© Southern Political Science Association
Committee Politics in the US Senate:
Democratic Leaders and Democratic Committee Assignments
In the U.S. Senate, 1953-19941
Scott A. Frisch
California State University, Channel Islands
One University Drive
Camarillo, CA 93012
Scott.Frisch@csuci.edu
Sean Q Kelly
Department of Political Science
Niagara University
11 Timon Hall
Niagara University, NY 14109
sqkelly@niagara.edu
Abstract
The extant literature on committee assignments in Congress focuses primarily on assignments in
the House. This paper explores committee assignments in the Senate. In contrast to most other
works on the topic, we employ the committee requests of senators to determine factors that
influence committee assignment success. Earlier research by Charles Bullock (1985) examined
request data for the period 1953 to 1971; our data cover the period 1953 to 1994. While
addressing Bullock’s primary finding that Senate committee assignments are mostly determined
by seniority, we also explore an issue left unaddressed by Bullock: the influence of the
Democratic leader in the assignment process. We contend that each of the Democratic leaders
who served during this period (Lyndon Johnson, Mike Mansfield, Robert Byrd, and George
Mitchell) approached the assignment process in a way that is consistent with their individual
leadership style and that, in turn, had important consequences for senators seeking committee
assignments during these leadership eras. Our findings suggest that there are important period
effects consistent with qualitative assessments of the four leaders’ role in the selection process.
Further our results suggest that the role of seniority in the process is overestimated relative to
leadership effects.
Paper prepared for presentation at the Southern Political Science Association meeting, New
Orleans, Louisiana, January 8-10, 2004.
1 This research has benefited from the help of archivists across the