The only other members of the Class of 1974 are Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, one of only 17 Republican freshmen elected that year, and Congressman Rick Nolan, who retired from the House in 1980 but was elected again in 2012 after 32 years in the private sector.
Grassley was elected to the House in '74 of course, Senate in 1980. Damn that Nolan!!! I want em all gone!!!
Strange the way things work out. Unless we beat him (which is possible but not likely), Nolan, a guy who retired before I was born and whom most people forgot about, will be the last watergate baby left thanks to a 2012 comeback in a mostly different district.
If Grassley, a Republican, outlasts him that would be the ultimate irony.
I think I neglected to include you in this ping
Reelected after a 32 year layoff...is that a record? Has to be close if it isn’t.
People claim that the Watergate Babies were so politically astute because they kept getting reelected in marginal districts. The truth is that Congressional spending exploded during the 1970’s. The number of staffers and direct mail costs soared. The expanded staffers did the serious legislating and told the Congressmen what the laws were and how to vote. The Congressmen themselves were full-time candidates while others did the actual work. The result was that the taxpayers were indirectly subsidizing the reelections of the Watergate babies and even the best challengers couldn’t keep up with that. The 1974 elections were a disaster for the entire nation in every way imaginable.
Barone is limiting the term “Watergate babies” to those first elected to the House in 1974, but if we extended the term to apply to those first elected to Congress (whether House or Senate) that year, it would also include Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT).
When Leahy was elected in 1974, he was the first Democrat ever elected to the Senate from VT—I’m talking *ever*, and Andrew Jackson had founded the party 150 years before!
As DJ has noted before, had longtime Republican Senator George Aiken run for reelection in 1974, he would have waltzed to victory (he was by far the most popular politician in the state, and had been reelected unopposed in 1968); the GOP almost certainly would have held the seat in 1980 upon Aiken’s retirement, given that GOP nominee Stewart Ledbetter nearly defeated incumbent Senator Leahy that year (and in an open-seat race whoever would be the GOP nominee would have been carried in by Reagan’s coattails). Had Aiken run for reelection in 1974, it is quite likely that Leahy never would have been elected to the Senate, and if he ever was it elected it wouldn’t have occurred prior to 1986.
My hypothesis, actually, is that had Aiken run for reelection in 1974, Congressman Richard Mallary would have stayed in the House (he gave up his seat to run for the Senate that year), thus blocking Jim Jeffords from being elected to Congress in 1974. Mallary almost certainly would have run for the Senate in 1980 when Aiken finally retired, and been elected easily (and would have had a good chance at reelection in 1986 despite the political environment); his House seat would have stayed Republican in 1980, perhaps being won by Stewart Ledbetter. Had Ledbetter been elected to the House in 1980, he would be the likely GOP Senate nominee in 1988 upon Senator Robert Stafford’s retirement, and likely would have won in 1988 (and if so, obviously reelected in 1994). Had all this occurred, who knows who would be the Republican elected to the House in 1988?; perhaps it wouldn’t be someone anti-gun like Peter Smith, and Bernie Sanders wouldn’t be able to get elected as an Independent in 1990 by running to his right on guns. So, conceivably, had Aiken run for reelection in 1974, Vermont would have an all-Republican congressional delegation as late as 1996 or 2000, and Pat Leahy and Jim Jeffords never would have sullied the Senate’s halls.