Leaders Jockey Within Gingrich Power Vacuum

Within the inner chambers of the House, the transfer of power has already begun.

Regardless of its ultimate outcome, a two-year ethics investigation has left Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) distracted and weakened and a new cadre of ambitious Republicans--committee chairmen and leadership lieutenants--are stepping up to fill the vacuum left by the mastermind of the GOP revolution in Congress.

“To the degree we can, we’ve just got to rely on other folks in leadership to help us through some of the rough spots,” said Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), a backbencher who earlier this month called on Gingrich to step aside but, in the end, voted to reelect him as speaker. “A lot of people are capable of rising to the occasion.”

Rank-and-file Republicans are eyeing this quiet transfer of power with a mixture of hope and apprehension. They are hoping that it will allow other, less-controversial lawmakers to devise and advance a GOP agenda that can help the party put this ethics imbroglio behind it.

But some fear that a fragmented leadership will reopen divisions within the party--between moderates and conservatives, Young Turks and old guard--that Gingrich has helped bridge.

A key question is whether the party’s second-string leadership is seasoned enough to make up for the party’s injured power hitter. Indeed, some argue that one of the best things going for Gingrich in his battle has been the absence of a consensus candidate to succeed him.

But the next few weeks and months may give Republicans such as Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) new opportunities to showcase their leadership skills.

“In the [1995-’96] Congress, they were working in Gingrich’s shadow,” said Jack F. Pitney Jr., a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College. “This is their opportunity to come out into the sunshine and show what they can do. We’ll see who is a leader and who is wedded to the status quo.”

“I don’t see it as a real vacuum, I see it as an opportunity for people to blossom,” said Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas). “We are in fact devolving power from a central speakership.”

Among those who will blossom are Senate Republican leaders, who already have been far more prominent than two years ago, when they played second fiddle to the House GOP juggernaut.

The shift of power away from Gingrich is not entirely driven by his current ethics crisis. It began last year, when his party struck a new, more conciliatory pose toward the White House and Gingrich stepped back from the front lines of legislative battle. But Gingrich’s ethics problems have given new impetus to that trend.

Many Republicans believe that the best way to get this imbroglio behind them is to get on with their legislative agenda. But their leading agenda-setters have been utterly preoccupied with defending Gingrich in recent weeks.

“You can sense in the Republican conference a sense of disappointment that the planning that would normally be done for an agenda has been put on hold,” said Rep. David M. McIntosh (R-Ind.). “No one’s taking the lead. There’s no systematic plan.”

To be sure, Gingrich is an extraordinarily resilient politician and his allies predict that he will bounce back to his dominant leadership position once the ethics case is wrapped up. They have grown increasingly hopeful about his future as the recent controversy about the secret taping of a phone conversation among Gingrich and other House GOP leaders has thrown Democrats on the defensive. “I see him being more effective [after the ethics case is over] rather than less because he will be more focused,” said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.).

Others are less optimistic. “Obviously, he’s damaged,” said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.).

Even if he gets off with a slap on the wrist, Republicans say, Gingrich has had to spend enormous political capital maintaining his colleagues’ support through this crisis. That could leave him with fewer chips to play when he seeks tough votes on the budget, Medicare and other policy matters. Two years ago, by contrast, he could draw on vast reserves of goodwill because of the credit he received for the GOP takeover of Congress.

“In the last Congress, they owed him; this Congress, he owes them,” said Pitney, the Claremont political scientist. “He’s overdrawn at the favor bank.”

What’s more, even before Gingrich’s ethics problem came to a head, he had begun delegating more power to committee chairmen and leadership lieutenants. Months ago, he put Armey in charge of managing the day-to-day operations of the House. And toward the end of last year, committee chairmen were given more authority over moving bills addressing welfare, health and other major issues that made up the heart of Republicans’ legislative accomplishments.

While Gingrich has been under siege, other House GOP leaders have been careful to avoid any gesture that might appear an unseemly power grab. But committee chairmen clearly have stepped out on issues within their purview.

Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer (R-Texas) went to the White House in December for a one-on-one meeting with President Clinton--an event that would have been unthinkable a year ago. Budget Chairman Kasich has stepped up his media appearances. Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bud Shuster (R-Pa.) has been beating the drum for his cherished idea of a fiscal maneuver aimed at clearing the way for more transportation spending, despite opposition from other senior Republicans. Gingrich’s own speech to the House last week, after he was reelected speaker, was littered with references to the chairmen and the issues he wants them to address.

The shift of power, ironically, is a throwback to the traditional House power structure. During the 40 years of Democratic House rule preceding the 1994 elections, the committee chairmen were the chief power brokers, entrenched by the seniority system and jealous guardians of their vast staffs and fiefdoms.

Gingrich changed all that. He circumvented the seniority system, hand-picking some of the most important chairmen. And their agenda was handed to them by the GOP House leadership.

Some Republicans say it is natural for power to flow back to the committees now that the GOP has retained control of the House for another term. The consequence is likely to be a House less inclined to ideological combat and more given to cranking out compromises with Clinton.

“Committee chairmen are oriented toward legislation and less toward the grand partisan strategies,” said Thomas Mann, an expert on Congress at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “I believe there is a little more likelihood of doing business with the administration.”

Kasich, who is widely thought to have higher political ambitions and has been mentioned as a possible successor to Gingrich, is clearly hungry for a balanced-budget deal with the Clinton administration.

Archer, who has said that he will serve only one more term in Congress after this one, seems more interested in leaving laws rather than political issues as his legacy at Ways and Means.

Another chairman who may flourish in the absence of heavy-handed central leadership is Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.), who has developed his own lines of communications with the administration.

When GOP leaders were negotiating a big budget deal with the White House last winter, it collapsed. When a more modest budget-cutting target was set, Livingston delivered.

However, some Republicans worry that returning power to committee chairmen will send the House back to the crippling turf battles of the past.

“It can lead to a swamp,” said Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.).

It also could reopen divisions among Republicans that Gingrich helped mediate last year--such as Archer’s reluctance to cut corporate tax subsidies as much as Kasich wants and Hyde’s opposition to congressional term limits, an article of faith among junior members.

“There’s a generational difference” that Gingrich has managed to bridge, said McIntosh.

Gingrich allies, meanwhile, insist that an enhanced role for other GOP leaders will not necessarily eclipse the speaker. “There will be more work done by others,” said Shays. “But don’t believe for a minute that Newt Gingrich won’t be involved in vision and strategy.”