The redirection of the Steiger Fund several years ago to provide Centennial Center research support for former APSA Congressional Fellows (CFP) has been a classic case of hiding your light beneath a bushel. Hopefully this brief article can begin to reverse the trend. Who was William Steiger, and why should he be remembered?

After six years in the Wisconsin State Assembly, the 28-year-old native of Oshkosh was elected to represent Wisconsin's 6^th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives' 90^th Congress on November 8, 1966, and re-elected to succeeding Congresses until his untimely death on December 4, 1978. His death was memorialized by the 96^th Congress on January 15, 1979. The first eulogy in the bound book of that event was offered by the long-term member of the CFP Advisory Committee, dean of the Washington press corps and Washington Post reporter and columnist David Broder. “It is a cliché in the political reporting business,” wrote Broder, “that every one of us carries around in his head a list of stories that he would have given his eyeteeth to have written. Some are scoops on which you were beaten. Some are exposés for which you wish you could claim credit. But the most uncomfortably remembered stories are those where you might have said—but did not—that somebody is doing a helluva job in public office. Bill Steiger had done that kind of a job ever since he came to the House of Representatives… . Steiger was a man of exceptional talent, integrity and drive. But there are more than a few of his kind in politics. It would honor his memory if we occasionally wrote about them, too—before they die.”

In his own turn, columnist George Will was equally praiseworthy. “It was not chance that advanced Steiger to the front rank of his party and his profession. But chance has done what only chance could do: It has prevented him from completing what would have been one of the most distinguished careers Congress has known. It would be doing less than justice to Steiger,” Will continued, “to say only that he was a superb legislative craftsman. He also resembled another bundle of useful energy from the upper Midwest. It may seem a contradiction in terms to speak of anyone as a ‘Republican Hubert Humphrey,’ but Steiger exemplified what Humphrey called ‘the politics of joy.’ Plainly put, he loved his profession, and it showed.”

It would appear to be less than chance that Steiger should be compared to one of the Fellowship's great congressional champions, Hubert H. Humphrey who, since his election to the Senate in 1948, always hosted a Fellow and served on the program's Advisory Committee. As rumor had it, he was routinely given his choice of a Fellow from among succeeding classes. And, when Senator Humphrey moved into the vice president's office in 1965, the APSA Congressional Fellowship Program moved with him. Among his key staff was John Stewart, a 29-year-old scholar turned politician who would be in charge of program development, talent scouting, and general research. Like Senator Humphrey, Representative Steiger hosted a Fellow every year of his service in the Congress.

From their perch on his staff, these Fellows would have participated in the work of the Ways and Means Committee, on one of the first successful efforts to change capital gains legislation, in Steiger's co-authorship of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the tenacious congressional oversight which made it a civilizing influence on the American workplace, in his ground-breaking work on the original ethics reform package, in his push to establish a “volunteer” military service, and in his participation on a select committee in 1973 and 1974 dealing with the organization of the committee structure of the House. Representative Steiger said as much at the 20^th anniversary of the Fellowship in 1973 where he was joined by such congressional luminaries as Senators Hubert Humphrey and Edward Kennedy and Representative Morris Udall. “While the focus is to provide a learning experience for the Fellow and a better understanding of the legislative process,” Steiger said, “all of the Fellows in my office have undertaken substantive assignments on legislative and constituent matters. The variety of assignments undertaken is staggering. They research legislation for members, help develop legislation, write reports, brief members on committee and floor activities, respond to constituent mail, arrange hearings, meet with lobbyists, serve as aides in trips to the district or in international conferences and represent the member at meetings and conferences. The value of the Program is beyond question. Members, Fellows, and outside observers all attest to the value of the experience for not only Members and Fellows, but for the Congress as a whole and for the agencies and groups with whom the Fellows have contact after the program.”

And, in a larger sense, the Fellows would have absorbed a view of Congress from an institutionalist. As Steiger's Wisconsin Democratic colleague Representative David Obey stated it, “he understood that the proper role of the minority party was not to savage the majority, but to look for constructive alternatives and to define better alternatives. Much to our chagrin,” Obey noted, “he did that often, and the Nation was better off for it. So was the minority party and so, I submit, was the majority party.”

When the APSA Congressional Fellowship Program joined in the remembrance of William Steiger, it was to become something of a family affair. His widow, Janet Steiger, became a generous supporter of the Fellowship and benefactor to the Steiger Fund, went on to become chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and was a long-time member of the Advisory Committee. For a number of years, the outside review panel which selects the political scientists and journalists in each class of Fellows has honored a particularly promising political scientist by designating that individual the William A. Steiger Fellow. The honorees, and their current institutional affiliation, have included Lyn Ragsdale (University of Illinois, Chicago), C. Lawrence Evans (College of William & Mary), Craig A. Rimmerman (Hobart & William Smith College), Ronald G. Shaiko (Dartmouth College), Robin A. Kolodny (Temple University), Timothy S. Prinz (Community Health Institute, Affinity Health Plan), Frederick Carl Walton (Morris Brown College), Diana Dwyre (California State University, Chico), David Leal (University of Texas, Austin), Andrew Taylor (North Carolina State University), Jay Barth (Hendrix College), Fiona Wright, Frances Lee (University of Maryland), Jennifer Nicholl Victor (University of Pittsburgh), Colleen J. Shogan (George Mason University), and Kathryn C. Lavelle (Case Western Reserve University).

A fund, which initially envisioned supplementing the stipend for a political science Fellow, was also created in his memory. This was somewhat overtaken by the 1991 MCI endowment which, with wise investments, all but insured that the political scientists and journalists would be supported in perpetuity. A wiser use of the Steiger Fund appeared to be to assist former political science Fellows with support for future research done in the Washington, D.C. area. The final argument in that logic was the inauguration of the APSA Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs. Located on the 3^rd floor of the APSA offices, the Center would provide office space, phones, computers, Internet access, a fax, a printer, and a copier, the nucleus of a library, and a congenial atmosphere for the presentation of ongoing research for up to 10 scholars. To date, most of the Centennial Fellows have been advanced graduate students and younger faculty from U.S. campuses, but the group has also included international scholars from countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Ukraine. The costs for residence at the Centennial Center are $400 per month for stays of less than six months, $300 for stays of more than six, and short stays at $75 per week.

At that point, serendipity played its role. The Fellowship discovered, almost by accident, that 2003–2004 Fellow Marian Currinder, assistant professor at the College of Charleston, had applied and been accepted to spend several months in the summer of 2005 as a Centennial Fellow. In the absence of any financial support from her university, the Steiger Fund was used for the first time to help defray the costs of using the Center. Marian's project last summer looked at member-to-member and member-to-party fundraising as a partial product of the 1970s institutional reforms. The reforms, together with changes in the chamber's membership, more active parties-in-government, and shifts in the sociopolitical environment, have together helped create a more competitive and atomistic environment in the House.

As belated as the Fellowship's effort to broaden the awareness of this new opportunity has been, conversations among former Fellows has already taken up some of the slack. This summer Marian will return to the Centennial Center and will be joined by 2001–2002 political science Fellow Elizabeth Oldmixon of the University of North Texas. In addition to a book project, the two of them will examine House member support for fiscally conservative policy as a function of member ideology, party affiliation, majority/minority status, and support for the president, together with district-level variables. Using data from 1992–2004, they model member support scores under two different administrations, one in which there were budget surpluses and the other in which there were budget deficits. The project explores whether member support for fiscally conservative policy is consistent across administrations, or whether it fluctuates depending upon members' majority/minority status, support for the president and party leadership, and personal political ambition (among other variables). Dummy variables are created to measure the cross-time support scores for Democratic members of the Blue Dog Coalition and Republican members who were elected in 1994 (and signed the “Contract with America”) in order to gauge whether these self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives are more consistent in their support than other members. For more on these Centennial Center Scholars' other projects, turn to page 579 of this issue.

Hopefully this is the beginning of a longer-term trend in which former Congressional Fellows will return to the scene of their Fellowship experience to build upon research ideas that were acquired at that time. Certainly this would be in the growing tradition of the Centennial Center as it bridges the discipline with the larger world of public affairs—an arena which has been the environment of the Fellowship now for more than 50 years.