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 Missouri: Third District Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D) As of June 1, 1997
Middle America, it could be said, lies somewhere on the south side of metropolitan St. Louis. The geographical center of the country's population was here in 1980, just south of St. Louis in once rural and now half-suburban Jefferson County; and while that point has moved a few miles southwest, St. Louis is still the metro area nearest the midpoint of a country most of whose people live in million-plus metro areas. Geographically, this is a node where some of the nation's main arteries come together. The Missouri River flows into the Mississippi a few miles north of St. Louis's Gateway Arch; the National Road and its successors, U.S. 40 and Interstate 70, cross the Mississippi just below the Arch. And the great tides of southerners migrating west up the Mississippi and Germans migrating overland met here to create one of the nation's largest and most bustling cities out of a town founded by the French before the Revolutionary War. The south side of St. Louis is famous for its tight-knit, neat neighborhoods and pleasant parks; its most famous symbol is the Anheuser-Busch brewery just south of downtown and Grant's Farm, where Ulysses S. Grant lived in the 1850s and where Anheuser-Busch now keeps the Budweiser Clydesdales. But many more people now live in the suburbs heading out all directions, well into Jefferson County to the south. The 3d Congressional District consists of the south side of St. Louis City, the southern St. Louis County suburbs, Jefferson County, and rural Ste. Genevieve County on the Mississippi to the south, the site of Missouri's oldest permanent settlement, founded near a salt mine in 1730. It is the descendant of districts dominated by St. Louis voters, but now the city casts only 25% of its votes, fewer than Jefferson County. Ethnically, this has been a heavily German-American area since the mid-19th Century. Politically, it has been Democratic since the New Deal of the 1930s. The congressman from the 3d District is Dick Gephardt, first elected in 1976, the leader of the Democratic Party in the House, presidential candidate in 1988 and perhaps again in 2000. Gephardt grew up on the south side of St. Louis, the son of a milk truck driver who worked himself up into the middle class. A bit too old to be part of the generation of Vietnam-era student rebels, Gephardt returned home from law school in 1965 to work in a large downtown law firm, but was clearly intent on a traditional political career; he moved to the south side and was elected alderman in 1971. In 1976, when 3d District Congresswoman Leonor Sullivan announced her retirement, Gephardt jumped into the race as an anti-establishment candidate. He beat a labor union official in the primary and a former board of aldermen president in the general. Gephardt started off in the House as one of the newer breed of Democrats who did not automatically favor big government and higher taxes. With the help of Missouri's Richard Bolling, Gephardt got a seat on the Ways and Means Committee -- rare for a freshman. He voted for the 1981 Reagan tax cut and was the House co-sponsor of New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley's bill that was the basis of the 1986 tax reform. Gephardt was one of the founders of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council and opposed many popular Democratic causes such as abortion, busing and raising the minimum wage. But around the mid-1980s he began to shift, perhaps reflecting the increasingly liberal tenor of the Democratic Caucus, of which he was elected chairman over David Obey in 1984. Gephardt has always been a superb caucus politician and a good listener, working with small universes -- caucuses -- of colleagues and constituents. He is a hard-working detail man, eager to absorb information, with a gift for molding compromises, for coming up with positions that hold together the often unruly and fissiparous Democratic Caucus. When Gephardt started running for president in 1986, he had the enthusiastic support of dozens of House colleagues as he spent 144 days in Iowa campaigning for the February 1988 caucuses. Iowa was the biggest population-losing state in the 1980s, bitterly anti-Reagan; to Iowans, and to many House Democrats in Washington, there was a sense the Reagan era was over. Gephardt adjusted to this new arena, sometimes to the dismay of his former allies. He played little role in the 1986 tax reform he had originally co-sponsored; he changed his stand on abortion to pro-choice. In Iowa, he supported mandatory agricultural production controls, a nonstarter even in a Democratic Congress; agricultural policy has since moved in the opposite direction. Even more prominently, he went on the offensive on trade issues. The United Auto Workers is a major factor in Iowa caucuses, and Gephardt, who had opposed the UAW's domestic content bill, came up with his amendment requiring retaliation against countries (read: Japan) running large trade surpluses with the United States. It passed the House in late 1987 by a 218-214 margin -- a gift to Gephardt's presidential campaign, for the bill clearly was going nowhere in the Senate. Gephardt won the Iowa caucuses with 31% of the vote, to 27% for Paul Simon and 22% for Michael Dukakis. In New Hampshire, Gephardt found himself under attack for switching positions in a prosperous state that hates taxes and government regulation; he finished second with 20% to Dukakis's 36%. On Super Tuesday, Gephardt had run out of money and won only Missouri, and was out of the race. In the House Gephardt rebounded when another leadership position came his way. In June 1989 Speaker Jim Wright and Majority Whip Tony Coelho resigned, and as Thomas Foley was elected speaker, Gephardt ran for majority leader and defeated Georgian Ed Jenkins 181-76. Gephardt went to work creating a sense of camaraderie in a dispirited caucus. In the 1990 budget summit talks, Gephardt used OMB Director Richard Darman's desire for agreement to frame the issue as a choice between the Democrats' plan to tax the rich more and Bush's refusal to do so -- a contrast that at least momentarily hurt Republican candidates and prevented them from making gains in the November 1990 elections. In September 1990, Gephardt supported Bush's dispatch of troops to the Persian Gulf, but in January 1991, he led the opposition to the Gulf war resolution and uncharacteristically stumbled by threatening to cut off funds for U.S. troops there. Gephardt decided not to run for president in 1992. In the first Clinton years, Gephardt combined ardent support for the administration on most issues with carefully calibrated dissent on others. He fought for the Clinton economic stimulus plan and for the spending cuts and tax increase package which passed with exactly 218 votes in August 1993. His major dissent was on trade. He held off opposing NAFTA for several months as he sought more concessions from administration officials and he eventually came out against it, though critics said his efforts were too late. He called for side agreements on labor law, wage levels and the environment; but he did not get in the way as Clinton and his special aide William Daley and Republican Whip Newt Gingrich rounded up enough votes for NAFTA's passage in November 1993. In December 1993, Gephardt endorsed GATT; in February 1994, he came up with his own plan to force Japan to meet numerical goals in opening its markets or face retaliation. Gephardt vigorously supported the Clinton healthcare plan in 1994, and tried to put together his own bill combining the Clinton and Ways and Means health reform plans and capable of winning 218 votes in the Democratic Caucus. But it was tough slogging and no bill came to the floor. Then in August 1994 the leadership lost the vote on the crime bill rule. To hold together the caucus, gun control amendments as well as tougher penalties were included; but gun control repelled too many moderate Democrats and Chairman Jack Brooks's highhandedness antagonized many moderate Republicans, and the rule failed. That delayed the crime bill two weeks and the healthcare bill forever. Clinton had shaped his two major initiatives -- the 1993 budget and tax increase and the 1994 healthcare bill -- along the lines recommended by House Democratic leaders. In November 1994 they were all stunningly repudiated. Democrats lost 52 seats and control of the House. Speaker Thomas Foley was defeated and Gephardt lost his rank as majority leader and became minority leader instead. The strategy followed by Speakers Tip O'Neill, Jim Wright and Foley -- hold the Democratic Caucus together enough to produce 218 votes -- was now obsolete. There were only 205 Democrats altogether, and that number dropped to 199 with party switches and special election losses. Gephardt pushed aside a challenge by North Carolina's Charlie Rose for the party leadership, 150-58. But the day he handed over the gavel to Speaker Newt Gingrich, Gephardt later said, "was one of the worst days of my life." The Democratic president and Democrats in Congress started fending for themselves. In December 1994 Gephardt proposed a tax cut just days before Clinton was set to, and in January 1995 he said, "House Democrats are an independent organization, and we will present what we think is best for America's workers." In the debates on the Contract with America, Gephardt was far less visible than the rabidly anti-Gingrich Democratic Whip David Bonior. In June 1995 Gephardt and other Democrats were stunned when Clinton accepted the Republican goal of a balanced budget by 2002. Gephardt produced a "flat tax" plan in July 1995 under which most taxpayers would pay 10% and most deductions except for mortgage interest be abolished, and higher brackets ranging up to 34%; but it got just 119 votes on the floor. Times got better for Democrats as support for Republicans and Gingrich plummeted during the government shutdown. Gephardt created a House Democratic Policy Committee to serve as a forum for developing a Democratic alternative to the Contract. By June 1996 Gephardt and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle came up with a united Democratic "Families First" platform -- "modest and achievable ways to help every struggling family." It included tax deductions for child care, health insurance and higher education, a balanced budget, and tough anti-crime measures. "We're all new Democrats now," Gephardt said. "We have to be. Times change." And House Democrats scored a rousing success when they forced a vote on, and passage of, a minimum wage increase in summer 1996. But the surging Clinton-Gore campaign ignored Gephardt and, though most polls started showing Democrats ahead of Republicans in the generic vote, ignored Democrats' efforts to win a majority in the House. Clinton never mentioned Families First, but instead unveiled a package of "little things" himself. When Gephardt spoke to the Democratic National Convention in August, the obedient crowd chanted "Four more years!" -- although no member of Congress except the resident commissioner from Puerto Rico and the delegate from American Samoa has a four-year term. Clinton and Gore each devoted all of one sentence in their acceptance speeches to the need for Democratic majorities in Congress. Gore promoted himself with voters and Democratic insiders for president in 2000, much to Gephardt's chagrin. In October the Clinton campaign did raise impressive sums for Democratic congressional candidates, but Clinton avoided high-visibility appearances with most. Gephardt's hopes to become speaker came crashing down in November 1996 as Democrats won only 207 House seats and Republicans 227, despite Newt Gingrich's unpopularity, despite the AFL-CIO $35 million ad campaign, despite Clinton's victory. Gephardt's hopes of forging majorities still depend on coalitions with Republicans whom Democratic leaders scorned and refused to deal with up through 1994 and with whom they made little contact in 1995 and 1996. Democrats have always tended to be a divided party, an uneasy alliance of disparate elements, and are today in the House. Most of the Black Caucus and perhaps 40 other members are dedicated social democrats, dismayed first at Clinton's and then at Gephardt's acceptance of the goal of a balanced budget, frustrated with downward pressure in discretionary spending, and determined not to give up the fading strength of the Medicare or Social Security issues. Then there are the 23 or so Blue Dogs, moderate on cultural issues, generally conservative and budget-balancing on economics, supportive of some Republican stands. And there are the many Democrats motivated most strongly by liberal views on cultural issues like abortion. Democrats of all stripes may be departing in 1998; no party in presidential power for six years has ever lost House seats. One response from Gephardt is campaign finance reform: he favors amending the First Amendment to allow limits on campaign spending. "What we have here is two important values in direct conflict: freedom of speech and our desire for healthy campaigns in a healthy democracy. You can't have both." Gephardt is obviously giving serious consideration to running for president. He appeared before the AFL-CIO in February, the same day as Gore but immediately after a quick trip to Mexico -- bringing to mind his and the AFL-CIO's opposition to NAFTA, which Gore supported. Gephardt clearly sees organized labor and House members as his base, and as Clinton and Gore kept proclaiming the era of big government was over and power was leaving Washington, Gephardt was positioned to be the alternative on the left. In May 1997, Gephardt denounced the balanced budget plan (which passed the House with support from 132 Democrats) as "a budget of many deficits -- a deficit of principle, a deficit of fairness, a deficit of tax justice and, worst of all, a deficit of dollars." Gephardt also drew lines with Clinton when he declared his opposition to extending normal trade relations with China. Meanwhile, he has been mostly ignored by the Clinton-Gore White House, his relationship with Newt Gingrich is minimal, and House rules allow a determined and united majority -- which Republicans have been and may be again -- to have its way. Gephardt faces daunting challenges. He also faced, briefly, an ethics problem. Republican leadership loyalist Jennifer Dunn filed a complaint in February 1996 that Gephardt made contradictory statements on disclosure forms and tax returns on a North Carolina beach house he traded for another in 1991. He claimed it as investment property on the tax forms, in order to make the exchange tax-free; but in House disclosure forms he had called it a vacation house and in some years disclosed no rental income. In September 1996 he amended his disclosure and the Ethics Committee found he had omitted some income: "The committee expects you will be more diligent in the future and adhere strictly to the requirements to file timely and accurate financial statements," it said in dismissing the case. Gephardt has won reelection at home by solid but not enormous margins. He still goes door-to-door on occasion and work on local issues, like the McDonnell Douglas strike, overseas routes for TWA, bringing the Rams into and keeping the Defense Mapping Agency in the St. Louis area. But his strongest weapon is money. In 1990, he spent $1.4 million and won 57%-43%; in 1992 he spent $3.3 million and won 64%-33%. In 1994, with an opponent who actually spent a bit himself ($196,000), Gephardt spent $2.6 million and won 58%-40%. In 1996, against a candidate who spent $62,000, he spent $3.1 million and won 59%-39%. It was the costliest House campaign outside Newt Gingrich's district; Gephardt raised $1.1 million from PACs. While some of this campaigning is to promote his obvious national political interests, the numbers also suggest that Gephardt cannot take the 3d District for granted, even as he struggles with uniting a diffuse party caucus and running for president against a candidate backed by the White House.
The People: Pop. 1990: 568,105; 16% rural; 15% age 65+; 96% White; 2% Black; 1% Asian; 1% Hispanic origin. Households: 56% married couple families; 26% married couple fams. w. children; 41% college educ.; median household income: $30,863; per capita income: $14,272; median gross rent: $390; median house value: $71,500.
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