Can’t Be Forced to Resign : The Congressman Is in a Coma--and Still in Office

In many ways, Illinois Rep. John Grotberg’s office is like any other on Capitol Hill. For example, aides write reports for their boss on legislation making its way through Congress.

But the boss never reads those papers or votes on the measures they explore. Grotberg, 61, is at his home in St. Charles, Ill., recovering from a five-week coma. He has not been at work this year. And there’s little prospect that he will be back before his current term expires at the end of this year.

The Grotberg case, say congressional experts, highlights the unresolved problem of how to deal with lawmakers who become incapacitated and cannot--or will not--resign their office.

Topic Avoided

Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar with the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a Washington research outfit, said Congress traditionally has steered away from the topic.

“There’s been a kind of embarrassment about it,” Ornstein said.

Grotberg’s long absence became more of an inconvenience for his state with the sudden death last month of his fellow Republican congressman from Illinois, George M. O’Brien of Joliet. Illinois now has lost two of its 22 votes in the House for the current session of Congress.

There is no mechanism in the Constitution or congressional rules for determining when a lawmaker is incapable of serving and for removing and replacing him.

In Grotberg’s case, the lawmaker lapsed into a coma in January after suffering complications from an experimental cancer treatment. The freshman congressman was unconscious for about a week before his family fully disclosed his condition.

Nominated in March

His reelection candidacy was maintained throughout the coma and he won re-nomination in the March primary. He and his family decided to drop the reelection bid in May, but after the deadline for calling a special election to fill his unexpired term.

The timing of the decision left the selection of a replacement GOP candidate to party officials--rather than voters--and determined that Grotberg’s district would have no vote in the House unless he returned to Capitol Hill.

According to House and Senate historians, there have been at least four similar cases in the last 40 years. They include:

- Rep. Gladys Spellman (D-Md.). She was elected to a fourth House term in 1980--less than a week after she suffered a massive heart attack while campaigning. She fell into a semiconscious state from which she never recovered and was never sworn into office.

Nevertheless, her family and staff resisted efforts to replace her. The House declared the seat vacant after weeks of uncertainty and a special election was held in April, 1981.

- Sen. Karl Mundt, a conservative South Dakota Republican. Mundt was absent from the Senate floor for about three years after suffering a stroke in 1969.

Republican leaders tried to get Mundt to resign so that the South Dakota governor could appoint a replacement. They also stripped him of his committee assignments. But the senator’s wife resisted pleas and pressures and even insisted her husband would seek a fifth term. He decided not to seek reelection in 1972 and died two years later.

- Sen. Clair Engle (D-Calif.). He suffered from brain cancer and, after undergoing repeated operations, was left partially paralyzed and unable to speak distinctly.

In June, 1964, a month before his death, he was brought into the Senate by wheelchair to vote for the landmark Civil Rights Act. During one roll call, he pointed to his eye to indicate that he wanted to vote “aye.”

Engle’s wife, Lucretia, was criticized by some on Capitol Hill for allegedly restricting information about his condition and pushing him to remain in office.

- Sen. Carter Glass (D-Va.). Glass, who served in the Senate from 1920 to 1946, was so ill during his last term that he was absent from Capitol Hill for the four years preceding his death. Before his death, the aging senator was urged by some newspapers to resign and one made an open appeal to his wife to persuade him to quit.

Removal Difficult

“As long as a senator or congressman wants to hold office, there’s almost no way to remove him,” said Donald Ritchie, one of the Senate’s official historians.

Ornstein said one of the reasons lawmakers resist solutions to those situations is that they fear such a mechanism could be turned against them.