The Fate of the Fifty
Does voting against a war, even when it was just unpopular, come with a price?
The 1916 elections were a highly contested affair as Democratic President Woodrow Wilson faced both domestic and international pressures pushing a progressive agenda and an isolationist stance. Wilson’s allies used the rallying cry, “He kept us out of the war,” and if it weren’t for a personal slight by his opponent, he very well could have lost the entire election. His party wasn’t so lucky in the House of Representatives and the Republicans netted 19 seats to hit a plurality of 215 seats, only three short of a majority. Democrats held 214 seats, and the rest were a smattering of other parties. Democrats nabbed a coalition majority by allying with the Progressives (6 seats) and Socialist Representative Meyer London of New York. The last few seats were held by an Independent and the Prohibition Party.
Congress was not even sworn in for a month when President Wilson reversed course and gave a speech to a joint session of Congress asking them to declare war on Germany. Since the election, Germany had declared a policy of unrestricted warfare and British intelligence had leaked the Zimmerman Telegram where Germany promised to help Mexico recover lost territories in war for support in World War I. The Mexican-American war had ended almost 70 years before but it was only one year before that US General John Pershing led a pushback against Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa in Mexican territory.
Public opinion had swung rapidly and suddenly there was a clamoring for war, with both parties firmly in support. The Senate went first, with 82 votes in favor and 6 opposed. Two days later, it went to the House where it had an overwhelming majority of 373 in favor, and 50 representatives opposed. It cut across party lines too with sixteen Democrats bucking Wilson, and 32 Republicans opposed, mostly from the Midwest. The singular Prohibition and Socialist representatives also voted against entrance. The map below from VoteView shows the geographic breakdown of the vote, not to mention the Democratic dominance of the South at the time.
Though the war was virtually over with a victory by the next cycle, 1918 was a year where people wanted a change and Republicans fully picked up the House and the Senate. As neither party could claim the war, it is harder to discern if the mood was really pro- or anti- war and I decided to take a look at what happened to representatives that bucked leadership and voted no. I went through every member of the freshly sworn in 65th congress and detailed when they left the House. If a member lost and then was re-elected later, I only counted the first departure to get a sense of the effect on their term. The chart below plots out each year and then the percent of total Yes or No voting representatives of all parties that were remaining. The blue line is for all Yes voting congresspeople while the No votes are in orange.
This chart seems to show that No voting representatives paid a heavier electoral price, with over half not making it to the next term. This drop would be consistently lower than the Yes votes until the FDR election 15 years later. There was even a similar drop in the decade after the vote meaning it may not have only been a one time penalty immediately the next cycle. The next chart plots out the same metric but now breaks it up by the two major parties.
Here you can see the immediate impact of defecting Democrats right in the aftermath. Republicans that voted no also had higher exit rates but there is not as much as a gap in the vote choice there.
Now congressional representatives do leave office for a myriad of reasons so it may only be a coincidence that they exited Congress earlier. My next step was to break down a cause for leaving Congress and look to see why each representative’s career was cut short. The categories are:
· Promoted — This is when a representative moves to another job that they wanted. It can be even something lower than a Rep like a state senator or can be appointed to a cabinet position or judgeship, but they would be active in Congress without it and they made the jump. I did not include people who lost a race and then were offered a promotion
· Retired — Opted not to seek re-election or resigned
· Died — Self-Explanatory
· Lost Primary — was a candidate looking to win their seat and was defeated by a member of the same party in a primary
· Lost General — was their party’s nominee but was defeated in the general election by a candidate from a different party
· Failed Upward Attempt — tried to run for another office but was defeated. If this happened but then the representative stayed in the House and exited because of something else, I used the latter actual date and reason instead
· Enlisted — A few representatives enlisted when WW1 was called. 1 resigned and is marked as 1917 and the other just did not run but is marked as Enlisted but for 1919
With this classification system, I first looked at the fate of everyone in the Yes and No vote that had exited by 1921, or within a few cycles, and why they left. The chart below plots out the fate of the congressperson by party and entrance vote.
No votes in each party were far likelier to lose to a primary challenger, though the Republicans did see a difference in the number of retirements so that may be harder to tell. The number that sticks out to me though is that either 14 or 13% of Yes votes saw promotions from the House but none of the House votes were able to get more prestigious sports or appointments. Some of the No vote promotions were explicitly because of this roll call with Mississippi 6th’s Bryon (Pat) Patton successfully primarying Wilson foe James K. Vardaman who voted No in the Senate. This was not only an immediate effect blocking higher office. If you look at how everyone in the 65th eventually left the House, the No votes only saw one promotion and it was a Republican. Charles Frank Reavis was appointed special assistant to the US Attorney General to prosecute war fraud cases, in line with a no vote.
Overall, a No vote to enter WWI likely meant you were taking years off of your political life, whether you were defeated early for re-election or found yourself in a dead end. Some who lost did manage to come back, including the first woman in the House Jeannette Rankin who would return and be the only no vote to enter WWII decades later.
If you would like to see these charts, as well as an interactive look at every member in the 65th where you can filter by their party, how they voted, and when they left, visit this link:
https://public.tableau.com/profile/noah7751#!/vizhome/WW1Vote/Fatesofthe65thCongress?publish=yes
