Space Race
Ornstein, Iric Nathanson and Norman
The Space Race by lric Nathanson and Norman Ornstein The morning after the election was a busy time for members of the staff of Rep. Stewart McKinney, a Connecticut Republican who...
...This, in turn, was bad news for William Steiger, who had his eyes on Udall’s suite...
...As one observer put it, “It’s just like the National Football League draft-they make trades and give up priority over a good office for future consider& tions...
...During a frenzied two-week period immediately thereafter, members place their bids for vacant offices...
...The first step in the process is the lottery for incumbents with equal seniority, held the Monday after the election...
...A more senior colleague from the other end of the political spectrum, John Ashbrook of Ohio, discovered that the office was available and bumped Udall...
...Stewart McKinney, a Connecticut Republican who had managed to win reelection to a third term in the House...
...At the back of his mind may have been this classic example of how far the prestige-office equation can go: the suite of F. Edward Hebert-26year congressional veteran and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee-in the Raybum Office Building, complete with marble atrium and fountain...
...With the possible exception of newspaper reporters, congressional staff members are given less work space and less privacy than any other professional group in our society...
...Most congressmen sent their aides, but some House members, including Henry Reuss, Brock Adams, and John Erlenborn, came in person to participate in this important event...
...Fraser then discovered that one of the rooms used by Mrs...
...A delicate calculus is involved here, for a member who places his bid too early or is too talkative about the virtues of the little-known-but-delightful suite he has discovered can wake up to find that he has been “bumped” by someone with more seniority...
...So the congressional leadership-Speaker Carl Albert, Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, and Minority Leader John Rhodes-will have to meet to resolve the dispute between Steiger and Jacobs...
...These resolute words referred not to some imagined duty to console the bereaved, but to McKinney’s hope of obtaining a better suite of offices...
...Clarence Miller of Ohio, for example, once had to make do with an office that was bisected by a public restroom...
...In the meantime, Fraser, who had lost out to Udall in the bidding for Collier’s office, decided on his second choice-the suite being vacated by retiring Rep...
...Edith Green...
...Ostensibly moved by compassion, McKinney staff members went from office to office of their defeated Republican colleagues, offering condolences...
...His corner suite has all the right qualities-it is large, wellproportioned, convenient to the elevators, and has a picture-postcard view of the Capitol dome...
...Although the seniority system theoretically determines assignments of vacant office space (a lottery is held to determine pecking order among congressmen with equal seniority), in practice scheming and horse-trading are the order of the day...
...Democrats Don Fraser and Morris Udall, congressmen with equal seniority, both coveted the Collier office, but Udall came out ahead of Fraser in the lottery...
...While Congress is an exception to most organizational rules, this one it obeys...
...When the turnover is as large as it was in 1974, the machinations can become terribly intricate...
...McKinney aide, “but it has to be done...
...Stewart McKinney had apparently decided that three terms in the House rated an office in a better spot than on the fifth floor of the Cannon Building, a location so remote that it is not even accessible to the main elevator in this, the oldest of the three House office buildings...
...But C.W...
...Green’s office...
...Udall had only barely begun to enjoy his victory when, one day later, his own claim on the office evaporated...
...Although the mid-term death of a congressman, creating a suddenlyvacant suite, can set the office politics game in motion-delegations of staffers stop by to offer condolences while surreptitiously checking the dimensions-the major activity occurs right after an election...
...Like Udall, Fraser decided to stay where he was-and Steiger bid for Mrs...
...And so the old year ended with Depression around the corner and Famine on the march, with Ashbrook and Jacobs ascendant and Steiger in ’ the shade, and with many people wondering just why we get no leadership from Capitol Hill...
...Since the largest of the rooms is usually reserved for the congressman, and part of a second room has to be used for a reception area, a dozen desks may be crowded into the remaining room and a half...
...This year it lasted more than 11 hours and attracted more than 200 participants...
...Awkwardness of that order is rare, but every congressman must pay attention to the distance that separates his office from the House floor...
...Jacobs-with his constant companion, a huge Great Dane named C-SA-had long been one of Capitol Hill’s more colorful characters...
...Most congressmen are allocated just three rooms for a staff that often numbers as many as 12...
...The pushy status-seekers are still scrambling to get into Rayburn,” one Capitol Hill staff member remarked, “but those with real taste would just as soon stay in Longworth...
...Green had been re-designated as a committee room and would not be available to the next occupant...
...Arriving in Bob Mathias’ office, they found the secretaries still weeping over the Congressman’s unexpected defeat...
...But tears didn’t stop the McKinney delegation...
...when his turn came to choose, he decided that he and C-5A also wanted Rep...
...Denied Collier’s office, Udall decided to hold on to the one he already had...
...Norman Ornstein teaches political science at Catholic University...
...He had served three terms in the House prior to his defeat in 1972, and therefore did not have to wait until the special lottery for House freshmen to get into the bidding war...
...Typical was the sequence of events that determined the inheritor of an office being vacated by Republican Harold Collier, who is retiring after nine terms...
...Fraser took his objection to the top, to House Speaker Carl Albert, but his appeal was denied...
...Unlike most of the Democrats who defeated Republican incumbents, Jacobs is not a congressional newcomer...
...To protect themselves against this kind of unpleasant surprise, congressmen try to work out deals with colleagues with a hgher lottery priority...
...Apart from the prestige, there are serious practical considerations to bear in mind...
...At this point, Indiana’s Andrew Jacobs entered the scene...
...With more and more roll-call votes taking place each session, a well-located office can greatly reduce the time and effort necessary to reach the House floor within the 15 minutes allotted for each vote...
...It’s depressing to have to go through all these offices when people have been defeated,” said a Iric Nathanson is a congressional assistant...
...Green’s office, which even without the additional room was better than what he had...
...Bates, the House building superintendent, ruled in Jacobs’ favor, leaving Steiger to carry his appeal to the House Building Commission...
...It has long been noted by management theorists and observers of the corporate pecking order that the size and location of office is one of the most important ways of defining status within the large organization...
...True, it is located in the older Longworth Building, but many veteran House members are coming to prefer these offices, with their mellow, paneled walls, to the more ostentatious modernity of the Rayburn Building...
...The Space Race by lric Nathanson and Norman Ornstein The morning after the election was a busy time for members of the staff of Rep...
...But the lottery is only the beginning...
...Steiger was outraged when he discovered that he was being bumped by Jacobs and a dog, especially since he and Jacobs have served an equal number of years in Congress and Steiger’s term has been continuous...
...All this makes it easy to understand why congressmen often plot for weeks to get their hands on an office whose three rooms are larger than normal or which has an extra nook...
...Space is another important consideration...
Vol. 6 • January 1975 • No. 11
