The formal structures of the House provide party and committee leaders with a set of tools, including agenda-setting power, and information and communications services (Kingdon 1989; Evans 2004; Cox and McCubbins 2005), to pursue their policy goals. In the 1950s and 1960s, these tools were often used to suppress consideration of many of the policy goals prioritized by liberal members. DSG strategically developed their own tools to challenge these biases and support the adoption of liberal policy goals. Among them, liberals developed the DSG Campaign Fund to provide liberal candidates with funds, activities and services; a whip system to mobilize members to come to the floor for key votes; and information networks to provide their members with unbiased policy and legislation research. These tools were effective instruments through which DSG distributed precious resources and services to their members and empowered them to collectively articulate liberal interests. But they also served as the central linkage between DSG’s organizational strengths and the group’s broader membership.
Almost immediately after the group’s founding in 1959, DSG developed its whip system under the office of the secretary. Shortly thereafter, liberals used the system to mobilize their allies in their “first floor engagement” on the 1959 Civil Rights Act – which is representative of the broader policy issues most commonly addressed by the whip system.76 Throughout the
76 Undated 1960 memo, DSG papers, part II, box 151, folder 6. “The coordinated DSG effort in support of
the civil rights bill represents our first floor engagement. In many ways, it was an experimental pilot operation. Mistakes were made. Some techniques worked, some didn’t. All in all, we have obtained valuable experience which will help in the coming fights for other measures in our DSG legislative
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lobbying to mobilize members on behalf of a variety of policies, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.77 DSG organized their whips geographically, pioneering what was called the “buddy system” whereby whips would stay on the floor throughout the entire debate on amendments and notify a list of members when they needed to be present. This was a considerable task as debates on amendments (especially on major legislation) frequently took several hours, but it was the only method through which whips could know exactly which votes liberal support was most needed, and the precise time when votes would occur. After the introduction of recorded teller votes (and the further development of the Democratic whip system) in 1970, DSG refined their whip system as the primary tool through which membership polls and counts were conducted. These polls and counts guided group decision-making, but they also empowered DSG leaders to advocate on behalf of the group. For example, DSG’s emphasis on unbiased whip polls (weighted to account for liberal bias) often gave them leverage in
negotiating with the leadership who relied on Democratic counts that were susceptible to conservative bias (and did not always weight results based on differing responses rates).78 From civil rights legislation in the 1960s, to procedural changes in the 1970s, to budget issues in the
program.” This memo provides early evidence that DSG leaders always sought to reflect on their past efforts – successes and failures – and apply those lessons to future fights.
77 See chapter seven for more information about the policy focus of DSG whips. The personal relationship
between whips and their assigned members was so important that whenever a whip was assigned their list of members, they were instructed to review the names. If their personal relationship with any member was weak (for any reason), the whip was to notify DSG staff who would reassign the member.
78 For example, in budget negotiations with the leadership in 1983, DSG’s whip poll gave liberal leaders
leverage in negotiating with the leadership to pressure Ways & Means to include alterative options to meet budget reconciliation goals (September 29, 1983 executive committee meeting minutes, DSG papers, Part II, box 7, folder 8). DSG’s poll (which was weighted to eliminate liberal bias) surveyed more options than the leadership (which surveyed only 3), and was apparently deliberately non-specific in their poll so that Ways & Means “wouldn’t get pressured to include things in the tax package.” DSG’s whip poll would ultimately enable them to help craft a committee amendment known as the Pease-Gephardt-Moody- McHugh amendment (McHugh was DSG chair at the time), which would have raised $32 billion over three years (White and Wildavsky 1990). The amendment was ultimately not adopted (65 Democrats voted against the rule), but the consideration of the amendment itself is significant given Ways & Means Chairman Rostenkowski’s opposition to any amendments on his committee’s bills.
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1980s, DSG’s whip system empowered liberal leaders to construct successful legislative coalitions on key issues of interest to their members.
Ultimately however, the success of these coalitions and the whip system was dependent on efforts inside and outside of Congress to increase the number of liberals in the House. DSG was keenly aware that liberals’ minority status limited the strategies available to them to achieve their policy goals.79 To increase the number their likeminded allies, they established the DSG Campaign Fund in the early 1960s to support liberal candidacies, especially in competitive districts.80 The Campaign Fund served as an apparatus through which DSG could distribute monies and services to fledging liberal campaigns. In addition to draft speeches, opposition research and other information, the Campaign Fund also leveraged individual connections and subsidized the cost for members to capitalize on new media in their campaigns. For example, in 1968, the DSG Radio-TV subcommittee led by Reps. Lester Wolff (D-PA) and Tom Rees (D- CA) (whose California district contained Hollywood agencies) wrote to members offering their services to coordinate an effort to obtain movie stars, including Henry Fonda, Ralph Bellamy, and Gregory Peck, to record radio commercials for DSG members running for re-election.81 DSG also invited public relations experts and held seminars on topics like “How To Make the Most of Your Television Appearance,” which included instruction on make-up, posture, and lighting.82 These were all critical services for liberal members from competitive districts that were not provided by the Democratic campaign committee at the time.
79 For example, shortly after organizing the group in 1959, liberals decided that absent the votes to pursue
formal rules changes, they would focus for the time being on “working within the Rules of the House.” December 30, 1960 DSG meeting notes (2pm in the hearing room of the George Washington Inn), DSG papers, Part II, box 159, folder 2.
80 I have not been able to establish an exact organizing date for the DSG Campaign Fund, however the
group was first active in congressional elections in 1964.
81 Undated 1968 memo from Les Wolff to DSG Members. DSG papers, Part I, box 90, folder 2. 82 Campaign Work Strategy, 1968. DSG Papers, Part II, box 6, folder 3.
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Over time, DSG evolved to meet members’ other campaign needs. DSG began a polling service which provided at-cost polling services to campaigns that would otherwise struggle to obtain the resources necessary to conduct polling. Political scientist Thomas Mann spearheaded DSG’s polling efforts in the 1970s and recalled how they marshaled minimal resources to provide a significant service for candidates:
“There was no budget – I came cheap back then. We used volunteer interviewers that we trained in districts. I hired a Catholic nun graduate student at Georgetown to do data processing for me and produce tables that I used to write up our reports. But what it allowed them to do was provide assistance to challengers who had modest budgets and couldn’t afford to hire and pay for polling…. They [Members] just look back on it, and they look back on it as a really important part of their election to Congress. It was really quite an extraordinary list of people because so many of them were successful…It was amazing because when you do it this cheaply, you’re drawing samples that wouldn’t be acceptable now, using telephone directories when lists of registered voters weren’t available…[we had] at least aspirations of rigor. We produced some useful materials for Members, and it was certainly better than ‘the seat of the pants’” operation campaigns were running.83
In addition to the critical poll service, DSG also began a loan service to candidates whereby DSG raised a rotating pool of funds that made small loans to the campaigns of liberal Democrats. The loans only had to be paid back if the candidate won the race (they were forgiven otherwise). While it would be difficult, if not arguably impossible, to isolate the effects of DSG campaign support on the likelihood of winning re-election from the 1960s-1980s, liberals clearly developed and employed the Campaign Fund to subsidize the cost of running for election to the House for their fellow liberals. DSG’s support strengthened the candidacies of Democratic candidates and incumbent members alike. The early development of these campaign resources and services – much earlier than similarly developed by party committees – suggests that many liberals’ campaigns would have been (all else equal) weaker without DSG’s support.
83 November 17, 2015 telephone interview. Mann worked as an APSA Congressional Fellow for Rep.
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innovative information and research services, which empowered liberals to intelligently articulate and represent their constituents’ interests.84 In the 1950s and 1960s, junior liberals were reliant on the largely unhelpful information provided by committees, the leadership, and the Library of Congress. In contrast, DSG’s information was designed in line with what Kingdon (1973) described as the most “usable”: “predigested, explicitly evaluative information which takes into account the political as well as the policy implications of voting decisions” (227). DSG
developed a range of information services to enable liberals to participate in the legislative process, including a variety of policy and legislative research distributed to members on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, depending on the publication, the complexity of the issues involved, and the congressional schedule.
Nearly all of DSG’s research was considered partisan until Dick Conlon was hired as executive director in 1968.85 Conlon’s background as a journalist, including stints with the
Minneapolis Tribune and the Duluth Herald & News Tribune, shaped his approach to DSG’s
research services. He strived to provide a comprehensive representation of policy issues before the House. Among the publications was the Legislative Report (which summarized all major legislation scheduled for House action in a given week), Fact Sheets (which provided in-depth analyses of major legislation scheduled for House action), Special Reports (which analyzed controversial issues and legislation from a Democratic perspective), and Staff Bulletin (which distributed draft constituent letters on major legislation/issues, and requests by members for new cosponsors to their legislation). Of the four major publications listed above, only the Special
Reports adopted an overt Democratic or liberal ideological approach.
84 DSG research services began in the early 1960s but did not fully develop until the late 1960s/early 1970s. 85 The partisan nature of DSG’s research services in the 1960s explains why no Republicans became
research subscribers until the early 1970s after Conlon spent a couple years developing DSG’s reputation for non-partisan research.
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he said the purpose was “to gird them [members], not to influence them.” The goal was not necessarily to change how they voted, but to enable them to vote “as if he [she] were informed” (Kingdon 1973, 74). He went on to describe the staff’s approach to DSG’s research services:
We “started with the assumption that they [members] were going to be uninformed about the bill – the details, about why it is controversial. That the members came to the floor ignorant, and if they’re ignorant, they are either going to be puppets of the whip or do something stupid. We say our job is to let them know ‘here is the problem,’” rather than to tell them how to fix it.86
DSG’s research subsidized the cost for members (and their staff) to remain informed on issues, including simple, straightforward summaries of all legislation in which they cast votes, the position of relevant interest groups and the Administration on any given bill, a description of the parliamentary situation in which the bill would be debated, and a concise summary of the major points of controversy related to a bill.
But more critically – as the quote above captures – the research services made it possible for liberal members to cast votes supported by verifiable information. Informed of the real policy and electoral implications of casting a “yea” or “nay” vote, members were less susceptible to leadership or committee pressure (and arguably presidential pressure (Kernell 1997)). And they could defend their votes to their constituents with concrete, demonstrable evidence, rather than party talking points – members cast knowledgeable, informed and defendable votes.