Austin, Texas. -- To understand the extraordinary impact of Newt Gingrich on the Republican party, you only have to check out the GOP candidates for open or Democratic House seats this fall.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, the model for aspiring Republican representatives was Jack Kemp. Now Mr. Gingrich is the model. He has a positive message, but he's also tough, partisan, impatient and a high-energy foe of everything liberal. "Bomb-thrower is a word you often hear," says Dan Leonard of the National Republican Congressional Committee. In the midterm election Tuesday, there are hundreds of Gingrich-like bomb-throwers running for Congress.
Democrats are terrified. "We can't turn over the House to 100-plus Newt Gingriches," Democratic Rep. Sandy Levin of Michigan recently told a rally in a Detroit suburb.
Mr. Levin has the Newtoids pegged wrong. They want to gain power, then tear the institution apart. They scorn the accommodationist approach of retiring House Republican Leader Bob Michel of Illinois. "They're less interested in institutional niceties," says Stuart Rothenberg, a conservative political analyst. Steve Gill, challenging Democratic Rep. Bart Gordon in a Tennessee district outside Nashville, wants to revolutionize Congress, making it "a part-time citizen-legislature" with House terms limited to 10 years and Congress subject to "every law which it has already applied to the rest of us."
Mr. Gingrich's followers aren't all whitebread clones. Take Jo Baylor, who's seeking the House seat in Austin from which Democratic Rep. Jake Pickle is retiring. Ms. Baylor is a single mother. She runs her own real-estate business and owns a company that sells toilet seats. She speaks Spanish. She's pro-choice. She's eager to protect landowners from "takings" by the federal government. She introduced Mr. Gingrich at the Capitol rally during which more than 300 House candidates, including her, signed the GOP "Contract with America." Ms. Baylor, 43, is also black.
Like many other Newtoids, Jo Baylor is seeking office for the first time. John Shadegg, 44, an attorney running for an open Republican seat in Phoenix, regards Mr. Gingrich as "everybody's example in terms of ideas." Mr. Shadegg, whose father was a senior adviser to Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign in 1964, met with Mr. Gingrich a year ago in Washington. "We wanted to talk to him about ideas. We wanted an agenda."
The Georgian, Mr. Shadegg said, "recognizes politics is controlled by ideas. He knows it's not just a matter of holding ideas, but doing something with them." Mr. Shadegg echoes Mr. Gingrich. "The particular issue I'm interested in is cutting down the beast" he told me. He was referring to the federal government. Mr. Shadegg signed the Contract with America, too.
Mr. Gingrich's effect on Republican candidates is no accident. For years, his scheduler has been under instructions to set time aside for any Republican congressional candidate who comes to Washington. "Virtually every candidate has been through my office," he says.
Mr. Gill, who played basketball at the University of Tennessee with Bernard King, was a White House fellow when he got to know Mr. Gingrich in 1993. "You could spend a day with a congressman or senator, and I thought he'd be neat to spend a day with," says Mr. Gill. He was impressed. "I got an insider look at what he really does. He spends a lot of the day focusing on policy. As a pro-active conservative, he's a model, and correctly so."
Much of Mr. Gingrich's influence comes from GOPAC, the political action committee he's headed since 1986. GOPAC holds seminars for candidates, distributes thousands of audio cassettes and videotapes and provides telephone access to Mr. Gingrich every Thursday evening. He is the star of the tapes. Joe Gaylord, a GOPAC honcho, says: "One reason candidates are like him is that for eight years they've gotten training material from him that emphasizes that type of candidacy." Talk to a Re- publican House candidate and invariably he or she has devoured the GOPAC cassettes and videotapes. "I'm like a believer and a fan," says Ms. Baylor. "They have an ability to energize you."
Candidates plagiarize Mr. Gingrich's best lines. A favorite is this staple: "It is impossible to maintain civilization with 12-year-olds having babies, 15-year-olds killing each other, 17-year-olds dying of AIDS and 18-year-olds receiving diplomas they cannot read."
Mr. Gill cites the Gingrich riff in denying he's a right-wing extremist. What's "radical," he says, is the social condition described by Mr. Gingrich. Ms. Baylor has her own version: "It is impossible to maintain civilization with 12-year-olds having babies and carrying coloring books to the delivery room, 14-year-olds taking guns to school to feel safe, 15-year-olds killing each other, 16-year-olds dying of AIDS because they haven't learned the meaning of abstinence, 18-year-olds getting diplomas they can't read, 21-year-olds who are grandmothers, 31-year-olds who've never held a job, and 65-year-olds who sleep on the floor out of fear of drive-by shootings." When Ms. Baylor delivered that broadside at the Texas GOP convention last July, she got a standing ovation.
Jo Baylor is a favorite of Mr. Gingrich and his GOPAC operatives. She became a Republican in 1979 after a conversation with former President Richard Nixon. Married at the time to the former Baltimore Oriole Don Baylor, now manager of the Colorado Rockies, she attended a birthday party for Nixon at Anaheim Stadium in California. He asked why more minorities weren't Republicans, which got her thinking: "Once you get a mortgage and a child, you become a Republican, or at least more conservative."
Ms. Baylor returned to her hometown of Austin in 1984, got a degree at the University of Texas and started a business. Her first foray into politics was in 1992 when she opposed designating a large area near Austin off-limits to development because it's the habitat of the golden-cheeked warbler. Shortly after Representative Pickle announced his retirement, she jumped into the House race, defeating two white men in the primary.
Attending a Republican candidate school in Washington, she learned of GOPAC, got its collection of cassettes and tapes and met Newt Gingrich. His style has rubbed off. She's a relentless, issue-oriented campaigner. This Democrat-leaning district is rough turf for a Republican. Yet she's an unflinching Newtoid. Last May, she conferred with Texas Lieutenant Gov. Bill Hobby, a Democrat. He offered to endorse her and raise money if she promised not to vote for Mr. Gingrich for speaker of the House. No way, she said.
Fred Barnes is a senior editor of The New Republic, in which this article first appeared.