¹ Baker, John W., ed., Member of the House (New York: Charles Scribners, 1962), p. 93Google Scholar.

² Polsby, Nelson W., “The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review, 62 (03, 1968), 144–168CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Witmer, T. Richard, “The Aging of the House,” Political Science Quarterly, 79 (12. 1964), 526–527CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ “Careerists” is chosen to characterize senior members, since the typical man or woman who spends ten terms or more in the House of Representatives is there from his mid-forties until he reaches the median retirement age in this country. For material on the median age of freshman congressmen across time see Davidson, Roger H., The Role of the Congressman (New York: Pegasus, 1969), p. 62Google Scholar.

⁵ One of the major congressional “reforms” of this century has contributed to reasons for members to make careers of House service. As a result of the Cannon revolt the positions of committee chairman and ranking minority member have become power bases rather than rewards given the Speaker's allies.

⁶ Polsby, , “Institutionalization of the U.S. House,” pp. 144–168Google Scholar. For a detailed treatment of the seniority system see Polsby, Nelson W., Gallaher, Miriam, and Rundquist, Barry Spencer, “The Growth of the Seniority System in the U.S. House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review, 63 (09, 1969), 787–807CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Jones, Charles O., “Inter-Party Competition for Congressional Seats,” Western Political Quarterly, 17 (09, 1964), 461–476CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Jones, Charles O., Every Second Year (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1967), p. 68Google Scholar; Jones, Charles O., “The Role of the Campaign in Congressional Politics,” in The Electoral Process, ed. by Jennings, M. Kent and Zeigler, L. Harmon (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 24Google Scholar; Hinckley, Barbara, “Seniority in the Committee Leadership Selection of Congress,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 13 (11, 1969), 620CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Witmer, , “Aging of The House,” pp. 536–537Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Southern Democrats are those from Ala., Ark., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tenn., Tex., and Va.

¹¹ Wolfinger, Raymond E. and Hollinger, Joan Heifitz, “Safe Seats, Seniority, and Power in Congress,” in The Congressional System: Notes and Readings, ed. by Rieselbach, Leroy N. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1970), pp. 85–86Google Scholar.

¹² Wolfinger and Hollinger, pp. 87–88.

¹³ “The Northern wing of the congressional party is just now [1965] recovering the ground lost in the Republican sweep of 1946,” Wolfinger and Hollinger, p. 87.

¹⁴ Between the periods 1942–1950 and 1952–1960 the number of safe Republican seats declined from 147 to 136. Jones, , “Inter-Party Competition,” pp. 461–466Google Scholar. There is little reason to doubt that this trend continued in the 1960s. In regard to the lack of seniority among Republicans in the House, in 1967, “two-thirds of the House Republicans had been elected since 1959.” Jones, Charles O., The Minority Party in Congress (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 173Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Some of the material in Polsby, , “Institutionalization of the U.S. House,” pp. 146 and 159Google Scholar, suggests that the 77th Congress may be a watershed. It is only since 1941 that mean House tenure has consistently exceeded four terms. Also a measure which Polsby uses to show growth in internal complexity in the House, the budget for the House, has been moving steadily upward only since around 1939–1941 when gains lost to the depression were recovered.

¹⁶ Of careerists who voluntarily left Congress, those not seeking another public office were categorized as having retired. Even though some of those in the retirement category said, in announcing their decisions not to seek another term, that they were returning to vocations, such as law, it would seem that these activities might often have been only part time. The mean age of retirees when leaving Congress was 69.7, only slightly less than the average age (71.0) of those who died in office. In contrast, those seeking other public offices were, on average, 59.6 when they left the chamber. The mean age of those defeated in primary and general elections were 68.4 and 63.8, respectively.

¹⁷ Careerists losing general elections to fellow incumbents were Thomas Lane (D-Mass.), Ivor Fenton (R-Pa.), Robert Secrest (D-Ohio), Frances Bolton (R-Ohio), and Ross Adair (R-Ind.). Frank Boykin (D-Ala.) ran ninth in a primary contest for eight at large seats when the Alabama legislature failed to draw new districts following the state's loss of one representative in the wake of the 1960 census. Other victims of primary contests between incumbents were Lindley Beckworth (D-Tex.), and Edna Kelly (D-N.Y.).

All of the above except Adair were defeated in the first election subsequent to reapportionment. The Indiana Republican's defeat is classified with others touched by redistricting because he lost to Edward Roush (D-Ind.), the former incumbent whom Adair had narrowly defeated in 1968, immediately after redistricting.

¹⁸ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (10 30, 1970), pp. 2728–2729, 2735Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Between 1942 and 1960 four of seven primary defeats were absorbed by Southern Democrats, one by a Republican, and two by border state Democrats. Between 1962 and 1968, eight of 12 primary defeats fell on Southern Democrats, two each on Republicans and Northern Democrats. In contrast all five incumbents turned out in 1970 primaries were Northern Democrats.

²⁰ Careerists whose defeats seem most clearly attributable to two-party competition in previously one-party districts are Ben Jensen (R-Iowa), Arthur Winstead (D-Miss.) and William Ayers (R-Ohio). Reapportionment seems to have figured in the defeats of three of the other four Southern Democrats and four of the other Republicans. Another Republican, Earl Wilson (R-Ind), represented a clearly marginal district

²¹ Jones, , “Inter-Party Competition,” p. 461–476Google Scholar.

²² Polsby, , “Institutionalization of the U.S. House,” pp. 149–153Google Scholar; Davidson, , Role of The Congressman, pp. 63–66Google Scholar.

²³ Schlesinger distinguishes between progressive ambition (desire to hold public office[s] other than the one currently occupied), static ambition (desire to retain one's current position), and discrete ambition (intention to relinquish one's present position and withdraw from politics at the end of the current term). Schlesinger, Joseph, Ambition and Politics: Political Careers in the United States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966), p. 10Google Scholar.

²⁴ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (03 8, 1968), p. 491Google Scholar.

²⁵ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (01 22, 1971), pp. 177–179Google Scholar.

²⁶ See Polsby, , “Institutionalization of the U.S. House,” pp. 148–149Google Scholar.

²⁷ For a discussion of patterns of majority and minority party leadership with an attempt to categorize the leadership of the House during the period 1861–1967, see Ripley, Randall B., Party Leaders in the House of Representatives (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1967), pp. 82–113Google Scholar. Ripley concludes that the Democrats have had collegial leadership since the death of Sam Rayburn, with a similar pattern obtaining in the GOP since the displacement of Minority Leader Martin by Charles Halleck. Prior to these events there had been two instances of collegial leadership of the majority party (1899–1903 and 1919–1925), but none previously in the minority party.

²⁸ Davidson, , Role of The Congressman, p. 136Google Scholar.