March to the Majority by Newt Gingrich

Author:Newt Gingrich [Gingrich, Newt/Gaylord, Joe and Brogdon, Louie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2023-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

The Unhealable Wound

A major partisan break point arose out of the 1984 contest for Indiana’s 8th Congressional District—the Bloody 8th. Republicans had recruited Rick McIntyre to run against the Democrat incumbent, Francis McCloskey. This district was an infamous swing seat and had a long history of ousting incumbents from both sides. From the start of the campaign in 1984, it was clear that the final count would be close—but no one expected how close. In fact, it took six months and five recounts before a winner was declared. And this was the problem. The recount process and the ultimate decision were nakedly partisan and orchestrated by the House Democrats to genuinely steal the election.

As Roberta Herzberg later detailed for the journal Publius,2 the initial vote count on Election Day showed the Democrat incumbent with a 72-vote lead, but a counting error in Gibson County bumped the Republican challenger to a 39-vote lead. After looking into a series of other counting errors and inconsistencies in other counties, the state called for a partial recount and found that, in fact, the Republican had won by 418 votes. At this point, the election outcome was clear and official. McIntyre had won.

Like all the other candidates who won their elections, McIntyre came to Washington on January 3, 1985, with a certificate of election from his state, Indiana, and expected to be sworn in. But the Democrats refused to seat him. Then–majority leader Wright, who would soon take over for Speaker O’Neill, objected to allowing McIntyre to take the oath and the Democrats voted to essentially negate his election. They instead opted to override Indiana and leave its voters without a voice in Congress until they could work out the election on their terms. This had never happened before.

Then, the House Democrats took the unprecedented step of recounting the votes themselves. They formed a special three-person task force to abrogate the state’s decision and redetermine the election. (They called it bipartisan, but of course there were two Democrats and one Republican—Bill Thomas of California.) Democrat representative Leon Panetta of California, who would later be President Barack Obama’s secretary of defense, chaired the group, and Democrat Bill Clay of Missouri also sat for it.

Before the task force convened for its first meeting, I met with Thomas and our attorney and warned him that the Democrats were going to steal the election. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Coelho’s wife was from the district and was hyperfocused on the race (so he was, too). Of course, Panetta and Clay controlled how the whole process was handled. On partisan lines, they passed their own rules for counting the ballots, which ignored Indiana’s rules. They made totally subjective decisions about which votes would be counted and which ones would be skipped. It was a total farce and a complete corruption of representative government.

Naturally, the Democrat-dominated task force determined that the Democrat candidate had won the election by four votes. In reality, there were about 32 votes still uncounted, and the House Democrats just stopped counting when McCloskey had a lead.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.