Majority Whip
Written by Steve Champlin
Then Whip House Floor Assistant and Strategist to the House Majority Whip
National politics in America reflects the forces at work in the country. In the 1970’s and 1980’s the technics of direct mail and phone banking put new pressures on congress. They allowed interest groups to go over the head of Members of Congress and talk directly to their constituents.
This created new challenges for the leadership of both parties. The days when the leadership could work with committee chairs to bring legislation to the floor and pass it based on their power in Congress were over.
As Majority Whip Tony Coelho stepped into this breech. The Speaker in consultation with the rest of the leadership and the chairs set the agenda, but the Whip powered the mechanism that passed that agenda. To do that Tony Coelho revolutionized the whip operation.
It became common to do what was called a “whip count” on every major bill. This involved surveying all the Members. It produced a list of those Members who supported the bill and those who were uncertain.
Then a group would be pulled together of those Members who supported the bill, and this group ran the process of talking to Members about their concerns.
On the more complicated bills that process usually made clear the need to make some changes to the bill. Working with the committee chairs (and the Administration if appropriate) the Whip and the leadership would develop an amendment (sometimes two) and seek appropriate Members to offer those amendments.Tony Coelho would stay close to the members on the cusp.
When those changes were defined the new bill would be recounted. As the bill moved toward passage the Whip would work with outside groups and talk with the press. But there was an art in this process as well. Time seldom allowed the count to be developed to the point where you had a precise count showing a majority. The leadership had to proceed with a work in progress sensing the moment when momentum was on their side. Tony Coelho could read the mood of his colleagues.
Not all bills needed this much work. Most bills involved important but routine matters that commanded easy support: veteran-
related bills or bills addressing local needs, for example. The tough bills were usually the tax bills, the bills addressing large regulatory issues, and the occasional bill that addressed controversial spending matters.
But it was the larger bills that defined each Congress. They defined success or failure, and they had a major role in deciding election outcomes. Tony Coelho worked with the Speaker and the rest of the leadership to usher in a new era of whip operations.