Choosing the Leader

This book attempts to fill the gap in the understanding of how congressional leaders are chosen. It offers the first systematic analysis of party leadership elections in Congress since the 1970s, looking in particular at how election campaigns unfold and the factors driving lawmakers' vote choice when vacancies occur or challenges erupt against sitting leaders. This chapter begins with a brief review of the House's major elected party leadership positions. It then discusses the common wisdom about congressional leadership elections and the limits of early research on the topic. Next, it introduces a new theory of leadership selection and explain how candidates, campaigns, and political context contribute to the factors that shape legislators' vote choice for a leader. It then introduces the empirical data used in this study, describes the testing methodology, and outlines the chapters that follow.

Conclusion

This chapter reviews the examination of the factors behind candidate emergence and the analyses of vote choice in fourteen contested leadership elections in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1965. It then discusses additional possible explanations of vote choice, how applicable the present findings may be to other legislative settings, and how the politics of leadership races has changed in the past and may change in the years ahead. The chapter concludes that we may see more ethnically diverse leadership candidates than in the past, with voters, interest groups, and new media playing more significant roles in shaping lawmakers' vote choice. However, so long as the central elements shaping the House's leadership elections—the size of the chamber, the service orientation of party leaders, committees and states as the bases for professional connections—do not change, professional connections and salient goals will remain fundamental to how the rank-and-file decide who will lead them.

Revolts

This chapter considers intraparty revolts: races in which an incumbent is challenged in his bid to keep his leadership post. Although such races are uncommon and seldom successful, they often reveal important divisions within the congressional party and can be a harbinger of future changes to party leadership. Cases examined in this chapter include three Republicans who ran against Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) in 1998, Gerald Ford's (R-MI) successful challenge against minority leader Charlie Halleck (R-IN) in 1965, Morris Udall's effort to defeat incumbent Speaker John McCormack in 1969, and intraparty votes cast on the floor against John Boehner for Speaker of the House in 2013.

Challenges to the Heir Apparent

This chapter focuses on challenges to the heir apparent, when, despite an established pattern of succession, a lawmaker wishing to ascend the so-called leadership ladder to a newly vacant position is challenged by another candidate. These types of races often occur when the heir apparent is politically vulnerable or a sizeable group of partisans support a rival on political or personal grounds. The chapter analyzes three challenges to the heir apparent. The first was probably the most famous example of this type of race in the contemporary House—the 1976 race for Democratic majority leader—and the other two were races for Republican majority leader in early 2006 and, after that year's congressional elections, Democratic majority leader. In all three instances, one of the candidates running for majority leader was serving as whip, a position that at the time was the “natural” precursor to becoming leader.

Open Competition Races II: House Republicans

This chapter continues the discussion on the open competition race, the most common type of leadership race in the House of Representatives, focusing on the GOP. It begins with a detailed discussion of perhaps the most consequential GOP leadership election in the past three decades: the 1989 race for whip, in which Newt Gingrich (R-GA) narrowly bested Ed Madigan (R-IL) and positioned himself to become the first Republican Speaker of the House in forty years. It then considers three additional cases of open competition for GOP posts: the minority leader and whip races in 1980 and the majority whip contest in 1994. As in the previous chapter, the findings are consistent with the mixed-motive model of vote choice.

Open Competition Races I: House Democrats

This chapter focuses on the most common type of leadership race in the House of Representatives, the open competition race: when two or more candidates run for a vacant position and none of them occupies a leadership post considered the “natural” stepping stone to the position. It begins by examining open competition races in the House Democratic Party. It contends that although the mixed-motive model applies to both parties' leadership elections, looking at just House Democrats allows the documentation and testing of the significance of an important longstanding division within the party, between its conservative, often southern wing and its liberal, usually nonsouthern wing. The chapter begins by focusing on one of the longest campaigns for leadership in the modern House: the 1998–2001 race for Democratic whip between Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD), which would put the winner in a prime position to later become Speaker of the House. It then discusses two additional open races, for majority leader in 1971 and majority leader in 1989.

Why Run? Party Leadership Ambitions in the House of Representatives

Drawing upon interviews with current and former members of Congress and congressional staff, plus existing research on political ambition, this chapter offers some tentative answers to the question of why certain lawmakers decide to be candidates for a party leadership post. Following the lead of political scientist Jennifer Lawless, it frames the discussion in terms of two kinds of ambition: nascent ambition, or the general “interest in seeking elective office,” and expressive ambition, “the act of entering a specific race at a particular time”. It shows that these two kinds of ambition ultimately determine who among all of its members leads the House, as well as the degree of stability and conflict that exists within both political parties.