Republican Contract with America

In 1994, six weeks before the midterm congressional elections in November, the Republican Party released a document it called the Contract with America, a blueprint for the legislative initiatives the Republicans proposed taking if they were to win a majority in the House and Senate in the upcoming elections. The contract was written by Larry Hunter, who worked in the White House of President Ronald Reagan and was the chief economist of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Assisting him was House of Representatives minority whip Newt Gingrich, along with other Republican legislators such as Richard Armey, Bill Paxon, Tom DeLay, Robert Walker, John Boehner, and Jim Nussle. On September 27, 1994, the contract was inked by all but two Republican members of the House of Representatives and all of the Republican nonincumbent congressional candidates—a total of 367—in a mass signing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

The Contract with America was unique in that it outlined for voters the party's specific proposals, and in essence it nationalized the congressional elections—that is, the elections focused less on local and state concerns and more on national issues. The Contract with America may have been instrumental in helping the Republican Party win majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1953. The contract, too, in concert with Republican gains in the House and Senate, may have persuaded President Bill Clinton, who had been elected in 1992, to govern more from the center than the left, even though Clinton threatened to veto what he regarded as its most radical proposals and Democrats denounced it. Republicans believed that the 1994 congressional elections represented a repudiation of many of Clinton's more liberal policy proposals, although not all Senate Republicans were initially on board with the contract. In the end, some of the proposals in the contract were enacted; others were either vetoed or altered in major ways by the president. Nevertheless, the 1994 elections placed the Republican Party in charge of the nation's domestic agenda for the remainder of the decade and beyond, and it was seen as a major victory for American conservatism.