Posted on 12/17/2005 8:21:37 PM PST by RWR8189
THE ETHICS SCANDALS SWIRLING ABOUT Capitol Hill make it all but certain that the 2006 elections will be unusually focused on character. That's a good thing, of course, except that it obscures a different development, one that stands to be equally influential in determining the personality of our national legislature--the rise of the heirloom congressional seat.
In the 109th Congress, there are 30 members of the House and Senate whose parents also served in Congress, four sets of siblings, and four wives who succeeded their husbands. There's also a gaggle of congressional offspring back home, quietly positioning themselves for their parents' impending retirements, including two candidates who are running to succeed their fathers in 2006.
There's nothing unusual about the practice of political inheritance. America has a rich history of it, dating back at least to the Adams family of Massachusetts. Forty years ago, in his 1966 book America's Political Dynasties, scholar Stephen Hess counted some 700 families in which two or more members had served in Congress since 1774. Family connections continue to play a role at all levels of American electoral politics--including the presidential, where every winning ticket since 1980 has featured a son or a grandson of a United States senator.
In Congress, where the high cost of campaigning and the tremendous value of name recognition encourage legacy candidacies, more than a handful of districts have remained a family affair for decades. In Missouri, William Lacy Clay and his father, William L. Clay, have held a St. Louis-based seat since 1969. The Shusters of central Pennsylvania have occupied their district since 1973. San Antonio's Charlie Gonzalez won election in 1998 to the seat his father, Henry, first won four decades earlier. Tennessee boasts two House heirs--one from each side of the state.
But none of these father-and-son pairs comes close to matching the family that holds the current congressional record for uninterrupted service: Between son John D. and father John, the Dingell family has held their southeastern Michigan seat for 72 straight years. The last time the local congressional ballot lacked a Dingell, Herbert Hoover was president.
Consider the case of Daniel Lipinski, the newly elected Democratic representative from Illinois's 3rd District, on the South Side of Chicago. In August 2004, his father, Rep. William Lipinski, made the surprise announcement that he would not seek reelection in November. His decision to retire came unusually late in the election cycle--five months after he won the party primary and less than 90 days before the general election--but the 22-year-veteran made sure his constituents had an obvious replacement. Within days of his retirement announcement, the elder Lipinski engineered a unanimous vote of local Democratic ward committeemen to endorse his 38-year-old son.
In the heavily Democratic 3rd, the party imprimatur virtually guaranteed that Daniel was going to Washington. But Daniel Lipinski had not actually lived in the district for quite some time--he took a master's degree at Stanford, followed by a Ph.D. at Duke, before moving to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he was employed as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee. Local critics claimed that the senior Lipinski had even gone so far as to plant a patsy candidate on the Republican side of the ticket as insurance. "If he's a real candidate," wrote a Chicago Sun-Times columnist of Lipinski's nominal opponent, "then I'm Britney Spears."
Congressman Lipinski, a well-connected local powerbroker, denied the allegation. But there was something odd in Chicago's Bungalow Belt. The GOP nominee, a 26-year-old political novice, was the rare congressional candidate who didn't seek publicity, didn't raise money, and didn't post a campaign website. "No one has had any contact with him," Republican Cook County commissioner Tony Peraica told Congress Daily. "This whole thing is really a sham."
As undemocratic as it seems, the questionable succession scheme has become commonplace. In December 2002, Alaska's newly elected Republican governor, Frank Murkowski, appointed his daughter Lisa to fill the vacancy created by his resignation from the Senate. Earlier that year, Florida Democrat Carrie Meek succeeded in bequeathing her House seat to her son by timing her retirement announcement so close to the candidate filing deadline that no competitive challenger could emerge. The plan worked like a charm: Kendrick Meek won the open seat without any primary or general election opposition whatsoever.
The parent-to-child hand-off doesn't always work. In Louisiana, 30-year-old Billy Tauzin III failed in his 2004 bid to succeed his father, GOP representative Billy Tauzin Jr., despite the outgoing congressman's best efforts. In August, Tauzin the elder contributed $40,000 to the state Republican party--the same month the party endorsed his son, an act that enraged competitors in the then-undecided primary. Opponents filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission; Tauzin won the party nomination anyway. He lost in November, victimized in part by attacks mocking him as "Little Billy."
Tauzin at least made it to the general election, which is further than Republican Brad Smith, son of retiring Rep. Nick Smith, got in Michigan's 7th District in 2004. The younger Smith's campaign briefly drew national notice when his father alleged that Republican House leaders offered $100,000 for his son's congressional campaign in exchange for his vote for the Medicare prescription drug bill in November 2003.
The incident ended up before the House ethics committee, where several members, including then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay, were eventually admonished for their involvement in the affair. Nick Smith himself was rebuked for making comments based on "speculation or exaggeration" and for his failure to cooperate fully during the investigation. His son Brad ultimately finished second in the primary.
As unsavory as the entire episode proved to be, it revealed something equally disturbing about how members of Congress think. When it came time to turn the screws on Nick Smith, his colleagues came to this conclusion: The thing of greatest value to a congressman is the succession of a child to his seat.
Charles Mahtesian is editor of National Journal's Almanac of American Politics.
Wonder how rabid feminist, pro-abortion, and gay candidates stand on this issue?
We still thank God Dick Armey's son didn't succeed him!
It was bad luck for FEMA though - the incompetent little expletive deleted works for THEM now!
Nothing new about this. Didn't the author ever hear of John Quincy Adams?
?!?
Did you miss the 3rd paragraph?
America has a rich history of it, dating back at least to the Adams family of Massachusetts.
I skimmed :-). I don't like the hand-me-down political offices, but it's still nothing new.
Oh, I see he says in the 3rd paragraph that it's nothing new ... so what's the point?
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