The House Is Not a Home

Republicans make gains, but the Democrats still rule the roost

Even in years of presidential landslides, members of the House of Representatives who run for re-election usually win. Their success rate is more than 90%, compared with the more hazardous 68% success rate of their Senate colleagues. This year the powers of incumbency were sorely strained by the surprising Reagan-slide, the Abscam bribery scandal and the harrowing problems of inflation. The Democrats, nevertheless, hung on to control. Although at least 26 incumbent Democrats were defeated, and the Republicans had a net gain of 32 seats, the final breakdown of the 97th Congress will be about 245 Democrats and 190 Republicans.

The fallen Democrats included several of the chamber's most powerful leaders and esteemed veterans, who fell partly because Ronald Reagan proved to have unexpectedly broad coattails, and partly because so many voters were in such a throw-out-the-Administration frame of mind that they did not hesitate to extend their anti-Carter ire to Democratic Congressmen. Lamented House Speaker Tip O'Neill: "It was a broad brush they tarred us with."

The Republican leaders were elated by their gains. Said Michigan's Guy Vander Jagt, who as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee was partly responsible for the G.O.P. House election strategy: "It's the most crushing rejection of a President and his party in Congress since Herbert Hoover. Democratic leaders who managed to survive had the bejesus scared out of them."

The Democrats' tattered majority will be a meager bulwark against a Republican Administration and a Republican-controlled Senate that probably will be intent on dismantling major elements of the social legislation passed during the Democrats' nearly half-century of dominance in both the House and Senate. In addition, the Democratic majority has turned more conservative. Most of the Republican newcomers are on their party's right wing, and most of the Democrats who survived did so only by shifting during the campaign away from the Big Government liberalism that was clearly in disfavor on Election Day. Indeed O'Neill could become a classic political anachronism--the liberal Speaker of the House, crying the old progressive song in a Capitol wilderness of conservatives.

Fall of the Mighty. Until this year, the House leaders on both sides of the aisle have had an unspoken agreement that they would not try to unseat each other. But this summer Vander Jagt met with other Republicans and decided to break with tradition by mounting stiff challenges to high-ranking Democrats. It worked.

Tip O'Neill survived with only token opposition. But Majority Leader Jim Wright, who has spent 25 years in Congress and aspires to succeed the Speaker when O'Neill retires, barely beat back a stern challenge in Fort Worth from conservative Republican Jim Bradshaw, who was strongly backed by some wealthy oilmen. But the third man in the Democratic hierarchy, Whip John Brademas, 53, of Indiana, lost his bid for a twelfth term to Businessman John Hiler. The attractive, young (27), conservative Hiler convinced the voters of his district, which includes South Bend, that Brademas, because of his leadership position, had to share the blame for the sorry state of the economy. Said Hiler: "I am the point man of the effort to change the direction of the country."

The chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee is so powerful that the last man who held it, Wilbur Mills, was able to jump into the Washington Tidal Basin with Stripper Fanne Foxe and still win reelection. But his successor, Al Ullman of Oregon, did something even worse in the eyes of many constituents: he proposed a national value-added tax, which to many .voters in his district sounded suspiciously like the state sales tax that they had repeatedly rejected in referendums. In addition, while Ullman clambered up the rungs of power on Capitol Hill, he visited his home folks too infrequently. Despite his late disavowal of the tax proposal, he was narrowly beaten by Denny Smith, 42, son of a former Oregon Governor and the publisher of 15 newspapers. Ullman plans to demand a recount.

Other House leaders suffered similar fates. Public Works Chairman Harold ("Bizz") Johnson, 72, was defeated after eleven terms by California Assemblyman Eugene Chappie of Sacramento. Jim Corman, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was defeated by Bobbi Fiedler, whose chief issue was opposition to court-ordered busing to desegregate schools in Los Angeles County. Ohio's Thomas ("Lud") Ashley, who as chairman of an ad hoc energy committee guided much of President Carter's energy program into law, was upset by Attorney Ed Weber of Toledo. But liberal Warhorse Morris Udall, 58, recently stricken by Parkinson's disease, beat back a strong challenge from a conservative real estate millionaire, Richard Huff, 54, in Arizona.

Abscamed into Obscurity. The only fate worse than being a Democratic leader was being filmed by FBI undercover agents while dealing with fictitious sheiks. The two Democrats convicted in the scandal, Michael ("Ozzie") Myers of Pennsylvania and John Jenrette of South Carolina, as well as two awaiting trial, Frank Thompson of New Jersey and Merchant Marine Committee Chairman John Murphy of New York, were defeated. The sole survivor among those indicted: Raymond Lederer of Pennsylvania, whose trial is scheduled for December.

A Woman's Place. All 15 women incumbents who sought re-election were victorious, and at least four were added to their ranks, meaning that there will be a record number of women in the next House, though their representation in the 435-member body is still meager. The new women Representatives, like Fiedler in California, are mainly Republican and conservative. One of them is Lynn Martin, whose budget-cutting assaults as a member of the Illinois legislature earned her a nickname: "the Ax." After criss-crossing her district for 26,000 miles, she won the seat vacated by John Anderson. Former Schoolteacher Marge Roukema knocked off liberal Democrat Andrew Maguire in New Jersey on her second try. And Claudine Schneider, an environmentalist from Narragansett, became the first woman elected to high office in Rhode Island, and the first Republican to go to Congress from there since 1938.

New Faces. Besides the new women, the election brought in a crop of conservative young Republicans who will try to solidify the political shift evidenced so strongly by Reagan's victory. John LeBoutillier, 27, a wealthy Harvard Business School graduate, was considered nothing but an upstart until he defeated eight-term Democrat Lester Wolff, 61, of Long Island. LeBoutillier is the author of two books: Primary, a scenario of a Saudi prince who parlays his oil wealth into political power, and Harvard Hates America, a collection of essays that take a jaundiced view of the university and liberalism.

Quintessential Southern Gentleman Richardson Preyer of North Carolina made way for a new Republican conservative, Eugene Johnson, a self-made millionaire who owns a graphics firm and manages real estate investments in Greensboro. Liberals found some solace in the election of Barney Frank to the Massachusetts seat that Jesuit Priest Robert Drinan is vacating on orders of Pope John Paul II. Among the 19 blacks elected, the most in history, were two new members, including former California Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally.

For the next two years, the country's conservative mood will be reflected in the nominally Democratic House. The ideas that carried Reagan to victory--his tax cut plans, energy proposals, austere budget goals--will find plenty of adherents, certainly enough to sustain any vetoes if not to pass all the new President's initiatives. This month the old House will meet in a lameduck session. But given the size of the Republican mandate, House leaders will postpone anything more ambitious than tidying up the current budget until the 97th Congress convenes in January.

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