Middlemen No More? Emergent Patterns in Congressional Leadership Selection

Abstract

For a quarter-century, conservative Republicans have used the “San Francisco liberal” label to place Democrats as outside the American mainstream. Imagine their dismay as the 110th Congress opened in January 2007 and Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat well to the left of most of her party, ascended to the podium as speaker of the United States House of Representatives. This was, to be sure, a departure. Traditionally, House Democrats had selected ideological “middlemen” for top leadership posts (Truman 1959), particularly those from the “Austin-Boston alliance” that held unbroken sway in House Democratic leadership selection from the initial teaming of Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas and Majority Leader John McCormack of Boston in 1940 to that of Tip O'Neill of Boston and Texan Jim Wright in the 1970s and 1980s. During this time, Democrats “almost never” selected “‘Americans for Democratic Action-type’ liberals” as leaders (Peabody 1976, 470).

Walking the Gendered Tightrope

“…Indeed, Gingrich's ultimate demise is a cautionary tale to the bombastic. Today we see that, while many leaders occupy the center of the ideological spectrum, some leaders have come from the ideological extremes of their parties, although it is unclear whether this is a product of partisan polarization or a contributor to it (Harris and Nelson 2008).…”

“…Finally, in 1998, Pelosi was decidedly more liberal than Hoyer, who was a centrist. To use Harris and Nelson's (2008) terminology, Hoyer was a "middleman" and Pelosi, by contrast, was neither in the middle nor a man. 1 The noncampaign campaign continued for three more years.…”

Who Sets the Agenda? Participation Asymmetries in the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress in the 116th Congress

“… Note : Percentile rank is calculated using first dimension DW-NOMINATE scores for the 116th Congress. As defined by Harris and Nelson (2008), members with italicized rankings (“extremity” position) represent their party’s ideological extreme (1st–39th percentile), whereas members with underlined rankings (“chamber moderate” position) are drawn from outside of the party’s mainstream (61st percentile and higher). Source : Data in table 1 on member background, experience, and seniority are collected from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (2021). …”

“…This ideological distribution suggests that Democratic members may be better positioned to advocate on behalf of the range of attitudes in their caucus than their Republican colleagues. Notably, neither party's Select Committee representatives include so-called ideological middlemen, or those members drawn from the middle of their party's respective ideological distribution (Harris and Nelson 2008). Instead, party leaders drew from the ideological extremes of their membership.…”