The South Rises Again in Congress

When asked before last week's budget vote whether the Democrats, who control the House, could hold together, Speaker Tip O'Neill replied sadly that in most other countries they would be splintered ideologically into five parties. If anything, he was understating the disorganization of the 97th Congress, which is riven into blocs representing regional, ethnic and economic as well as philosophical interests: there is a northeastern caucus, a black caucus, a steel caucus, even a mushroom caucus, dedicated to defending mushroom-growing constituents against foreign competition. In all this factionalism, one group of conservative Democrats has acquired so much clout that it did more than any other bloc to ensure Ronald Reagan his big win on the Gramm-Latta resolution. These Congressmen, banded together in the Conservative Democratic Forum, are electoral descendants of the Dixie Democrats who ran Congress through the 1950s; the overwhelming majority of the 47 C.D.F. members are from the Old South.* But they resemble the Southern barons of yore in no other way.

The C.D.F. members are mostly junior (average service: 3 1/2 terms). They do not hold a single major committee chairmanship, and they represent not "safe" one-party constituencies but seats that have been menaced by the rise of Southern Republicanism. The prominence of the forum members is a kind of electoral accident: the November election left just enough conservative Southern Democrats in the House to hold the balance of power on any issue that unites all Republicans against moderate-to-liberal Democrats.

Sensing their pivotal position, the Southerners formed the C.D.F. the week after election and demanded seats on major committees from a party leadership that, they felt, had been ignoring them. O'Neill, who knew that Republicans had been seeking conservative Democratic votes against his re-election as Speaker, hastily complied. In the budget fight, the resolution that won Reagan's backing was written primarily by C.D.F. Member Phil Gramm, a former economics professor from Texas; seeking their support for the measure, the President wooed the conservative Democrats harder than he did any other bloc. In the end, C.D.F. members cast 38 of the 63 Democratic votes for Gramm-Latta.

How the conservatives will vote in future showdowns is unknown. Their top priorities are a strong defense and a balanced budget. But they make no attempt to work out a unified position, and their organization is the loosest on Capitol Hill: the forum has no chairman, no staff, no offices, not even any set schedule for meeting. When a member wants a meeting, he notifies Charles Stenholm, a cotton farmer from Texas who has been designated "coordinator." At the meetings, members simply talk and break up without taking any nose counts.

Their independence makes the conservative Democrats a problem to leaders of both parties. Republicans are trying to forge alliances with them while simultaneously threatening an all-out effort to bag many of their seats in 1982. As for Democratic leaders, they have been put on notice that the price of C.D.F. support is a much more conservative stance. Says Stenholm: "We need to change the direction of our party, or we will soon be a minority in the House."

* With a sprinkling from Maryland and Sunbelt states such as Oklahoma and Arizona, plus one Northerner, Samuel Stratton of upstate New York.

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