No Longer Capitol Doormats, Republicans Revel in Perks

It was just the morning after, the ballot boxes were still sizzling with the voter rage that had booted the Democrats from the House majority for the first time in four decades and already, stepping off the elevator, he could feel the difference.

This staffer who had toiled on the Hill for 20 years as a member of the Republican Party--”the minority party”--was suddenly commanding some respect. He had gone to bed Rodney Dangerfield and gotten up Sylvester Stallone.

“The people who run the elevators in the Capitol--they are pretty surly generally--but all of a sudden they are very solicitous,” said the aide to an Orange County congressman. “I am getting calls from people I’ve never heard of, inviting me to lunches and dinners I never knew were going on.”

In the 40 years that they have controlled the House, the Democrats have decided what bills came to the floor, what was debated and who debated it in the process that shapes this nation’s laws. They have also controlled the quality of daily life in Washington for thousands of Republicans. And, if you ask the GOP, 40 years is a long time to be treated like a doormat.

But all of that is about to change. On that fateful Nov. 8, voters swung the prison door open. This beaten minority is poised to seize the wheel and there is an electricity in the Washington air as GOP lawmakers jockey to lead committees and subcommittees where they have long been hushed, slashing Democratic staff they always considered bloated. And, on the eve of power, some Republicans admit to having a little trouble overlooking past slights.

“I remember Democrats telling us we couldn’t use more than six pieces of paper to copy something,” bemoaned Brad Smith, a veteran Washington staffer who now works for Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas). “I don’t think people realize how petty things got.”

Republicans were banished to the tiniest offices, where their phones hardly ever rang. Nobody cared what they had to say. Republican members of the Committee on House Administration, which decides who gets to park where at the Capitol, say they don’t know where anybody parks--the Democrats wouldn’t tell them. (It is rumored that one committee had 27 underground parking spaces for Democratic staffers and just one for the Republicans.)

“We get little glimpses now and then, and that’s only because we kick and scream,” one of the committee’s Republican staffers said. “Frankly, I welcome their opportunity to feel what it’s like.”

It is in such committees that the real work of Congress gets done, and the Democrats nearly always wildly outnumber Republicans. “The Democrats have five lawyers and three or four other staff assistants,” said Andrew Cowin, Republican staff counsel for the subcommittee on crime and criminal justice. “I have me and Audray (the secretary), and I share her with another lawyer.”

The theory is this: Make the little tasks difficult and the big ones become impossible. One Republican likened it to showing up for work every day bound and gagged and then taking heat for never getting anything done.

“Sometimes, it’s almost been like you were a member of a jury where only half the members even came to hear the evidence and then the jury foreman reaches into his pocket and pulls out the rest of the votes,” said Rep. Edward R. Royce (R-Fullerton). “It’s been awful.”

Now, however, as they combine committees and cut staffs, Republicans say they will hang on to the proportional advantage the majority party has always enjoyed. After all, said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), “we now feel totally justified in keeping that same formula.”

For instance, should Rohrabacher ascend, as he hopes, to the chairmanship of a subcommittee on space, he said, “I will have a significant number of staff working for me, and (the subcommittee’s Democrats) will have basically one working for them.”

The Republicans will also gain another kind of leverage. By controlling the appointments of those who head the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office, they will now have access to the reams of documents generated by those agencies, of invaluable help in researching legislation.

“When Democrats gave speeches on the floor of the House, they were often incredibly researched and written because they were able to use their own staffs, the committee staffs and the staffs of those offices,” Rohrabacher said. “Our guys had to do much of the research themselves.”

Gone are the days of never getting bills passed, never getting to offer amendments. No more teeth-grinding as some freshman Democrat presides over sessions of the House while even the most venerable Republican can’t so much as sit in the Speaker’s chair.

A square dance of sorts is about to take place as occupants of tiny, inconvenient offices move into the nicer digs so the Democrats can hoof it for awhile. Once empty phone-mail boxes are filling up. Republican lobbyists who couldn’t get a job a year ago are suddenly in demand. And long-frustrated GOP veterans are awash in euphoria. This is their day in the sun.

“I am still waking up every morning thinking it’s a dream,” said Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who used to sit in the Speaker’s chair when the House was dark just to see what it felt like. So thrilled is he about this shift of power that Dornan will not necessarily honor his vow to make his ninth term his last.

“There is just a spirit of joy right now,” Rohrabacher said. “Even during the early days of the Reagan Administration, it wasn’t like this. Now we’re veterans. We know exactly what we want to do and what leverage we’ve got, and we’re very anxious to get going.”

Some wonder now how the Republicans ever let this humiliation at the hands of Democrats happen in the first place. The oppression set in slowly, like aging, the process unnoticeable but the result unmistakable.

“If you throw a frog in boiling water, he jumps out. But if you put him in warm water and slowly bring it to a boil, he lets himself cook,” said Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach).

A lot of Republicans keep saying they have no vengeance in their hearts, that they will not stoop to treating their oppressors as they were mistreated. Or at least they hope not.

“We have cried for the opportunity to go to the plate and take a swing for so long,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley). “I hope and pray . . . that we’ll get up there and take our best swing rather than fight along the sidelines or try to stick it in the other guy’s ear.”

After all, Gallegly said, the greatest vindication he can imagine is for Republicans to move cherished elements of their long-stalled agenda out of the forgotten crannies of the committee system, onto the floors of the House and Senate and up for votes.

They also promise, magnanimously, to open the rules, allowing more debate, more amendments to be offered, and probably, longer days for many on the Hill.

“My sense is that we have so much work to do that the feeling of wanting any kind of retribution is really the last thing on our minds,” added Dreier, the San Dimas congressman and one of the architects of the congressional restructuring now under way. “We plan to be much more fair.”

Then again, revenge is sweet.

“I suspect there are some people who have been down so long and kicked around so long that they may have vengeance in their hearts,” one aide said. “It may be pay-back time.”

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