Incoming House Republican freshmen, many of whom came up through the ranks of state and local government, are ready to play by what appears to be the emerging unwritten rule of the 106th Congress' House GOP Conference: unity.
As House and Senate GOP leaders were meeting Friday with leading Republican governors on Capitol Hill, GOP freshmen were at the Heritage Foundation's orientation in Baltimore-but both groups were on message, pledging to work together to advance a shared agenda.
Rep.-elect John Sweeney of New York, the freshman class representative on the GOP Steering Committee, said that, based on his experience with his freshman colleagues and the leadership in determining new members' panel assignments, "There is a higher calling [than partisanship]-this is about governing." Sweeney is a former top aide to New York Gov. George Pataki.
Fellow New York Rep.-elect Thomas Reynolds, a former county legislator and state assemblyman, had a similar assessment. Citing the backgrounds of many freshmen, Reyolds said the group "understands the workings of government. And freshmen are important because they can reflect new views - they're fresh off the campaign trail and know what people want."
Kentucky Rep.-elect Ernie Fletcher, the freshman class representative to leadership, said, "Most of us ran on some very centrist themes-mainstream issues that will engender bipartisanship" such as education and Social Security reform. "We want to pick out a few main issues that we can promote as our agenda, and they will not be issues that are divisive."
Rep.-elect Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the freshman class' president who has been tapped by Speaker-designate Livingston to serve on an issues task force, said freshmen are well aware of the constraints under which the Conference will be working next year.
"The closeness of our majority is very sobering," he said. "It does create a sense of urgency to agree. ... We've got to find areas of consensus and the places where things move in the right direction, compared to the crash-and-burn strategy."
As opposed to the GOP revolutionaries of 1994, DeMint said his class "will have to be more careful about stirring up trouble."
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