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This book attempts to fill the gap in the understanding of how congressional leaders are chosen. It offers the first systematic analysis of party leadership elections in Congress since the 1970s, looking in particular at how election campaigns unfold and the factors driving lawmakers' vote choice when vacancies occur or challenges erupt against sitting leaders. This chapter begins with a brief review of the House's major elected party leadership positions. It then discusses the common wisdom about congressional leadership elections and the limits of early research on the topic. Next, it introduces a new theory of leadership selection and explain how candidates, campaigns, and political context contribute to the factors that shape legislators' vote choice for a leader. It then introduces the empirical data used in this study, describes the testing methodology, and outlines the chapters that follow.

This chapter reviews the examination of the factors behind candidate emergence and the analyses of vote choice in fourteen contested leadership elections in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1965. It then discusses additional possible explanations of vote choice, how applicable the present findings may be to other legislative settings, and how the politics of leadership races has changed in the past and may change in the years ahead. The chapter concludes that we may see more ethnically diverse leadership candidates than in the past, with voters, interest groups, and new media playing more significant roles in shaping lawmakers' vote choice. However, so long as the central elements shaping the House's leadership elections—the size of the chamber, the service orientation of party leaders, committees and states as the bases for professional connections—do not change, professional connections and salient goals will remain fundamental to how the rank-and-file decide who will lead them.

This chapter focuses on challenges to the heir apparent, when, despite an established pattern of succession, a lawmaker wishing to ascend the so-called leadership ladder to a newly vacant position is challenged by another candidate. These types of races often occur when the heir apparent is politically vulnerable or a sizeable group of partisans support a rival on political or personal grounds. The chapter analyzes three challenges to the heir apparent. The first was probably the most famous example of this type of race in the contemporary House—the 1976 race for Democratic majority leader—and the other two were races for Republican majority leader in early 2006 and, after that year's congressional elections, Democratic majority leader. In all three instances, one of the candidates running for majority leader was serving as whip, a position that at the time was the “natural” precursor to becoming leader.

This chapter examines the legislative process, paying particular attention to the role of congressional leaders and the changing impact of party and partisanship. It argues that a “new order” has evolved in Congress. The new order reduces the power of the congressional committees and undermines deliberation, but it can still produce legislation, especially when Congress and the president are of the same party. The new order consists of three key elements, which are discussed in this chapter: “follow-the-leader” lawmaking, “do-it-yourself” (DIY) legislating, and “catching-the-omnibus” budgeting. The chapter also looks in detail at one very important part of the legislative process—the budget and appropriations process through which Congress exercises its constitutional “power of the purse.”

Drawing upon interviews with current and former members of Congress and congressional staff, plus existing research on political ambition, this chapter offers some tentative answers to the question of why certain lawmakers decide to be candidates for a party leadership post. Following the lead of political scientist Jennifer Lawless, it frames the discussion in terms of two kinds of ambition: nascent ambition, or the general “interest in seeking elective office,” and expressive ambition, “the act of entering a specific race at a particular time”. It shows that these two kinds of ambition ultimately determine who among all of its members leads the House, as well as the degree of stability and conflict that exists within both political parties.