New Kids on the Hill: Profiles of 3 Freshmen Likely to Succeed

With 98 members, this year’s freshman class of Congress ranks among the biggest ever--and its arrival signals a significant shift in the prevailing winds of national politics. Swept into office amid anti-Democrat and anti-incumbency fervor, the newcomers promise to make an indelible mark on the institution they are joining.

Most of them--73 of the House’s 87 freshmen and all of the Senate’s 11 first-termers--are Republicans, giving the GOP control of both chambers for the first time since the 1950s. As a group, the freshmen overwhelmingly support term limits, a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, reduced regulation and less government--starting with Congress itself.

And they tend to be in a terrific hurry: With many committed to serving no more than a few terms on Capitol Hill, they are reluctant to serve several years in obscurity until the traditional seniority system can bestow them with legislative clout and key committee assignments. Indeed, the Republican freshmen consider themselves to be “majority makers,” and they expect to be treated as such by congressional leaders.

So far, Capitol Hill’s new residents have been scrutinized more as a group than as individuals, with an emphasis on characteristics in common instead of attributes that set them apart. But as the following profiles show, the freshman class of 1995 is a varied lot, representing a range of personal traits, professional accomplishments and political priorities almost as wide as the nation itself:

Rep. J.C. Watts Jr. (R-Okla.)

In a freshman class filled with rising political stars in the Republican Party, one shines particularly bright: a stocky young man with a smile as wide as Oklahoma and the irresistible name of Julius Caesar Watts.

J.C. Watts is by some measures the best quarterback to ever take the field for the legendary University of Oklahoma Sooners. He led the team to consecutive Orange Bowl victories, then starred for seven years in the Canadian Football League, winning honors as its most valuable player in the league’s championship game.

When he entered politics, his name recognition in Oklahoma was already nearly 80%. And it’s likely to rise in Washington as well: Watts is running for president of the powerful freshman class in Congress, and he is a favorite of incoming Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). In fact, Gingrich wanted to put Watts on the powerful Rules Committee, an honor Watts said he had to turn down in the interest of serving his constituency.

There are many things about the 37-year-old Watts that make him political magic for the GOP.

For starters, he represents a new breed of Southern Republican. He was raised as a Democrat but switched to the GOP in 1989. (“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, it left me,” he often says, echoing a line used by one of his political heroes, Ronald Reagan.)

And Watts is a Baptist minister, he married his childhood sweetheart and has five children.

But there is one characteristic that makes Watts even more tantalizing to Republican Party leaders in search of new political role models: He is black.

In the view of Gingrich and his fellow strategists, the Republican Party must become more inclusive if it wants to retain majority-party status. Winning over substantial numbers of minority voters, Gingrich has said, would marginalize the Democratic Party for good, leaving it with only about 30% of the electorate.

Watts subscribes to the same theory, and he can wax eloquent on the subject. Minorities are willing to vote GOP, he says, if party members “recommit ourselves to what the Republican Party--the party of (Abraham) Lincoln--was founded on: opportunity for everyone, cultural renewal, understanding that the family is the most important institution on the face of the Earth.”

Watts’ record is the stuff of GOP dreams. In 1990 he was elected chairman of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which sets utility rates and regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, and thus became the first black elected to statewide office in Oklahoma. He won his House seat in a district with three registered Democrats for every Republican. And he did so as an unabashed conservative.

When a reporter asked Watts if he would accept political help from “radical” Christian political activists, Watts answered powerfully: “Sir, since you put it like that, I am the radical Christian right. I am an ordained minister. I am the youth pastor of my church. You will never catch me apologizing.”

Hearing him tell the story, his congregation replied: “Amen.”

Watts was a pathfinder even as a youth. At Eufaula High School, he broke an unspoken color barrier when his coach made him quarterback of the football team. Soon he was elected class president in a school where blacks were a distinct minority and were expected to behave that way.

Watts’ list of heroes reflects his unusual background: Besides his father and high school coach, he cites his uncle, Wade Watts, a longtime leader in the state chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, and Barry Switzer, the hard-charging coach who shaped Watts’ football career with the Sooners.