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House Careerists: Changing Patterns of Longevity and Attrition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Charles S. Bullock III
Charles S. Bullock III*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Abstract

During the last 60 years, the proportion of careerists (congressmen elected ten or more times) has risen from 2.8 per cent to 20.0 per cent. The greatest increase occurred in the mid-1950s. The proportion of Southern Democrats numbered among the careerists has consistently been disproportionately large, with the number of Northern Democrats increasing, while Republican careerists have become relatively fewer. Fluctuations in the number of senior congressmen is not strongly influenced by national electoral patterns.

The most frequent cause of careerists' leaving the House has been retirement. During the last decade the incidence of defeats in primaries and general elections has increased; the greater susceptibility of careerists to rejection by the electorate coincides with reapportionment and the involvement of new groups in the electorate interested in new issues.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , December 1972 , pp. 1295 - 1300
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1972

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Footnotes

*

Professor Harrell Rodgers and two referees for the Review read an earlier draft, offering helpful comments. Les Bradley helped with the data collection.

References

1 Baker, John W., ed., Member of the House (New York: Charles Scribners, 1962), p. 93Google Scholar.

2 Polsby, Nelson W., “The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review, 62 (03, 1968), 144–168CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Witmer, T. Richard, “The Aging of the House,” Political Science Quarterly, 79 (12. 1964), 526–527CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 “Careerists” is chosen to characterize senior members, since the typical man or woman who spends ten terms or more in the House of Representatives is there from his mid-forties until he reaches the median retirement age in this country. For material on the median age of freshman congressmen across time see Davidson, Roger H., The Role of the Congressman (New York: Pegasus, 1969), p. 62Google Scholar.

5 One of the major congressional “reforms” of this century has contributed to reasons for members to make careers of House service. As a result of the Cannon revolt the positions of committee chairman and ranking minority member have become power bases rather than rewards given the Speaker's allies.

6 Polsby, , “Institutionalization of the U.S. House,” pp. 144–168Google Scholar. For a detailed treatment of the seniority system see Polsby, Nelson W., Gallaher, Miriam, and Rundquist, Barry Spencer, “The Growth of the Seniority System in the U.S. House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review, 63 (09, 1969), 787–807CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Jones, Charles O., “Inter-Party Competition for Congressional Seats,” Western Political Quarterly, 17 (09, 1964), 461–476CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Jones, Charles O., Every Second Year (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1967), p. 68Google Scholar; Jones, Charles O., “The Role of the Campaign in Congressional Politics,” in The Electoral Process, ed. by Jennings, M. Kent and Zeigler, L. Harmon (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 24Google Scholar; Hinckley, Barbara, “Seniority in the Committee Leadership Selection of Congress,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 13 (11, 1969), 620CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Witmer, , “Aging of The House,” pp. 536–537Google Scholar.

10 Southern Democrats are those from Ala., Ark., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tenn., Tex., and Va.

11 Wolfinger, Raymond E. and Hollinger, Joan Heifitz, “Safe Seats, Seniority, and Power in Congress,” in The Congressional System: Notes and Readings, ed. by Rieselbach, Leroy N. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1970), pp. 85–86Google Scholar.

12 Wolfinger and Hollinger, pp. 87–88.

13 “The Northern wing of the congressional party is just now [1965] recovering the ground lost in the Republican sweep of 1946,” Wolfinger and Hollinger, p. 87.

14 Between the periods 1942–1950 and 1952–1960 the number of safe Republican seats declined from 147 to 136. Jones, , “Inter-Party Competition,” pp. 461–466Google Scholar. There is little reason to doubt that this trend continued in the 1960s. In regard to the lack of seniority among Republicans in the House, in 1967, “two-thirds of the House Republicans had been elected since 1959.” Jones, Charles O., The Minority Party in Congress (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 173Google Scholar.

15 Some of the material in Polsby, , “Institutionalization of the U.S. House,” pp. 146 and 159Google Scholar, suggests that the 77th Congress may be a watershed. It is only since 1941 that mean House tenure has consistently exceeded four terms. Also a measure which Polsby uses to show growth in internal complexity in the House, the budget for the House, has been moving steadily upward only since around 1939–1941 when gains lost to the depression were recovered.

16 Of careerists who voluntarily left Congress, those not seeking another public office were categorized as having retired. Even though some of those in the retirement category said, in announcing their decisions not to seek another term, that they were returning to vocations, such as law, it would seem that these activities might often have been only part time. The mean age of retirees when leaving Congress was 69.7, only slightly less than the average age (71.0) of those who died in office. In contrast, those seeking other public offices were, on average, 59.6 when they left the chamber. The mean age of those defeated in primary and general elections were 68.4 and 63.8, respectively.

17 Careerists losing general elections to fellow incumbents were Thomas Lane (D-Mass.), Ivor Fenton (R-Pa.), Robert Secrest (D-Ohio), Frances Bolton (R-Ohio), and Ross Adair (R-Ind.). Frank Boykin (D-Ala.) ran ninth in a primary contest for eight at large seats when the Alabama legislature failed to draw new districts following the state's loss of one representative in the wake of the 1960 census. Other victims of primary contests between incumbents were Lindley Beckworth (D-Tex.), and Edna Kelly (D-N.Y.).

All of the above except Adair were defeated in the first election subsequent to reapportionment. The Indiana Republican's defeat is classified with others touched by redistricting because he lost to Edward Roush (D-Ind.), the former incumbent whom Adair had narrowly defeated in 1968, immediately after redistricting.

18 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (10 30, 1970), pp. 2728–2729, 2735Google Scholar.

19 Between 1942 and 1960 four of seven primary defeats were absorbed by Southern Democrats, one by a Republican, and two by border state Democrats. Between 1962 and 1968, eight of 12 primary defeats fell on Southern Democrats, two each on Republicans and Northern Democrats. In contrast all five incumbents turned out in 1970 primaries were Northern Democrats.

20 Careerists whose defeats seem most clearly attributable to two-party competition in previously one-party districts are Ben Jensen (R-Iowa), Arthur Winstead (D-Miss.) and William Ayers (R-Ohio). Reapportionment seems to have figured in the defeats of three of the other four Southern Democrats and four of the other Republicans. Another Republican, Earl Wilson (R-Ind), represented a clearly marginal district

21 Jones, , “Inter-Party Competition,” p. 461–476Google Scholar.

22 Polsby, , “Institutionalization of the U.S. House,” pp. 149–153Google Scholar; Davidson, , Role of The Congressman, pp. 63–66Google Scholar.

23 Schlesinger distinguishes between progressive ambition (desire to hold public office[s] other than the one currently occupied), static ambition (desire to retain one's current position), and discrete ambition (intention to relinquish one's present position and withdraw from politics at the end of the current term). Schlesinger, Joseph, Ambition and Politics: Political Careers in the United States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966), p. 10Google Scholar.

24 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (03 8, 1968), p. 491Google Scholar.

25 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (01 22, 1971), pp. 177–179Google Scholar.

26 See Polsby, , “Institutionalization of the U.S. House,” pp. 148–149Google Scholar.

27 For a discussion of patterns of majority and minority party leadership with an attempt to categorize the leadership of the House during the period 1861–1967, see Ripley, Randall B., Party Leaders in the House of Representatives (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1967), pp. 82–113Google Scholar. Ripley concludes that the Democrats have had collegial leadership since the death of Sam Rayburn, with a similar pattern obtaining in the GOP since the displacement of Minority Leader Martin by Charles Halleck. Prior to these events there had been two instances of collegial leadership of the majority party (1899–1903 and 1919–1925), but none previously in the minority party.

28 Davidson, , Role of The Congressman, p. 136Google Scholar.

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