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Freshman Committee Assignments and Re-election in the United States House of Representatives*

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

Two students of the committee assignment process, Nicholas Masters and Charles Clapp, as well as some congressmen, assert that the most crucial factor in filling committee vacancies is whether the appointment will enhance the recipient's chance of re-election. This statement is tested using data for Republican and Northern Democratic freshmen elected to the House between 1947 and 1967.

The freshmen are grouped on the basis of assumptions about which assignment or assignments should help them win re-election. When narrowly elected and safe freshmen are compared, there is no evidence that the former more frequently receive assignments likely to facilitate re-election. Thus there is no support for the Masters-Clapp proposition.

Investigation further reveals that even those freshmen from marginal districts who are awarded “good” appointments are not re-elected significantly more often than are comparable newcomers having less favorable assignments. Committee assignments therefore seem relatively unimportant in determining whether a congressman wins a sophomore term. Indeed, more than 70 per cent of the freshmen who triumphed in hotly contested races to reach the House are returned. When these incumbents are defeated it is typically as a result of nation-wide forces over which they exercise little if any control.

The implications of this research are that congressmen have a greater range of alternatives than is often thought. Even the narrowly elected novice is relatively free to seek appointment to committees for reasons other than constituency service or promotion. Largely symbolic activities are available through which concern for the district and its problems and needs can be demonstrated, thereby freeing much of the congressman's time and attention to pursue other less parochial goals.

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Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 66 , Issue 3 , September 1972 , pp. 996 - 1007
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1972

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Footnotes

*

Professors Richard Fenno, Roger Hanson, David Olson, and Harrell Rodgers provided most helpful critiques of earlier drafts of this paper. My assistant Jack Ethredge toiled many hours helping collect the data.

References

1 Masters, Nicholas A., “Committee Assignments in the House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review, 55 (06, 1961), 345–357CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Charles, Clapp, The Congressman: His Work As He Sees It (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1964), pp. 207–240Google Scholar.

3 Clapp, p. 234.

4 Masters, p. 357.

5 Clapp, p. 234.

6 In this paper “committees on committees” refers to the two party committees responsible for filling vacancies on standing committees. For a description of the differences in composition and operation of the Republican and the Democratic committees responsible for filling vacancies on standing committees, see Masters.

7 Clapp, p. 234.

8 Tacheron, Donald G. and Udall, Morris K., The Job of the Congressman (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), p. 152Google Scholar.

9 This finding has been reached repeatedly. No attempt will be made to cite the numerous possible sources. See Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter: An Abridgment (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964), pp. 99–102Google Scholar; Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald E., “Constituency Influence in Congress,” American Political Science Review, 57 (03, 1963), 54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stokes, Donald E. and Miller, Warren E., “Party Government and the Saliency of Congress,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 26 (Winter, 1962), 531–546CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Miller and Stokes, p. 54.

11 Kingdon, John W., Candidates for Office: Beliefs and Strategies (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 25–34Google Scholar.

12 The notion of “attentive constituents” is taken from a discussion of the characteristics, political knowledge, and political activities of a set of Iowans cited as political confidants by members of the Iowa legislature; see Boynton, G. R., Patterson, Samuel C., and Hedlund, Ronald D., “The Missing Links in Legislative Politics: Attentive Constituents,” Journal of Politics, 31 (08, 1969), 700–721CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a limited attempt to investigate the linkage between congressmen and opinion leaders, see La Cavera, Anthony J. Sr., Congressmen and Their Representative Constituents (unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Georgia, 1970)Google Scholar.

13 Throughout this paper the phrase “good assignments” is used as shorthand for a number of attributes which make a committee attractive to a congressman seeking to promote his re-election. Among the elements subsumed are the potential for service, promotion, or protection of some aspect of the economy of congressional districts, the possibilities of securing federal funds, and the likelihood of building a reputation in the district.

14 Occasionally individual scholars have gained access to Democratic requests for single congresses. Ripley, Randall B., Party Leaders in the House of Representatives (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1967), pp. 59–61Google Scholar, analyzes Democratic requests for committee seats in the 88th Congress. Masters, “Committee Assignments …” presents data on Democratic committee requests for the 86th Congress which could come only from the request books. Richard F. Fenno, Jr., had access to both parties' request books for the 83rd-88th Congresses; see Fenno, , The Power of the Purse: Appropriations Politics in Congress (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), p. 64Google Scholar.

15 Masters, pp. 345–357; Clapp, , The Congressman, pp. 207–240Google Scholar; Morrow, William L., Congressional Committees (New York: Scribner's, 1969), pp. 41–48Google Scholar; Fenno, Richard F. Jr., “Congressional Committees: A Comparative View,” paper presented at the 69th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, California, 09 8–12, 1970, pp. 2–11Google Scholar. The Fenno notion of “policy interest” can subsume the oft-cited factors of legislator experience and concern.

16 The concept of an “interested” congressman as one whose constituency characteristics suggest particular concern about policy making in an area is taken from Mayhew, David R., Party Loyalty Among Congressmen: The Difference Between Democrats and Republicans, 1947–1962 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Various cut-off points have been used in classifying narrowly elected and safe legislators. Fenno and Manley each use 55 per cent in discussing members of the Appropriations and Ways and Means Committees; Fenno, , Power of the Purse, p. 58Google Scholar; Manley, John F., The Politics of Finance: The House Committee on Ways and Means (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 51Google Scholar. Davidson, Roger H. uses 60 per cent in The Role of the Congressman (New York: Pegasus, 1969), p. 127Google Scholar. Using an electoral margin of less than 55 per cent as the breaking point between narrowly elected and safe freshmen is not feasible in this paper since it would result in too few cases in the former category for analysis.

18 This category is similar to one used in a study of Senate committees by Marvick, Dwaine, A Quantitative Technique for Analyzing Congressional Alignments (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1950)Google Scholar, cited in Matthews, Donald R., U.S. Senators and Their World (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), pp. 154–155Google Scholar. Fenno, in “Congressional Committees” (p. 5)Google Scholar reports that constituency service is not the primary motivation for members of Appropriations, Ways and Means, or Foreign Affairs. Nonetheless, it is a consideration for some members, e.g., “Most Appropriations members believe that there is no better committee from which to ‘do more for the people back home.’” Elsewhere Fenno points out that Appropriations is prized particularly by men who have served on two of the most constituency-oriented committees; Fenno, , Power of the Purse, p. 86Google Scholar. While a majority of the members on Top Committees may be attracted for other reasons, constituency service may be the primary consideration of those fearful of voter rejection. Manley, , Politics of Finance, pp. 82–84Google Scholar, says that Ways and Means members view their committee as having both positive and negative consequences for re-election.

19 Masters, , “Committee Assignments …,” pp. 351–354Google Scholar. One technique for measuring committee prestige involves comparing transfers from the committee with transfers to it. The larger the ratio of transfers to to transfers from, the higher the committee's prestige. This method has been used by Goodwin, George Jr., The Little Legislatures: Committees of Congress (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970), p. 114Google Scholar; Morrow, , Congressional Committees, pp. 42–43Google Scholar; Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald E., Representation in the American Congress (Prentice-Hall, forthcoming)Google Scholar; Bullock, Charles S. III, The Committee Assignments of Freshmen in the House of Representatives, 1947–1967 (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Washington University, 1968), pp. 33–35Google Scholar. Rank ordering on the basis of the proportion of a committee's members who have no other assignments produces slightly different results; see Gawthrop, Louis C., “Changing Membership Patterns in House Committees,” American Political Science Review, 60 (06, 1966), 366–373CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A ranking of the “most prestigious” House committees (without an explanation of how prestige was measured) is found in Dye, Thomas R. and Zeigler, L. Harmon, The Irony of Democracy (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1970), p. 244Google Scholar. The rankings of Gawthrop and Dye and Zeigler do not exactly duplicate my Top Committees in their first five slots. Nonetheless four of these Committees are within their top five slots in every case. In addition to ranking these committees as the top five in their ability to attract members from elsewhere, Miller and Stokes report that they cluster together with the lowest proportion of freshmen and the fewest members who leave to accept other appointments.

20 During the period studied, no freshmen were assigned to Rules, and only three Republican neophytes came to Ways and Means. Seventeen freshmen have sat on Appropriations, 24 on Armed Services, and 19 on Foreign Affairs.

21 Manley, , Politics of Finance, p. 55Google Scholar.

22 Fenno, , The Power of the Purse, pp. 82–88Google Scholar.

23 Manley, pp. 78–84. See also Manley, John F., “The House Committee on Ways and Means: Conflict Management in a Congressional Committee,” American Political Science Review, 59 (12, 1965), 927–939CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 During the 80th through the 90th Congresses, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs each attracted 46 transfers while losing ten and nine members respectively to other committees; 11 of the 19 moved to exclusive committees.

25 One observer suggests that the work of the Armed Services Committee is so oriented toward district betterment that its name should be changed to the Military Installations Committee or the Committee on Military Real Estate; Bolling, Richard, House Out of Order (New York: Dutton, 1965), p. 89Google Scholar. See also Dexter, Lewis Anthony, “Congressmen and the Making of Military Policy,” in New Perspectives on the House of Representatives, ed. Peabody, Robert L. and Polsby, Nelson W., 2nd edition (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), pp. 180–182Google Scholar. The career of the late congressman Mendel Rivers (D-S.C). while perhaps atypical, demonstrates the extent to which an Armed Services member can attract defense money to his district. See “Mendel Rivers,” Newsweek, 01 11, 1971, p. 18Google Scholar. Rundquist, Barry S., “The House Seniority System and the Distribution of Prime Military Contracts,” paper presented at the 70th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, 09 7–11, 1971Google Scholar, reports that junior Republicans, but not junior Democrats on Armed Services received a disproportionate share of prime military contracts in 1960.

26 This is suggested by some of the findings of Turner, Julius, Party and Constituency: Pressures on Congress (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1952)Google Scholar, Ch. 5. While the most frequent goal of Foreign Affairs members was the making of good public policy, some did see electoral payoffs associated with the committees; Fenno, , “Congressional Committees,” pp. 10, 72Google Scholar.

27 Fenno, , Power of the Purse, p. 58Google Scholar; Manley, , Politics of Finance, p. 51Google Scholar; Masters, , “Committee Assignments …,” pp. 353–354Google Scholar.

28 Davidson, , Role of the Congressman, pp. 130–134Google Scholar, reports that politicos and trustees, the representational role types favored for exclusive committees, tend to come from safe districts.

29 The value of Public Works in winning the hearts of one's public is stressed by Mississippi's last moderate-to-liberal congressman; see Smith, Frank E., Congressman From Mississippi (New York: Capricorn Books, 1964)Google Scholar. Also see Morrow, , Congressional Committees, pp. 43–44Google Scholar; Fenno, , Power of the Purse, pp. 83, 86Google Scholar; and Murphy, James T., “Partisanship and the House Public Works Committee,” paper presented at the 67th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 09 3–7, 1968Google Scholar.

30 Various authors have alluded to the tendency to fill vacancies on Agriculture, Banking and Currency, Education and Labor, Interior, and Merchant Marine and Fisheries with legislators whose districts could benefit from this service. Masters, p. 354; Morrow, pp. 43–48; Galloway, George B., History of the House of Representatives (New York: Crowell, 1961), p. 82Google Scholar; Bolling, , House Out of Order, p. 108Google Scholar; Goodwin, , Little Legislatures, pp. 77–78Google Scholar. Fenno, “Congressional Committees,” finds Interior members to be motivated chiefly by desires of constituency service. Education and Labor members, while requesting that committee most frequently because of an interest in making policy in that area, can, if they support organized labor, anticipate return of principle plus interest come reelection. Mayhew, Party Loyalty Among Congressmen, in discussing farm, urban, labor, and western issues, shows that interested legislators, regardless of party are in the vanguard of the proponents of legislation reported by the Agriculture, Banking and Currency, Education and Labor, and Interior Committees respectively. Whether the foremost goal of these legislators is constituency service or not, they can, and no doubt do, hold up their voting records with pride when they campaign for reelection. The paralleling of constituency interests and committee assignments is also dealt with in Kessel, John H., “The Washington Congressional Delegation,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 8 (02, 1964), 11–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Jones, Charles O., “Representation in Congress: The Case of the House Agriculture Committee,” American Political Science Review, 55 (06, 1961), 358–367CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Charles O., “The Role of the Congressional Sub-Committee,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 6 (11, 1962), 329–331CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One author refers to members of the Agriculture Committee as “ambassadors” for specific commodities; MacNeil, Neil, Forge of Democracy (New York: David McKay, 1963), pp. 161–62Google Scholar. Congressmen are so prone to perceive the Agriculture Committee as a farm pressure group that on one of the rare occasions in which a legislator has rejected a committee assignment, Shirley Chisholm, a New York City Democrat, refused appointment to Agriculture, judging it alien to the interests of her urban constituency.

32 The criterion for agricultural districts used by Mayhew, , Party Loyalty Among Congressmen, p. 17Google Scholar, is that ten per cent of the population be engaged in farm work. I have chosen ten per cent of the labor force engaged in agriculture because district labor force rather than population seems a more realistic measure. While ten per cent may seem a low figure to some, it must be recognized that many wives and young people who work on farms are not tabulated as part of the labor force. Moreover, in an agrarian district, many local businessmen are engaged in serving the needs of farmers.

33 Mayhew, pp. 61–64, looked almost exclusively at housing legislation in his discussion of pro-urban roll call votes. This legislation passed through the portals of the Banking and Currency Committees.

34 Mayhew, pp. 93–94.

35 This is the same figure used by Mayhew, pp. 92–94, in distinguishing between labor and nonlabor districts.

36 An indication of the utility perceived by some segments of coastal districts in having their congressmen on Merchant Marine and Fisheries is the contribution of $37,500 in campaign funds to Rep. Edward Garmatz (D.-Md.) in 1970. Interestingly, Garmatz was unopposed. Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 09 20, 1970, p. 10–BGoogle Scholar.

37 Bolling, , House Out of Order, pp. 102–103Google Scholar; Fenno, , “Congressional Committees,” pp. 38–41Google Scholar.

38 These are the states defined as western by Mayhew, p. 128. Much of the pro-western legislation con-sidered by Mayhew had been reported by the Interior Committee.

39 Scholars have found that these committees tend to cluster in the bottom third of prestige rankings. For sources see footnote 19. In 1959, three of these committees—District of Columbia, House Administration, and Post Office and Civil Service—had fewer Democratic applicants than seats available, suggesting their lack of attractiveness. Merchant Marine and Fisheries was the only other established committee for which supply exceeded demand. (There were also fewer requests than slots on Science and Astronautics, but this fact must be discounted since 1959 was the first year in which it was a standing committee); Masters, , “Committee Assignments …,” p. 346Google Scholar. Three of these committees—District of Columbia, House Administration, arid Un-American Activities—are generally considered unimportant by congressmen. See Wolfinger, Raymond E. and Heifetz, Joan, “Safe Seats, Seniority, and Power in Congress,” American Political Science Review, 59 (06, 1965), 339CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Long-time House staff member D. B. Hardeman reports that staffers generally regard the Duty Committees as unattractive. Hardeman classifies Government Operations, House Administration, District of Columbia, Veteran's Affairs, and Un-American Activities as “Bobtail Committees” and places Post Office and Civil Service last among the “Most Sought After Committees”; see Goodwin, , Little Legislatures, p. 116Google Scholar. Furthermore all six committees are among the nonexclusive ones; Goodwin, p. 68. While these committees are unattractive to most legislators, some have an appeal for certain types of congressmen. The best example of this atypical allure is the District of Columbia Committee which because of its control over black-populated Washington is popular with segregationist Southerners. Masters, p. 335; Bolling, , House Out of Order, p. 105Google Scholar. Post Office and Civil Service is viewed as constituency-serving by some of its members, but the majority of them did not request the assignment and abandoned it as soon as possible; Fenno, , “Congressional Committees,” pp. 73–74Google Scholar.

40 This category is adapted from that used by Marvick, Quantitative Technique ….

41 Three committees are excluded from this study: Science and Astronautics is omitted because it was not created until 1959; the Judiciary Committee is not dealt with because of its unique requirement that members be attorneys; the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee was omitted because of an inability to define a constituency characteristic associated with committee service.

42 Southern Democrats are from 11 states of the Confederacy.

43 Another reason for excluding Southern Democrats is the small number of appointments to some committees made to this group.

44 Bureau of the Census, Congressional District Data Book (Districts of the 88th Congress) (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963)Google Scholar, Supplements to this volume were used for districts redrawn since 1963.

45 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (June 20, 1956).

46 Some would argue that since the universe of all freshmen over a 20-year period and not a sample thereof is dealt with, significance tests are inappropriate. This stance is taken in, for example, Wahlke, John C., Eulau, Heinz, Buchanan, William, and Ferguson, LeRoy C., The Legislative System (New York: John Wiley, 1962), pp. 455–458Google Scholar. On the other hand Blalock, Hubert M., Social Statistics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), pp. 270–271Google Scholar, suggests that tests of significance “will practically always be helpful in evaluating one's findings.” The use of statistical significance to place findings in some kind of perspective even when the researcher has the universe rather than a random sample has been frequent, particularly in recent policy studies using the state as a unit of analysis. A few representative examples include: Dye, Thomas R., Politics, Economics, and the Public (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966)Google Scholar; Sharkansky, Ira, “Government Expenditures and Public Services in the American States,” American Political Science Review, 61 (12, 1967), 1066–1077CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hofferbert, Richard I., “Ecological Development and Policy Change,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 10 (11, 1966), 464–483CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Since the present paper engages in hypothesis testing, a commonly accepted level of statistical acceptance, .05, rather than an arbitrary percentage difference, was used as a rule of thumb.

47 These are the standards suggested for choosing between chi square and Fisher's exact test by Palumbo, Dennis J., Statistics in Political and Behavioral Science (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), p. 156Google Scholar.

48 Masters, , “Committee Assignments …,” pp. 351–354Google Scholar; Manley, , Politics of Finance, p. 51Google Scholar; Fenno, , Power of the Purse, p. 58Google Scholar.

49 Fenno, Richard F. Jr., “The House of Representatives and Federal Aid to Education,” in New Perspectives on the House of Representatives, ed. Peabody, Robert L. and Polsby, Nelson W., 2nd ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), pp. 283–323Google Scholar. In-fighting on Education and Labor is also discussed in MacNeil, pp. 172–173; Bolling, , House Out of Order, pp. 96–97Google Scholar; Masters, , “Committee Assignments …,” pp. 354–355Google Scholar; and Saloma, John S. III, Congress and the New Politics (Boston, Little, Brown, 1969), pp. 117–126Google Scholar.

50 Clapp, , The Congressman, p. 7Google Scholar.

51 Only 10 per cent of safe Republican and five per cent of safe Democratic freshmen failed in re-election bids.

52 Interestingly, of the six committees studied by Fenno, Interior is one of the two which members perceive as offering primarily opportunities for constituent service; Fenno, , “Congressional Committees,” pp. 38–41Google Scholar.

53 The proportion of incumbents re-elected varies depending upon which years are used; nonetheless, re-election rates rarely slip below 90 per cent. Between 1954 and 1960 an average 83.9 per cent of the House incumbents were returned in the general election. Jones, Charles O., “The Role of the Campaign in Congressional Politics,” in The Electoral Process, ed. Jennings, M. Kent and Zeigler, L. Harmon (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 24Google Scholar. Between 1954 and 1964, omitting 1962, 92 per cent of the incumbents seeking re-election were victorious; Hinckley, Barbara, “Seniority in the Committee Leadership of Congress,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 13 (11, 1969), 620CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In 1962 and 1966, 94 and 89 per cent respectively of the incumbents successfully turned back challenges; Jones, Charles O., Every Second Year (Washington; Brookings Institution, 1967), p. 68Google Scholar.

54 For a discussion of short term-electoral influences see Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E., Elections and the Political Order (New York: John Wiley, 1966)Google Scholar.

55 Miller, and Stokes, , “Constituency Influence …,” p. 54Google Scholar. The same study also found that only 49 per cent of the electorate had heard or read anything about the incumbent prior to the 1958 congressional elections. Dexter quotes a congressman as saying, “I never heard of any man being beaten on an issue,” Dexter, Lewis Anthony, The Sociology and Politics of Congress (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), p. 2Google Scholar. This is, of course, an overstatement, but it may express an evaluation which is far more accurate than not.

56 Dexter, pp. 2–3, 79. The finding that the narrowly elected placed on Duty Committees are not appreciably handicapped can perhaps be explained in that Duty assignments require less time and attention allowing the congressman to concentrate more heavily on casework, and so on.

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