Cox to Drop Speaker Bid in Bow to Livingston

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) plans to announce today that he is withdrawing from the speaker’s race, clearing the field for Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) to be elected the next leader of the House of Representatives by acclamation.

It was a dramatic twist in a fast-moving tale of congressional intrigue. Cox is withdrawing as abruptly as he entered two days ago in an apparent move to stop the bloodletting in a party left reeling by Friday’s sudden resignation of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

“You have to make a subjective judgment based on trends,” Cox said in an interview late Sunday. “This has turned into a foot race, and I can get votes as fast as Livingston can, but he started with a lead.

“While I’ve been reasonably successful at undoing some of his commitments, if you extrapolate this to a week, it would get very hard and very bitter, and I don’t wish that kind of contest. Our six-vote majority means we have to unify the conference.”

With Rep. James M. Talent of Missouri announcing Sunday that he would not seek the post, Livingston, chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, is unopposed.

“It’s over and it’s Livingston’s,” one GOP source said.

Cox said that by Sunday afternoon, he had reached 90 of the 223 House Republicans. All told him they were either behind him or leaning his way, he said.

Then Livingston paid an unexpected visit to Cox in his office. Livingston told Cox he had the votes to win and urged him to withdraw for the good of the party. “Let’s find a way to end this without having to wait another 10 days,” Livingston told Cox, according to a Republican source.

Cox did the math and decided to work to hang on to the post he now holds as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, which is fourth in the House leadership and which he would have had to relinquish to run for speaker.

“He saw the writing on the wall. Even his own chairman wasn’t behind him,” one senior Republican aide said of Cox’s decision, noting that he did not have the support of Rep. Thomas J. Bliley of Virginia, who heads the Commerce Committee of which Cox is a member.

Cox had been counting on the support of all or most of California’s 24 Republicans, but one California source said he did not have even half, with Reps. Howard P “Buck” McKeon of Santa Clarita and Ron Packard of Oceanside supporting Livingston.

Just hours after Gingrich resigned Friday, Cox was on CNN’s “Larry King Live” announcing his candidacy. He spent Sunday making the morning talk show circuit, insisting the race was wide open.

“Chris Cox may not win this race for speaker, but his future is very bright,” an aide to one California congressman said. “The California delegation needs Chris Cox in the leadership, and we will be working hard to make sure he is policy chairman.”

But even as he solidified his lock on power, Livingston, who has been laying groundwork for a leadership race for more than a year, faces some of the same problems that drove Gingrich to quit the post.

Factions within the Republican Party disagree deeply about their policy priorities--torn between reducing the federal government’s role or increasing regulation of such businesses as managed health care. And even as they endorsed Livingston, some GOP lawmakers expressed doubts about his leadership.

“Bob has got his problems, like all of us do,” said Rep. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who is planning to support Livingston, on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “He needs to realize that this is not an appropriations job he’s about to get into. It’s a leadership job.”

Livingston was vague about his signature issues. And, although it is anathema to conservatives, he urged compromise over confrontation, arguing that ideological purity would be political suicide.

“With a margin of only six votes in this coming Congress, I’ve got to work with people who don’t believe the same way I do,” Livingston said on ABC-TV’s “This Week,” complaining about “sulking” voters who contributed to the GOP’s loss by staying home.

Livingston pitched himself mainly as a better manager--and “chief train conductor”--than Gingrich, who left after the GOP lost seats in Tuesday’s election. Livingston also touted his capacity to cut deals--a quality that makes GOP conservatives uneasy.

There is little doubt that the Gingrich era of the speaker as philosopher king, party leader and national figure is on the wane. Republicans will vote Nov. 18 on their new speaker, with the full House to vote when the new Congress convenes in January.

“Newt Gingrich created a new kind of speakership,” said William Connelly, a professor of politics at Washington and Lee University, who specializes in congressional Republicans. “It included the idea that the speaker plays both an inside and an outside game. The speaker has always played an inside game of managing details of the legislative process, but Newt virtually single-handedly invented the notion of the bully pulpit of the speakership. He tried to govern the country from Congress.”

But even if the speakership returns to its traditional place as primarily an insider’s job, the party will still need a message. And the only item Livingston mentioned that is clearly on the conservative agenda is cutting taxes. Other possibilities--education and health care--create divisions within the Republican Party.

Gingrich’s tremendous power began to diminish after the government shutdown in 1995 in part because the party was polarized by disagreements over how they should have handled that situation. The debate continues in GOP circles, where some still argue that the tactical error was in not prolonging the shutdown.

But now, because there is a much slimmer GOP majority, it is difficult to overstate the obstacles that Livingston, if elected speaker, would face in cobbling together majorities for legislation while retaining a strong Republican stamp.

Much of the next speaker’s time will likely be spent facing a day- to-day ground war within his own party over what positions to stand firm on, which ones to compromise on and whether there are even occasions when it is better to lose nearly half of his own members’ votes in order to get legislation through.

“This is going to be a deal-makers’ Congress, and you can’t make deals with 218 votes; those will inevitably fall apart,” said Burdett Loomis, professor of political science at the University of Kansas.

Even more galling to many GOP lawmakers, Republicans will have to face the reality that, now more than ever, they will need President Clinton’s support to get anything accomplished.

“Why would anyone want to be a Republican speaker with this small a majority?” Connelly asked. “This job is borderline impossible. This is almost a recipe for almost any speaker they choose--short of Moses--to fail.”

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Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this story.