Former Congressmen Tom Davis and Martin Frost presented a lecture on “The Partisan Divide: Congress in Crisis” at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, MI on October 27, 2015. With a combined 40 years in Congress, Davis and Frost have joined forces “in an effort to save Congress from itself”.

Together they joined with Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen to author “The Partisan Divide”. The book examines the reasons for legislative gridlock in Congress and offers a common sense bi-partisan plan for making our Congress function effectively again.

Tom Davis is a former Republican Congressman who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 until 2008. Davis represented the 11th congressional district in Northern Virginia and his tenure included serving as the Ranking Member, and also Chairman, of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He is currently Director of Federal Affairs for Deloitte Consulting and is a Professor at George Mason University.

Martin Frost is a former Democratic Congressman who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1979 until 2005. Frost represented the 24th congressional district in Texas, near Dallas / Fort Worth, and his tenure included serving as the Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He is currently an attorney at Polsinelli Law Firm and Co-Chair of the Circles program for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Tom Davis spoke first about how he, a partisan Republican, and Frost, a partisan Democrat, first connected while in Congress. He recalled how the two would participate in talk shows together and then they would compare notes after the shows. They soon realized that they agreed on what ailed American politics, which was how they began to author “The Partisan Divide”. Their lecture previewed how the legislative gridlock became so bad in Washington, D.C., the present state of the troubles in Congress and solutions.

Davis presented three key reasons for the polarization of Congress in its current state which has caused the shrinking of the American political middle. The reasons first included redistricting, with no-contest elections and severely gerrymandered heavily-favored partisan districts; second was the current media business models, with talk radio and cable news shows concentrating on built-in audiences and reporting solely for their point of view and no equal time amongst policies or politicians; and third was the money in politics, with money now being moved from the political parties where outside groups are now outspending the parties and candidates. Davis also presented various reports and data on both voting trends and partisan movements of the US House and the country over the last 30 years showing the growing divide from the middle of the road.

Frost presented some of solutions to answer the partisan divide in Congress and throughout the country in order to help make government effective again. The reasons included solving the redistricting problem. While gerrymandering is a legal practice utilized by both parties it creates issues for incumbents as they must bend good government decisions and deter from comprising with the opposite political party to govern to win the primary. The only competitive contest is the primary as the general election is all but already decided in almost 80% of the U.S. House races across the country. Their solution would be to have each state appoint non-partisan commissions to draw its congressional districts, leaving the political parties out of it. More competitive districts would increase communication between the two parties as they would need to comprise more and come back to the middle.

Another solution is to truly reform campaign finance by having the FEC and/or Congress pass laws to detail the limits and sphere of coordination between campaigns and third party organizations such as SuperPACs. With no limit on outside fundraising, there must be stricter perimeters on how candidates and their campaigns can communicate and work with third parties. Increasing turnout in primaries, having all of the primaries on the same day throughout the country and returning the earmark to Congress would also help the solution.

Both Tom Davis and Martin Frost participated in a Q&A following their presentation.

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