Another candidate for the whip position was the fifty-three-year-old Illinois representative Edward Madigan, who came with a proven conservative track record on domestic issues, such as his staunch opposition to environmental regulation or federal health-care programs. Madigan, who before entering Congress ran his hometown’s yellow cab company, was a quintessential Republican insider. At a time when many Republicans were spending their waking hours finding new ways to rail against Washington, Madigan lived and breathed the art of deal making. If Republicans sought to replace the whip with someone cut from the cloth of Minority Leader Michel, Madigan was their man. Already serving as the deputy whip for Michel, Madigan thrived in the messiness of bipartisan negotiation and legislative horse-trading.
With two reliable choices—Gingrich was a nonstarter in his mind—Michel lobbied for Madigan. In public, Michel stayed out of the race, following the custom for the party leader. But behind the scenes, he threw his full weight behind Madigan, not simply because he liked his style or because they came from the same state but also because he owed him a favor. Madigan had agreed to voluntarily step down as ranking member of Energy and Commerce (moving to Agriculture) so that Michel could prevent the Vermont Republican Jim Jeffords, a liberal Watergate Baby, from obtaining a seat on the panel.51 In paying him back through his informal backing to be whip, Michel was making the controversial decision to side with Madigan over the Illinois Republican Henry Hyde, a popular dyed-in-the-wool conservative and a serious legislator respected for his parliamentary acumen. Hyde combined the capacity to legislate, more so than Gingrich, with a commitment to the rightward agenda. He had gained national prominence in 1976 when he pushed through an amendment to legislation that imposed stringent restrictions on the use of federal funds to provide abortions to low-income women. This was a landmark victory for conservatives who had been fighting to overturn Roe v. Wade, and one with a lasting impact decades later. Michel told Hyde, who was interested in the job, that Madigan would have his support and the final votes.52 Gingrich breathed a sigh of relief because he felt that Hyde could unite the conservatives and the establishment votes into an unbeatable voting bloc.
That Michel and the deputy whip were both from Illinois posed a problem, because the parties historically tended to distribute leadership positions to legislators from various states, but many Republicans nevertheless believed that Madigan was exactly what the GOP needed at this turbulent moment. For Republicans who disliked Gingrich and his methods, electing Madigan would affirm the kind of civil politics senior House Republicans believed they had practiced for decades.
Madigan even generated enthusiasm from some stout conservatives, including the brash Texan Tom DeLay, who, with ambitions of his own, wanted to show Michel that he could be a team player. Elected in 1984, one year before he became a born-again Christian, DeLay was a proud right-winger with a religious zeal for deregulation. A former owner of a pest extermination company, he had entered politics out of his frustration with environmental rules. In a strategic move, Madigan asked DeLay to run his campaign. The Texan then recruited another solid conservative to assist him, a new Republican congressman from Illinois named Dennis Hastert, a plainspoken and heavyset former high school wrestling coach.
Gingrich liked his chances, despite the broad respect his opponents had among the members. He saw himself as the only true “anti-establishment” candidate at a moment when Republicans desperately needed new leadership. He alone had racked up meaningful political victories, not least by bringing Speaker Wright to his knees, as he never failed to remind his colleagues. Ronald Reagan had played the maverick as a presidential contender. Gingrich would fill the same role within Congress.
But he had ground to make up. Gingrich was on his way to his field office in Griffin, Georgia, when President Bush announced the appointment of Cheney. After a USA Today reporter informed him what had happened, Gingrich began to frenetically work the phones. “As soon as the receiver hits the cradle of my phone, I know I’m running,” Gingrich recalled.53 For the first time, Gingrich engaged in the kind of old-fashioned political vote gathering he usually abhorred. He knew that he had to reach legislators before they promised their support to one of his opponents, particularly because he was not the obvious choice. He called his chief administrative assistant, Mary Brown, into his office and instructed her to locate where every member would be over the weekend so they could be reached.54 Two hours after learning of Cheney’s nomination, Gingrich had made thirty calls to possible supporters. He spent the entire weekend convincing Republicans that he could handle the nitty-gritty of vote counting and coalition building while touting himself as the only candidate with the vision to seize the House for Republicans for the first time since 1954.
From his cramped field office, Gingrich tapped into his network of allies like Pennsylvania’s Robert Walker and Joe Barton of Texas, who spent all of Sunday working the phones to round up votes. Often, Walker recalled, he couldn’t keep up with his friend. “I was calling people, who were telling me, oh yeah, I’ve already had three or four calls about Newt Gingrich. . . . Even people who said they couldn’t support Newt were impressed by the fact that the whole organizational thing seemed to come together.”
By the time Gingrich returned to Washington on Sunday night, March 12, he had obtained assurances from fifty-five Republicans that they would vote for him. The Republicans who supported Newt were angry, not just about being a permanent minority, but also about the heavy-handed way in which Wright had treated their caucus. Even if they didn’t like Gingrich personally, many of them wanted a leader who would play rough with the Democratic majority. Wright’s stubbornness with the Bloody Eighth, his brash decision to hold open the vote on the controversial budget bill in 1987, and the struggles over Nicaragua had created a great sense of urgency among Republicans to change the status quo and to revise their tactics. To have a Democratic Speaker take such defiant stands in the midst of the Reagan-led revolution was unbearable.
Gingrich would need another thirty-two votes for a win, so he distributed talking points to his supporters to sway undecided members. His candidacy, the talking points emphasized, was the only one that could give Republicans any chance of controlling the House by the year 2000. At the same time, feigning humility, Gingrich’s surrogates were instructed to say that he wanted Michel to become the Speaker and that, until then, he would be “Michel’s whip.” This message was intended to show concerned Republicans that he would remain subordinate. And, countering Madigan’s appeal to moderates, Gingrich stressed that he was not the rabid conservative his opponents painted him as: without much evidence to support his point, he said that he had a good record of working with moderates on environmental and racial issues, as well as with women and, yes, even Democrats.55
A few days after Bush announced Cheney’s nomination, Gingrich’s promised vote total was up to seventy, eighteen short of victory. On Thursday, he looked to seal his victory by circulating the galleys of a forthcoming editorial in William Buckley’s National Review, the gold standard for conservative opinion, endorsing his candidacy.56 According to the editors, Gingrich “irradiates energy, rather like the sun, and there is zero ozone layer between him and Speaker Jim Wright, whose progressively deteriorating situation is the result of Newt Gingrich’s insistence that if there is to be ethical conduct by members of the House of Representatives, there ought also to be ethical conduct by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.” The editors continued, Gingrich “wants to give the House an opportunity to be organized by a Republican majority. To this end, more resourcefully than anyone else whose name comes to mind, he is willing and anxious to work day and night, exploring Democratic techniques for effecting political longevity, shredding the artificial barriers that have been erected to thwart the will of the voters.”57
But as the campaign pressed on, Gingrich had to contend with bad news. Congressman Lewis announced that he was dropping out of the competition.
This was a blow for Gingrich because the non-maverick votes would be united around Madigan.
Then, as quickly as the pool of candidates had shrunk, it expanded again. After making his announcement to a press conference, Lewis started walking toward the exit. Before he left the room, one of his supporters, the New York Republican Gerald Solomon, stormed up to the lectern and yelled to the assembled reporters, many of them already packing up, “Ladies and gentlemen, wait. I have an important announcement! I know you’ll be interested!” Although Lewis, who was shocked by his colleague’s outburst, continued walking, almost all the reporters turned around to listen. “Henry Hyde [an Illinois representative] will be nominated for whip,” Solomon revealed.58 “Could you identify yourself?” asked one reporter who couldn’t recognize the New Yorker. Solomon, without consulting Hyde, made this impromptu announcement after having supported Lewis right until the press conference. Solomon, who agreed with Gingrich on policy and tactics, feared that his colleague from Georgia did not have what it took to serve in a leadership role. He would be unable to control his ego in front of the cameras and ultimately subvert the party’s chances of gaining a majority. With this Hail Mary move, Solomon tried to throw Hyde into the competition.
“Everyone in our party says Henry is the best man for the job and I’m going to nominate him,” Solomon announced to stunned reporters. From the moment that Solomon shared his plan with the press, Republican support for Hyde as a conservative alternative to Gingrich grew steadily. Those who were wary of Gingrich’s tactics were drawn to Hyde’s candidacy.
Meanwhile, some Republicans had become frustrated with Michel’s aggressive lobbying behind the scenes for Madigan after Hyde entered the race. For instance, Michel placed one of Gingrich’s closest allies on the Intelligence Committee, making it clear that he then owed him his vote.59 On the day that Lewis announced to reporters that he would withdraw, fifteen conservative Republicans paid an unexpected visit to Michel’s office to express their anger. They complained that his lieutenants were pressuring members to vote for Madigan by implying that if he won there would be repercussions for anyone who voted against him. The minority leader had control over committee assignments, budgetary resources, and a media platform that could be used against any Republican who stood in his way. The leader from Peoria, who prided himself on being “fair,” was upset to see just how visibly disturbed his fellow Republicans were with what they perceived as his bullying tactics. Michel denied that he or his representatives had done anything heavy-handed, and he assured legislators that if what they said was true, he would tell his deputies to stop applying pressure so that everyone could vote his or her conscience.60
Gingrich’s only hope was to emphasize his vision for winning the House for the GOP. He would never be seen as the insider who would be the best at working the halls of Congress and rounding up votes. Gingrich conceived of the whip’s role as also being a master party strategist. “Other than (former Rep. Jack) Kemp,” Gingrich boasted in his always confident tone, “I have been the most energetic Republican of my generation.”61
By defining the decision that House Republicans had to make in these particular terms, Gingrich forced members who normally might lean toward the traditional choice, in this case Madigan, to give him a second look, sensing that there was a real possibility to overtake the Democrats. The humiliation the House GOP had already suffered during Wright’s short tenure felt so intense that many were desperate for fundamental—not incremental—change. The success of Ronald Reagan had inspired an entire generation of Republicans to think differently about what was possible in American politics. Gingrich tried to win votes by appealing to those Republicans who were drawn to his overall vision for the party even if they didn’t agree with his cutthroat maneuvers. “We have good ideas,” said the Rhode Island representative Claudine Schneider, a liberal Republican, explaining her support, “but they’re not coming from the old establishment that has been happy to go along. Newt is a strategist . . . a mover and shaker.”62
Besides spreading his vision for the party’s future, Gingrich continued to throw himself into the job of whipping up his own vote. Gingrich, who woke at 5:30 every morning, met with potential supporters during one-on-one walks at six. Wearing his hiking boots, he strolled with undecided colleagues through the empty National Mall, quoting Machiavelli or Churchill from memory as they passed by the Smithsonian museums and paced toward the Washington Monument, to explain what his party needed to do to finally achieve true political power.63
And like both of those tacticians, Gingrich had a knack for goading his opponents into fighting political battles on his terms. Madigan did not shy away from the contrast that Gingrich was trying to make. Instead, he embraced it. Madigan, depicting himself as the “wiser” candidate, warned fellow Republicans of the potential cost of electing someone as erratic as Gingrich to be a leader. “The Whip is the guy who makes things work,” Madigan explained. “The job description is coalition building.”64 Although Gingrich might sound exciting to Republicans who were bruised from their battles with Speaker Wright, Madigan warned that he would be disastrous as whip, worsening divisions and discord with the Democrats as well as alienating Republican leadership with his over-the-top personality. Madigan said that Gingrich’s fierce partisan schemes would doom the GOP to be even more marginalized and ostracized, because he would burn any lines of communication with Democrats. Of course, these arguments were a harder sell for disillusioned Republicans because Madigan himself, along with the leadership, had repeatedly issued statements declaring that Democrats had rendered the GOP powerless.
Whereas Gingrich wanted Republicans to bet on their ability to become the majority, Madigan claimed that he was offering them the most pragmatic approach for exerting influence as a continued minority. He described Gingrich’s promise that the GOP could become a Republican majority in the House in the near future as quixotic. “The important thing for people in a minority is not to cause themselves to become irrelevant. If your minority becomes ineffective through confrontation with the majority,” Madigan counseled his fellow Republicans, “then your party is out of the loop. You have to be in a coalition-building posture all the time. That’s my forte. That’s what I’ve done.”65
The media enjoyed the slugfest. When covering the race, reporters adopted Gingrich’s framework for the stakes of the leadership race. Previous elections had seemed like an insider’s game of musical chairs, and this was more exciting to cover. The press described it as a contest between change and the status quo, or “Newt versus anti-Newt,” in the words of the Oklahoma Republican Mickey Edwards. “It’s Mr. Inside vs. Mr. Outside; the coalition-builder vs. the confrontationalist.” It made for excellent copy and sound bites.
In contrast to Gingrich, Madigan didn’t do much to court the media. When the prestigious PBS program The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour invited him to speak about his campaign, he turned down the invitation in order to use the valuable time remaining to make calls to members. And rather than convening a press conference in the final days of the race, the kind of event Gingrich masterfully used to depict himself as the agent of muscular change, Madigan spent just a few hours informally responding to reporters’ queries. He was living in the age of newspapers, and Gingrich understood that this was the era of television. Having bought into Gingrich’s characterization of this race as something more grandiose than most thought it would be, the reporters pressed Madigan to outline what he hoped to accomplish for the House Republicans. They wanted evidence that he could do more than count votes. In a somewhat diplomatic manner, Madigan responded by talking about his “special relationship” with Michel and how that would help him get things done. “I do not try to verbally abuse people in an acrimonious way that causes them to feel unable or unwilling to do business with me in the future,” Madigan added so that he could get in a bit of a zinger.66 The reporters’ eyes glazed over as he stubbornly refused, or proved unable, to give them much to wri
te about. While Gingrich was talking about revolution, Madigan was talking about competence.
Still, the race wasn’t over yet. With only a few days to go before the election, a bombshell report raised questions about Gingrich’s ethics. After months of covering Gingrich’s charges against Speaker Wright for selling a book to interest groups as a way to circumvent honoraria restrictions, The Washington Post now reported that in 1984 Gingrich had a murky book deal of his own, all of which was legally aboveboard but smelled totally rotten. The scheme revolved around Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Future.67 The book, coauthored with his wife, Marianne, and a science fiction writer named David Drake, offered Republicans a familiar manifesto to regain power and transform policy.68 According to the piece in The Washington Post, Gingrich had done something highly unusual to assist with the book’s promotion. To supplement the publisher’s campaign, he established a nonprofit institute that raised money from Republican donors, most of whom gave to Gingrich’s campaigns, to be used for book advertisements in newspapers and the author’s promotional travel. The COS Limited Partnership, as Gingrich called it, raised $105,000 in 1984. Each partner contributed $5,000 to the fund. The goal, Gingrich genially acknowledged to a reporter, was a half-baked plan to “force a bestseller,” which would of course enhance Gingrich’s public standing.
The story took an even more bizarre twist, because Window of Opportunity was a commercial failure. Even so, contributors to the COS Limited Partnership somehow managed to each earn a profit because they were eligible to write off their losses on their tax returns, making the story even more scandalous. Washington Post reporter Charles Babcock, who had broken the story on Wright’s book-buying deal, noted that Newt’s wife, Marianne, received $10,000 for her work as a “general partner” in the COS Limited Partnership.
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