Gop Frosh Having Trouble Keeping Family Values Pace And Pressure Bring About Divorces, Separations, Rumors
Many of them won their congressional campaigns by stressing their strong moral fiber, their conservative beliefs and their determination to enact legislation embodying traditional family values.
After taking Capitol Hill by storm, some of them signed up for weekly Bible studies with like-minded Republicans.
They formed a special freshman caucus to advance their agenda, fighting, for example, for welfare reform provisions designed to deter out-of-wedlock births.
Sometimes, though, trouble visits even the most strait-laced of houses.
Less than a year after its triumphant arrival in Washington, the celebrated Republican freshman class of ‘95 is finding that a high-pressure Washington lifestyle can be hazardous to your marriage.
The discomfort is intensified by the fact that many of the GOP freshmen, including some of those who have come to grief, campaigned on their commitment to traditional moral and family values.
Four freshman marriages have fallen apart. At least two more are on the rocks. And the House cloakroom is rampant with reports of more impending separations and tales of infidelity.
It has gotten so bad that the Republican Bible study group has begun praying for “protection against rumors” and support for members whose reputations have been sullied.
In this year of unusually bare-knuckled debate in the House, some freshmen charge that Democrats are deliberately spreading stories about their marital problems - to puncture the GOP’s claim to stand for moral renewal.
Indeed, some Democrats can’t resist making a political point out of the Republicans’ personal travails.
“It does raise legitimate concerns about whether these people are using so-called family values issues in an insincere way and politicizing these issues rather than living them,” said Rep. Robert Matsui, D-Calif.,.
Some of the GOP family travails are merely the stuff of small-town gossip, but at least two have been spelled out in painful detail in court documents.
One such case is the failed marriage of Rep. Jon Christensen, a first-term Republican from Nebraska who filed for divorce earlier this month. His petition included an affidavit from his wife, Meredith Christensen, a Texas beauty with piles of family money, accepting full responsibility for the divorce because of her repeated infidelity.
Another freshman, Rep. Enid Greene Waldholtz, R-Utah, filed for divorce amid charges of campaign finance improprieties.
Some Republicans suggest that the embarrassing series of marital problems may be an unintended consequence of the breakneck legislative pace of the Republican revolution.
If so, it is an ironic if understandable phenomenon. When the Republicans took control of the House this year, Speaker Newt Gingrich pledged to restructure the work schedule to make Congress a more “family friendly” institution.
Oregon Republican Jim Bunn, another House freshman whose marriage ended in divorce this fall, now refuses to talk to the media about his family problems. But he recently expressed his bitterness in an interview with a weekly congressional newspaper called the Hill: “There is nothing family friendly about this Congress, except the legislation,” he said.