Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts witnessed up close how the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives settled a close election in 1985 and says many of his then-Democratic colleagues came to regret the heavy-handed tactics needed to keep one of their own in office.
Roberts, in early January, will spend 40 years as a member of Congress, first as a House member from Kansas for 16 years and then representing the state in the Senate ever since. Back in 1985, he was part of a House Republican Conference that had been in the minority for 30 years. House Democrats used to stomp all over the minority party, including an infamous dispute 35 years ago in which it seated an incumbent Democratic House member from Indiana, Frank McCloskey, over his Republican rival, Rick McIntyre, who had been certified as the winner in the November 1984 contest.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Roberts, 84, says the long-ago episode is newly relevant due to a disputed Iowa House race that may be decided in the halls of Congress. Republican Marianette Miller-Meeks has been certified as the winner by six votes out of more than 394,000 cast, over Democratic rival Rita Hart. On Tuesday, Hart filed a petition with the House to review her case, with the hope of being seated instead of Miller-Meeks.
“With regards to what happened on the other side, I think they were embarrassed, and I think everybody agreed that we were not going to get in that business again,” Roberts said about elected officials, rather than voters, deciding elections. “I know we weren’t on our side.”
He added, “Everybody agreed in the Republican Party, and I think everybody was embarrassed enough in the Democrat Party,” noting a prominent Democrat involved in the process did not want to be involved with it at all.
Miller-Meeks initially led Hart by 47 votes on election night, but following a 24-county recount, her lead was trimmed to just six votes. The State Canvassing Board, however, certified her win, and Hart decided to forgo a court challenge and prepared to contest the race in Congress.
Hart filed her petition to the House Administration Committee on Tuesday, citing 22 excluded ballots, which, if included, would give her the lead over Miller-Meeks.
Roberts, who announced his retirement last January, in 1985 was a member on the House Administration Committee following the 1984 election cycle — the year first-term Rep. McCloskey filed a petition to the committee contesting his narrow reelection loss to McIntyre.
Although McCloskey initially led McIntyre by 72 votes on election night, the following day, McIntyre led McCloskey by a margin of 34 votes. Following a state recount, McIntyre’s lead expanded to 418 votes, and the Republican was certified the winner of Indiana’s 8th Congressional District.
However, on Jan. 3, 1985, just as House Speaker Tip O’Neill, a Massachusetts Democrat, swore in the 99th Congress, Majority Leader Jim Wright, a Texas Democrat, objected to McIntyre being sworn in and being seated with the other House members.
Ronald Reagan’s 1984 presidential reelection landslide over Walter Mondale yielded a net of 16 pickups in the House for the Republicans that cycle, leaving the Democratic majority with 253 seats and the GOP with 181.
“He won, and the secretary of state said he won. So he was here. And they refused to swear him in. So we were wondering what was going on,” Roberts said.
McIntyre’s certificate of election from Indiana’s secretary of state was voided, and neither McIntyre nor McCloskey was seated. It was the first time the House had ever denied seating a congressman-elect with a valid certificate of election. In previous circumstances, when an election was under investigation, the individual with the certificate would be seated until the investigation ended.
The matter went to the House Administration Committee, which McCloskey previously petitioned his election loss, led by Chairman Frank Annunzio, an Illinois Democrat, and ranking member Rep. Bill Frenzel, a Minnesota Republican.
Democrats, who outnumbered Republicans on the committee, suggested to assemble a recount team of two Democrats and one Republican, with a recount set up through the Government Accountability Office.
“So, despite our strong objections, they sent a team out on a recount. So there was a number of votes that they’d already been counted, but they wanted a recount. As soon as [McCloskey] went ahead. ‘Boom,’ they called it.”
“They stopped it as soon as they went ahead, and then we brought in a bunch of people who had not been counted,” Roberts recalled. “And there were more that they had in the committee, and they would not accept it.”
The controversy focused on a total of 42 un-notarized absentee ballots. Under Indiana law, these ballots should not have been opened and tabulated, and they were not at the time.
On Election Day, 10 of these un-notarized absentee ballots were sent to the precinct by mistake, but the mistake was caught, and they were returned unopened to the courthouse.
When McCloskey was behind by 12 votes in the running totals of the recount, Democrats on the task force voted to open and count these 10 ballots in their second hearing. In the last hearing, the task force the following week, after McCloskey moved into a four-vote lead, the Democrats on the task force flipped their previous decision and voted not to include the remaining 32 identical ballots, arguing the previous 10 ballots they voted on that made a one-day trip to the precincts and back were different from the other 32.
The exclusion of the 32 ballots ultimately gave McCloskey the win.
Republicans were furious, saying Democrats used tabulating tactics in the congressional recount to rig it for McCloskey.
“That came back to the committee. And we voted on it first committee that had to go to the floor, it had to be approved on the floor, which is a horrible way of doing things. I think that’s when Bill Frenzel gave me his seven minutes or whatever it was, I had the ‘Thou shalt not steal’ button. We all did,” Roberts said.
“Tip [O’Neill] said I couldn’t wear it, but during my speech, I took it off, and I said, ‘I will come up and give it to you, Mr. Speaker. But you have torn the blanket comity so badly here that we didn’t have to do it this way. And we raised that in our panel. I think they did regret it, but they won.”
Republicans marched off the floor in protest during the House vote that ultimately seated McCloskey.
Roberts says California House Democratic Rep. Jim Bates attempted to urge GOP lawmakers to pressure one of their own House incumbents, who lost by under 1,000 votes that cycle, to file a petition to contest the race.
“But everybody knew that the challenger won. We lost our incumbent. It ended up with me, and I said, ‘I’m not going to be part of this. So, I asked Bob, Michael, our leader, I said, ‘This is a terrible precedent. If we start this, it will never end.’”
