June 10, 2001
Jeffords Leaves Republicans, Gives Dems Control of Senate

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

One man sometimes is more than just one vote. If it’s a senator in an evenly divided US Senate, his decision can radically alter the balance of power in Washington, especially if the Senate is evenly divided, as it has been since January.

The one man who rocked the Washington boat was Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont. He bolted the Republican Party and declared himself an independent on May 24, but organized with the Democrats, giving them control of the US Senate for the first time since 1994.

The new alignment of 50 Democrats and 49 Republicans means that Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) will no longer be majority leader when Congress returns to work in early June. Lott will become the minority leader, and Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD), who was minority leader until Jeffords made his announcement, will become the majority leader.

And that will mean significant changes in the Senate. For one thing, all Senate committees will be chaired by Democrats, who will be able to advance their own agenda—maybe even the Gore agenda—and block much of the Bush agenda.

Daschle has already made it plain that several items on the Bush campaign platform will now be put on the back burner. If any advance at all, it will be because the new Senate leader and the White House have come to terms—meaning the Democrats will have determined the parameters of any compromise.

Guns Not Mentioned
Several social issues have been mentioned, but not gun-related legislation such as the various “gun show” bills that have been advanaced by Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) or the alternative offered by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT). But while these haven’t made the headlines yet, gunowners should be prepared for them to hit the Senate floor in a matter of weeks.

It is significant that the New York Post immediately commented that the switch in control of the Senate would help the two Democratic senators from the Empire State.

“A Democrat-run Senate would be good news for New York—and for Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer,” the Post opined.

“The needs of a heavily Democratic state that sent two Democrats to the Senate haven’t exactly been at the top of the GOP list.

“Schumer has had to fight hard to get Republicans to give New York its fair share of the federal pie.

“ ‘This means the world to the effectiveness of our two senators. They will go from essentially nothing to everything,’ ”said Tony Bullock, former chief of staff to retired Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan, according to The Post.

Schumer in Charge
With Democrats in charge, Schumer is in line to head two crucial panels, including the judiciary subcommittee that will screen President Bush’s federal judges and oversees the Department of Justice and the FBI.

Schumer could barely contain his joy, as the Post reported: “Excitement would be an understatement . . . It allows you to do good things rather than try to stop bad things,” Schumer said.

Clinton, who ranks 97th in seniority among 100 senators, is unlikely to get any promotions, but her voice will carry new weight. The switch would enable her to push her own agenda, including a proposal to boost the upstate New York economy, according to The Buffalo News.

What else Schumer and Clinton will be able to do remains to be seen. Both are avowed and activist anti-gunners.

Jeffords made his announcement after what wire service reports called a last-ditch effort by Republicans to keep him in the fold.

“In order to best represent my state of Vermont, my own conscience and principals that I have stood for my whole life, I will leave the Republican Party and become an independent,” Jeffords said as his supporters erupted in cheers.

Jeffords said that he had been “struggling with a very difficult decision” for the past several weeks.

His decision has shaken Washington. Until now President Bush could count on Republicans controlling—however narrowly—both houses of Congress. Now his party has lost control of one of them, and the stage is set to use the legislative agenda of both houses in a way that will block much of what Bush hoped to accomplish and increase chances that the Democrats could win control of both the Senate and the House in the 2002 elections.

Some observers have already noted that of the seven Senate incumbents who are considered vulnerable in the November 2002 election, six are Republicans and only one is a Democrat.

Some wire service reports claimed that President Bush had no advance warning that Jeffords was about to quit the Republican Party.

“The president told me he felt when Sen. Jeffords came to the White House on Tuesday (May 22) his mind was pretty much made up—that he had decided he was going to leave the Republican Party,” Bush counselor Karen Hughes said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

But there had been rumblings that Jeffords was unhappy with Bush’s agenda and was considering defecting. Jeffords’ plans became a major news story for two days before he actually made his announcement.

Just before Jeffords bolted, the Senate gave Bush two major victories. They passed the tax cut measure that was a centerpiece of the Bush campaign last year and they approved his nominee for solicitor general, Theodore Olson.

Olson was not popular with the Democrats and they would have preferred to reject him since he was the lawyer who got Gore’s Florida recount stopped.

Senators voted 51-47 to make Olson the government’s advocate before the Supreme Court, only hours after Jeffords switched.

Most Democrats had opposed Olson’s nomination for weeks, but they agreed to let it come to a vote before the switch. Two Democrats, Zel Miller of Georgia and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voted for confirmation.

Of course, there is always the remote possibility that the Republicans will be able to woo a Democrat to switch to their party, or to become an independent like Jeffords, but that possibility is clearly remote.

Democrats Advised
In the meanwhile, it is possible to get a better idea of how the Democrats will use their power in the Senate. Two of their best known campaign strategists and political advisers—James Carville and Paul Begala—offered a battle plan for the Democrats in an op-ed column in the May 27 New York Times.

Bear in mind that both Carville and Begala were stalwarts of Bill Clinton’s in his darkest days. They helped elect him. They defended him against all comers. And they advised him—among other things, on the gun issue.

The Carville-Begala column advised Democrats to do three things with their Senate windfall:

“First, call a radical a radical. Mr. Bush’s agenda is neither compassionate nor conservative: it’s radical and it’s dangerous and Democrats should say so.…”

“Second, the Democrats must work to spend and shrink; spend the money and shrink the tax cut….”

“Third, the Democrats should obstruct.”

That’s the broad outline from the lengthy Carville-Begala column. While they may be advising Democrats—and those for whom The New York Times is political and social gospel—the rest of Americans—especially gunowners should heed their warning.

The Senate was always more likely to pass gun bills than the House; they passed a gun show amendment offered by ex-Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) in 1999, which the House rejected. But the change in leadership suggests that tougher times are ahead for law-abiding gunowners.