A few years ago political advisers to Paul Coverdell, the Republican senator from Georgia, thought he should attend an Atlanta Braves baseball game to show he was a regular guy. But when they went to pick Coverdell up at his house on the outskirts of Atlanta, he was wearing a suit and tie — keep in mind summer temperatures in Georgia –and carrying a briefcase. He managed to feign interest in the game until the third inning, at which point he opened his briefcase and began wading through paperwork. He kept working till the end of the game.
Paul Coverdell is no hail fellow well met. He’s wonkish and workaholic. He doesn’t care much for one-on-one campaigning and is far from smooth on the stump. A Coverdell speech conjures up someone imitating Dana Carvey imitating George Bush. Coverdell, in other words, is atypical in the polished world of Washington politics. Yet he’s one of the most influential senators outside of Trent Lott and Tom Daschle, the Senate’s Republican and Democratic leaders.
In a little less than five years in Washington, Coverdell has emerged as a behind-the-scenes force in the development and implementation of the Republican agenda. Yet he’s remained so low profile that, asked for a comment about him, even Norman Ornstein — the American Enterprise Institute’s legendary congressional quote machine — is left speechless.
Coverdell’s influence springs from many sources, but one stands out: He spends more time working to advance GOP causes and stymie Democratic progress than any other member of the Senate. “I don’t know if he does anything other than politics,” says Rep. John Linder of Georgia, who served with Coverdell in the state legislature and has been a friend for over 20 years.
With a wife who’s a flight attendant, no kids, and no hobbies to speak of, Coverdell has lots of time for work. And it pays dividends. Back in 1993, it was he who organized the massive coalition of companies and interest groups that helped defeat the Clinton healthcare plan. Recently he’s been active on education, the balanced-budget amendment, and U.S. policy toward Mexico. House speaker Newt Gingrich jokes privately, “Republicans don’t need an agenda. We have the Coverdell agenda.”
Coverdell’s influence is not limited to public policy. He’s also among the most respected Republican strategists on Capitol Hill, one of the few people who have the ear of both Gingrich and Lott. He has known Gingrich for 20 years. “Paul is one of Newt’s trusted advisers,” says Linder, a member of the speaker’s inner circle. Most recently, Gingrich has been making a high-volume pitch for a Coverdell measure — educational savings accounts, or, as he calls them, “Coverdell accounts.”
Coverdell also regularly meets with Lott. He’s a member of Lott’s elected leadership team and is one of six senators on the Council of Trent, an informal group the majority leader consults on policy and politics. “Paul is a hard worker and has good judgment about the politics of the Senate,” Lott told me. When confronted with a seemingly intractable problem, Lott will gesture toward Coverdell and say, “Let Mikey handle it” — a reference to the kid in the Life cereal commercials who’s always ready to eat something new. Coverdell’s influence with Lott is mostly behind the scenes, though his very public opposition to William Weld’s confirmation as ambassador to Mexico helped cement Lott’s support for that position. A further link between the two senators was Coverdell’s hiring last year of Kyle McSlarrow, an adroit, all-purpose aide who had served as deputy chief of staff for Lott and Bob Dole.
The irony in Coverdell’s success is that he came to the Senate in 1992 as a moderate, reputedly pro-choice and close to George Bush. He endorsed Bush in 1980 and 1988 and spent nearly three years as Bush’s director of the Peace Corps.
But no one who looked at his record in the Senate would call Coverdell a Bush Republican. He’s one of the few elected officials to become more conservative after arriving in Washington. He is “the mirror image of someone who “grows” in office,” says Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition and a Georgia native. “He came to town perceived as a Bush/Ford-style moderate but has become one of the most reliable conservative champions in the Congress.”
Indeed, on votes scored by the American Conservative Union during the past four years, Coverdell’s annual average is 97 out of 100. This year he’s pleased conservatives with his vote against the Chemical Weapons Convention and his opposition to Weld. Linder says, “The only thing that separates Paul from Ralph Reed is that he’s not completely pro-life.” Yet if Coverdell opposes a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, he is also against federal funding of abortion and has received a perfect score from the National Right to Life Committee all four years he’s been in the Senate.
Coverdell says he hasn’t become more conservative, only “more concerned about government’s intrusion into our lives.” Either way, conservative support was key in getting him elected. After winning a two-stage Republican primary in 1992, in both rounds of which he was the moderate alternative, Coverdell trained his sights on Wyche Fowler, the incumbent Democrat. He finished 35,000 votes behind Fowler on election day, but Fowler only took 49 percent of the vote, necessitating a runoff election under Georgia law (a law the Democratic legislature has since changed).
Coverdell’s relative moderation had kept most conservative groups from working on his behalf, but in the runoff they mobilized. Groups such as the National Right to Work Committee, the Christian Coalition, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and the National Rifle Association sent out mailings, ran ads, set up phone banks, and dispatched campaign experts to the state. Many of these groups had never before campaigned for Coverdell, and some had opposed him. He also got a boost from Phil Gramm, who chaired the Senate Republican campaign committee and committed over $ 550,000 to the runoff election. Coverdell credits both Gramm and the conservative groups for his narrow victory over Fowler, and he hasn’t forgotten them. He was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Gramm’s presidential bid and since the runoff has been loyal to the conservative coalition.
The Clinton health-care plan was a defining issue for Coverdell, and by the time the battle ended there was little doubt about his ideological identity. Senate Republican moderates criticized the Clinton plan (except Jim Jeffords of Vermont, who was a cosponsor) but sympathized with its objectives. Coverdell attacked the Clinton proposal as “one of the greatest assaults on a free people” he had ever seen. At one memorable meeting of Senate Republicans in the fall of 1993 — before Dole’s position on the issue was clear — Coverdell said, “Think of this as 1939. We have to choose whether we are Chamberlain or Churchill.”
It wasn’t just empty rhetoric: Coverdell began organizing meetings of all the groups and companies with a stake in the potential overhaul of health care. Before long the meetings were attracting hundreds of people, and Coverdell was drumming up vocal opposition to the Clinton plan. He persuaded Ralph Reed to begin a massive postcard campaign highlighting some of the more draconian proposals and personally met with countless interested parties. Senators and staffers were awed by Coverdell’s energy and willingness to do the organizational scut work few other senators could be bothered with (hence the good-natured joke that Coverdell is “the best staffer in the Senate”). Aides say in retrospect that Coverdell did more to defeat the Clinton health- care plan than any other Republican in Congress.
His activist mentality –more common in the House — is popular with the Senate’s junior conservatives, but thanks to a non-threatening style and a readiness to submerge his ego at a moment’s notice, Coverdell remains popular with moderates and the more restrained Old Bulls. That’s why Lott put him in charge of managing the balanced-budget-amendment working group; numerous other senators had claimed the issue as their own, but all could agree that Coverdell was a good choice to coordinate the amendment’s passage (in the end, it failed by one vote). “Maximum output with minimum annoyance,” is how one aide characterizes Coverdell’s modus operandi. Spencer Abraham, a GOP senator from Michigan, notes that Coverdell stands out by virtue of his activity in so many different areas: legislation, fund-raising, message development, and Senate floor management. Coverdell also has a crack staff. McSlarrow is one of the Senate’s most influential aides, while press secretary Jonathan Baron and policy director Terri Delgadillo have helped boost Coverdell’s stature inside and outside the Senate.
The traits that have impressed his Republican colleagues also explain why no Democrats have announced they will challenge Coverdell for reelection next year. He has already raised $ 2 million, has strong ties with Atlanta’s predominantly nonpartisan business community, and maintains a political organization in all of the state’s 159 counties. In the absence of Democratic opposition, his most vocal adversary is the reflexively liberal editorial page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the state’s most widely read daily. In May, the paper published a scathing editorial entitled “Senator Chameleon” that described Coverdell as “assuming the protective coloration of those around him” and forsaking his reputation as a pragmatic conservative ” in a shameless courtship of his party’s farright fringe.” Expect more such criticism of Coverdell if he follows through on his plan to hire Ralph Reed as a consultant for next year’s campaign.
In the meantime, Coverdell will press some of his pet issues, including educational savings accounts. He introduced the measure earlier this year — it gives special tax status to money spent on education — and it’s become a centerpiece of the GOP’s education package. Lott and Gingrich are strong supporters.
It would already be law had President Clinton not promised to veto the entire tax-relief package if the Coverdell measure were included. The issue is vintage Coverdell: It’s good public policy, it puts Democrats on the defensive, and its passage will require a massive effort to overcome the diehard opposition of the education establishment.
It’s the kind of fight few other Senate Republicans would be prepared to wage, much less win. But Coverdell intends to press forward with this battle and others like it. His zeal — in stark contrast to the GOP’s general lethargy — all but ensures that sooner or later PaulCoverdell will escape from anonymity. Probably sooner.
Matthew Rees is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
