and race in legislators’ constituency coalitions presents new research opportunities related to race and representation. A Republican majority that represents districts that are overwhelmingly white and unreflective of the country as a whole alongside a Democratic minority that represents increasingly diverse districts presents challenges for legislative decision-making. I encourage scholars of legislative representation to address these questions and consider whether the Trump era has led to changes in legislative behavior regarding the symbolic and substantive actions of elected officials or whether patterns in racial representation from the past will persist.

Notes 1.

Bialik, Kristen and Jens Manuel Krogstad.

2017. “115th Congress Sets New High for Racial, Ethnic Diversity.” Pew Research Center, January 24.

2.

Carroll, Royce, Jeffrey B. Lewis, James Lo, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal.

2013. “The Structure of Utility in Spatial Voting Models.” American Journal of Political Science 57:1008-1028.

3.

Foster-Molina, Ella. 2017. “Historical Congressional Legislation and District Demographics, 1972-2014.” Doi:10.7910/DVN/ CI2EPI, Harvard Dataverse.

4.

Canon, David T. 1999. “Race, Redistricting, and Representation.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

5.

Graham, David. 2017. “Steve King’s Improbable Ascendance.” The Atlantic, March 13.

6.

Seitz-Wald, Alex. 2017. “Republican Carlos Curbelo Wants You to Know He Called for Impeachment First.” NBC News, May 19.

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21

For the Record

CARL ALBERT CENTER CELEBRATES

FOUNDER’S INSPIRING CAREER AT UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

By Cindy Simon Rosenthal | Director and Curator

22

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Ron Peters introduces former President Gerald R. Ford at a 1981 fundraising gala for the newly established Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center.

through a $2 million appropriation from Congress. The endowment was matched, in part, by private fundraising, including a gala dinner in 1981 featuring former President Gerald R. Ford, Speaker O’Neill, then-Majority Leader Jim Wright, Gov. George Nigh, the entire Oklahoma

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center

T

he bright, young assistant professor, fresh from Indiana University and trained to teach political philosophy, had an idea to create a premier congressional studies center in the middle of Oklahoma. He succeeded beyond perhaps his own wildest imaginings, and in May 2017, Ronald M. Peters Jr. retired after an inspiring 42-year career at the University of Oklahoma.

In puzzling over the language to engrave on his retirement gift, several of us confronted a challenge as we pondered the words to list. How do you sum up a career in a few words? We settled on five: Regents’ Professor, Founder, Director, and Mentor. These terms resonated over and over as family, friends, former students, and colleagues gathered to salute Ron’s retirement on April 22 in Norman.

A Hoosier born and bred, Professor Peters received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Indiana University. He joined OU in 1975 as a visiting professor, and one year later, was offered a tenure track position in the department.

Peters’ inspiration for creating the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center came with Speaker Albert’s retirement in 1977. Albert, a graduate of OU, a Rhodes Scholar and 46th Speaker of the House, donated his congressional papers to the Western History Center at OU. Peters proposed that the archives deserved an academic component focused on the study of Congress and set to work to help fund the initiative.

Peters drafted a formal proposal that formed the basis of state legislation creating the center in 1979. With the initial state funding, the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center opened its doors in July of that year.

In 1981 and 1982, Peters spent a sabbatical in Washington D.C. working for Speaker Tip O’Neill, leading to federal legislation to support a center endowment

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center

On April 14, 1988, Ron Peters and his wife Glenda, daughter Julie, and son John, joined Speaker Carl Albert for the formal opening of the Carl Albert Congressional Collection. The ceremony included the presentation of a portrait of Speaker Albert, which was painted by Charles Banks Wilson.

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center

congressional delegation, and a who’s who of Oklahoma business leaders.

The political road was winding but ultimately led to the center’s foundation as a premier congressional studies center. The story has its more colorful moments which are best told

by Peters himself.

Peters directed the center from 1979 to 2000 and also served as chair of the Political Science Department from 1994 to 2002. His leadership example established a model for institutional commitment which many of his former graduate fellows have practiced in their own careers as deans, directors, and department chairs.

Peters won several campus awards and the continuing admiration of his students. In 1994, he was named a Regents’ Professor, one of OU’s most distinguished awards, for excellence in teaching. His former graduate students testified at his retirement party about the inspiration they took from his mentorship. One former graduate student wrote, “When I teach well, I am teaching from what I learned from Ron.” He taught more than 50 different courses for OU and has been an innovative collaborator, co-teaching with colleagues across the disciplines of law, philosophy, and history.

He was an active participant in OU’s Advanced Programs, offering instruction to thousands of U.S. military and government personnel at military installations around the world.

Peters is nationally recognized as an expert on the Office of the Speaker and the varied inhabitants of it. Peters authored “The American Speakership” and co-authored “Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics.” He challenged his students to careful scholarship by being a responsive, insightful, and challenging reader. “I know now that, among dissertation advisors, Ron was truly a unique mind — capable of ranging with assiduity far afield from his own work and selfless in his commitment

Ron Peters, LaDonna Sullivan, Julian Rothbaum, Theda Skocpol and Joel Jankowsky (from left to right) at the 1999 Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture in Representative Government. to his students’ development,” one former graduate student wrote.

Ron Peters set out to create an institution that would make its mark on the field of congressional studies and yet maintain a sense of family and collegiality. Those of us who personally benefited from his

ambition, inspiration, and mentorship are forever thankful to have taken this journey with him. Thank you, Ron, for a job well done.

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Traveling from across the country, present and former center staff, faculty, university colleagues, friends, former students, and the extended Peters family joined the festivities which included a dinner and roast of Ronald M. Peters Jr. Eighteen former and current doctoral students representing all four decades of the centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s congressional fellows program gathered for the Petersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; retirement party. Among the commemorative gifts and gag mementos given to him, current Director Cindy Simon Rosenthal presented Professor Peters with an engraved crystal of the United States Capitol commemorating his role as center founder, Regentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Professor, and mentor.

24

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$39.95 HARDCOVER· 408 PAGES· 25 B&W ILLUS., 13 FIGURES With its rock-bottom approval ratings, acrimonious partisan battles, and apparent inability to do its legislative business, the U.S. Senate might easily be deemed unworthy of attention, if not downright irrelevant. But that would be a mistake. Despite its dysfunction, the Senate finds itself at the center of attention as 2017 develops under a new presidential administration and a heavy slate of legislative issues. Republicans hold the White House, majorities in both chambers of Congress and an ambitious, controversial agenda that includes repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act, immigration reform and tax reform.

Because the Senate has become the place where the policy-

making process most frequently stalls, any effective resolution to our polarized politics demands a clear understanding of how the formerly august legislative body once worked and how it came to the present crisis. Steven S. Smith provides that understanding in The Senate Syndrome.

Like the Senate itself, Smith’s account is grounded in history.

Countering a cacophony of inexpert opinion and a widespread misunderstanding of political and legislative history, the book fills in a world of missing information about debates among senators concerning fundamental democratic processes and the workings of institutional rules, procedures, and norms. And Smith does so in a clear and engaging manner. He puts the present problems of the Senate — the “Senate syndrome” — as he calls them, into historical context by explaining how particular ideas and procedures were first framed and how they transformed with the times. At stake is resolution of the Senate syndrome, and the critical underlying struggle between majority rule and minority rights in American policy making.

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25

For the Record

NEWS FROM THE CENTER Katherine McRae | Director of Administration

As part of the University of Oklahoma’s Earth Month activities in April, the Carl Albert Center’s archives hosted three local digital history labs, which focused on the creation and use of Lake Thunderbird, in Norman, Oklahoma.

Archive staff members recorded community members’ oral histories of the lake. They also collected historic photos and other materials and converted them to digital files for storage. The collection, which includes materials from the center’s archives, the Cleveland County Historical Society, and the OU Western History Collection, may be viewed online at https://water. cacexplore.org/lake-thunderbird.

Visitors to the U.S. Capitol can view materials from the center’s archives in the exhibit, “Congress and the World Wars,” which will be open through September 2017.

The materials are on loan for the exhibit, which is presented by the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. Patrons may explore the exhibit online at: https://www.visitthecapitol. gov/exhibitions/congress-andworld-wars.

Graduate assistant Heather Walser and graduate intern Nicole Sutton completed an online exhibit on the travels of the Cartwright family, “The Cartwright Family Wanderchart” which can be explored at https://wanderchart. cacexplore.org/cms.

Nathan Gerth, assistant curator and archivist, represented the center at an annual conference of 26

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Director Cindy Simon Rosenthal (left) leads the N.E.W. Leadership facultyin-residence panel featuring Cherokee Council Deputy Speaker Victoria Vazquez (center) and former State Representative and Speaker pro tem Lee Denney (right). the Association for the Centers of the Study of Congress. The event was held May 10-12 in Washington, D.C.

Women’s Leadership Initiative The center partnered with the Oklahoma Women’s Coalition to host the eighth “Pipeline to Politics” conference to encourage involvement in politics and public service. The conference was held Jan. 28 in Tulsa on the OU-Tulsa campus. The 2017 conference saw enrollment increase significantly over the prior year, a trend experienced by similar programs across the nation following the 2016 election. More than 60 women from around the state heard from 14 speakers, which included five female elected officials.

Presentations covered topics such as grassroots organizing, communications, campaign

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center

Archives

strategy, fundraising, and why women are needed in politics and public service.

In February, the center welcomed Lauren Schueler, who returned as director of the N.E.W. (National Education for Women’s) Leadership program and civic engagement. Prior to rejoining the center, Schueler worked as the assistant novice rowing coach with the University at Buffalo’s Women’s Rowing Team. Schueler has a master’s degree in adult and higher education from OU and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Central Florida.

The 2017 N.E.W. Leadership program converged on the Norman campus May 19-23, for the 16th year. The program’s mission is to educate, inspire and empower women to become leaders in public service and elective office.

The intense, five-day program brought together 33 undergraduate women from 17 higher education

N.E.W. Leadership alumna Ally Glavas led 2017 participants in a workshop on message framing and media relations.

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center

Award-winning Oklahoma author Rilla Askew inspired graduates and program supporters with a message of hope, empowerment, and affirmation.

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center

Oklahoma City Schools Foundation Executive Director Mary Mélon and N.E.W. Leadership graduate Madison Mélon-McLawhorn emceed the third annual EmPower Lunch.

institutions to learn from Oklahoma’s top women leaders in government, business, the nonprofit sector, and politics.

The 2017 Faculty-in-Residence were Lee Denney, DVM, former state representative and speaker pro tempore and current department head of OSU-OKC Veterinary Technology Agriculture Resource Center; DeVon Douglass, chief resilience officer, City of Tulsa; and Victoria Vazquez, deputy speaker of the Tribal Council, Cherokee Nation. Students heard from more than 50 presenters about various topics and completed a campaign simulation and action project focused on paid family leave. The program closed with the third annual EmPower Lunch fundraiser, held at the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. Award-winning author Rilla Askew was the keynote speaker. The luncheon was also an opportunity to recognize the 2017 N.E.W. Leadership sponsors, including Underwriting Partner AT&T and Platinum Sponsors the Cherokee Nation and Chickasaw Nation. Schueler and Carl Albert Center Director Cindy Simon Rosenthal oversaw the program.

Capitol Scholars In April, Carl Albert Center Associate Director Mike Crespin and the Capitol Scholars hosted students and faculty from the University of Kansas during events in Norman and at the Oklahoma State Capitol. The visitors met legislators, lobbyists and others. The trip was supported with funds from the center and the OU Department of Political Science. This is the second year of an ongoing exchange program between the universities.

Community Engagement In February, the center was host to 2016 Carl Albert Dissertation Award winner Molly Reynolds, Ph.D, from the Brookings Institution.

She participated in on-campus presentations and a Community Coffee Klatch. The award is funded by the center and presented by the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association.

In March, the center and the OU Department of Economics co-hosted John Patty, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and co-editor of the “Journal of Theoretical Politics.”

During his on-campus visit, Patty gave presentations and spoke at a Community Coffee Klatch.

As part of OU’s Earth Month activities in April, the center held a community engagement forum to discuss environmental issues facing Lake Thunderbird. Community members attended the forum and discussed concerns with water policy experts.

Presentations In April, Crespin and graduate fellows Jessica Hayden and Sarina Rhinehart presented “Running from the Donald or Jumping on the Trump Train: Campaign Rhetoric and the 2016 Congressional Election,” at the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) Annual Meeting in Chicago. This paper was also presented at the Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC. Graduate fellow Matthew Geras also presented “Quality Candidates and Competition in Elections for the U. S. House of Representatives,” at the MPSA Annual Meeting.

In June, Geras, Hayden and Rhinehart presented “Appointees continued next page extensions | Summer 2017

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Versus Elected Officials: The Implications of Selection Method on the Diversity of State Bureaucratic Leaders,” at the State Politics and Policy Conference in St. Louis.

Visiting Scholars In February, Scott Meinke, Bucknell University, visited the center’s archives to research congressional parties’ roles in setting the national policy agenda and party leadership organizations in the House of Representatives.

In May, Matthew Green, Catholic University of America, and Jeffery Crouch, American University, sought information for their book about former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Also in May, Joe Faykosh, Bowling Green State University, researched former Oklahoma Sen. Fred Harris, the 1968 Democratic Convention, and the creation of the McGovern-Fraser Commission.

Transitions Carl Albert Graduate Fellow Victoria Rickard accepted a visiting professorship at Mercyhurst University in Eric, Pennsylvania, beginning in August 2017. She will defend her dissertation this summer before leaving the center. She entered the center’s graduate program in 2012 after completing her juris doctorate at Michigan State University, with concentrations in international law and intellectual property.

She also has a master’s degree in international affairs from American University, with a concentration in international politics and an undergraduate degree from Gonzaga University, where, as a Regent Scholar, she studied history and political science. As a Carl Albert Fellow, Rickard focused her studies on American politics, public policy, and international relations.

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A

ssociate Professor Charles Finocchiaro will join the faculty of the Carl Albert Congressional Research & Studies Center in the fall.

Professor Finocchiaro comes to the center from the University of South Carolina, where he has spent the last 10 years. He received his doctorate at Michigan State University under the tutelage of congressional scholar David Rohde.

“I could not be more excited about joining the center at this juncture in its history. Its rich archival resources and growing digital footprint present a tremendous opportunity to further benefit the academic and geographic communities it serves,” Finocchiaro said. “I am eager to begin collaborating with faculty colleagues and the impressive team of Carl Albert Graduate Fellows.”

Finocchiaro’s own research agenda involves a mix of both contemporary legislative politics and historical aspects of the U.S. Congress, and he has been a user of the center’s archival collections in a book project on the evolution of the Congress around the turn of the 20th century. His book will focus on the emergence of congressional electioneering (or “personal vote” activities) from the mid-19th to mid20th centuries.

“Professional research, which is an integral component of the center’s mission, affords so many opportunities to enrich student learning, to train the next generation of researchers, and to better illuminate the function of Congress, a much-maligned yet critically important institution,” he said.

His research with co-author Dr. Scott MacKenzie was recently honored by the American Political Science Association and the Southern Political Science Association. Their winning paper “Making Washington Work: Legislative Entrepreneurship and the Personal Vote from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression” has been accepted for publication in the “American Journal of Political Science.”

Finocchiaro is jointly appointed in the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Political Science, where he will teach Introduction to American Government, a required course for all OU students. He also will contribute to center teaching duties on representative government and the Congress. The center is eager to welcome Chuck, his wife Lauren and their five children.

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DO FACTS MATTER?

Information and Misinformation in American Politics ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

JENNIFER L. HOCHSCHILD AND KATHERINE LEVINE EINSTEIN A democracy falters when most of its citizens are uninformed or misinformed, when misinformation affects political decisions and actions, or when political actors foment misinformation—the state of affairs the United States faces today, as this timely book makes painfully clear. In Do Facts Matter?

Jennifer L. Hochschild and Katherine Levine Einstein start with Thomas Jefferson’s ideal citizen, who knows and uses correct information to make policy or political choices. What, then, the authors ask, are the consequences if citizens are informed but do not act on their knowledge? More serious, what if they do act, but on incorrect information? $29.95 HARDCOVER · 248 PAGES ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

VOLUME 13 IN THE JULIAN J. ROTHBAUM DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES

Analyzing the use, nonuse, and misuse of facts in various cases—such as the call to impeach Bill Clinton, the response to global warming, Clarence Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court, the case for invading

Iraq, beliefs about Barack Obama’s birthplace and religion, and the Affordable Care Act—Hochschild and Einstein argue persuasively that errors of commission (that is, acting on falsehoods) are even more troublesome than errors of omission. While citizens’ inability or unwillingness to use the facts they know in their political decision making may be frustrating, their acquisition and use of incorrect “knowledge” pose a far greater threat to a democratic political system.

Do Facts Matter? looks beyond individual citizens to the role that political elites play in informing, misinforming, and encouraging or discouraging the use of accurate or mistaken information or beliefs. Hochschild and Einstein show that if a well-informed electorate remains a crucial component of a successful democracy, the deliberate concealment of political facts poses its greatest threat.

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The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center 630 Parrington Oval, Room 101 Norman, Oklahoma 73019-4031 (405) 325-6372 http://www.ou.edu/carlalbertcenter

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PAID University of Oklahoma

Visiting Scholars Program The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma seeks applicants for its Visiting Scholars Program, which provides financial assistance to researchers working at the Center’s archives. Awards of $500-$1000 are normally granted as reimbursement for travel and lodging.

The Center’s holdings include the papers of many former members of Congress, such as Speaker Carl Albert, Robert S. Kerr, and Fred Harris of Oklahoma, Helen Gahagan Douglas and Jeffery Cohelan of California, and Neil Gallagher of New Jersey. Besides the history of Congress, congressional leadership, national and Oklahoma politics, and election campaigns, the collections also document government policy affecting agriculture, Native Americans, energy, foreign affairs, the environment, and the economy.

Topics that can be studied include the Great Depression, flood control, soil conservation and tribal affairs. At least one collection provides insight on women in American politics. Most materials date from the 1920s to the 1990s, although there is one nineteenth-century collection.

Information about the center’s collections is available online at ou.edu/carlalbertcenter. Additional information can be obtained from the Center.

The Visiting Scholars Program is open to any applicant. Emphasis is given to those pursuing postdoctoral research in history, political science and other fields. Graduate students involved in research for publication, thesis, or dissertation are encouraged to apply. Professional writers and researchers are also invited to apply. The Center evaluates each research proposal based upon its merits, and funding for a variety of topics is expected.

Interested applicants should complete the Visiting Scholars Grant Application available online at ou.edu/carlalbertcenter/congressional-collection/vsp. Applications are accepted at any time.

For more information, please contact: Archivist, Carl Albert Center, 630 Parrington Oval, Room 101, Norman, OK 73019. Telephone: (405) 325-6372. FAX: (405) 325-6419. E-mail: cacarchives@ou.edu

The University of Oklahoma is an Equal Opportunity Institution. www.ou.edu

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Extensions is a copyrighted publication of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. It is distributed free of charge twice a year. All Rights Reserved.

Extensions and the Carl Albert Center symbol are trademarks of the Carl Albert Center. Copyright Carl Albert Center, The University of Oklahoma, 1985.

Statements contained herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Carl Albert Center or the regents of The University of Oklahoma.