A new term in Congress is weeks away, meaning a new class of freshmen—itching to get to work and eager to make a name for themselves—will soon be sworn in. But some of these incoming members have another goal, too.
Nearly two years after Jan. 6, the new crop of freshman lawmakers are trying to bridge the partisan divides of a deeply fractured Congress. They are trying to work across the aisle and accomplish bipartisan goals. In plainspeak, Democrats and Republicans are trying to be friends—though they might not always want to show it.
Members of Congress, in the House in particular, have seen their bipartisan camaraderie drop dramatically in recent years. The Jan. 6 insurrection made the situation worse, but four years of Trump had already driven a nasty, MAGA-tinged wedge between the two parties. Lawmakers told The Daily Beast earlier this year it’d become hard to hold up the once casual conversations they had with opposing members. The air in the Capitol was—and at times, still is—thick with resentment.
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But those collegial relationships had a purpose, beyond giving members room for small talk in committee rooms and Capitol elevators; they helped lower the temperature of a chamber that’s heated by hyper-polarized districts across the nation. The House is not like the so-called “cooling saucer” of the Senate. The House is spicy—the House is weird.
This term’s freshman members could be a fresh start. And they could help ease some of those divisions, if they want to.
Rep.-elect Jeff Jackson (D-NC), for instance, told The Daily Beast he was especially excited for the Capitol Christmas tree lighting this year. The tall, intricately decorated red spruce was from his beloved home state. But running late to the ceremony, he joined the North Carolina delegation in a remaining empty seat alongside Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC). Jackson said it was his “first opportunity to sort of sit with him and speak for a few moments.”
Budd just won a seat in the Senate against Democrat Cheri Beasley. He’s a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. And he’s every bit the hard-right Republican that Beasley tried to paint him as during the campaign.
And yet, Jackson said there was an ease to the moment. “There probably is something to the fact that the first real conversation I’ve had with this guy was literally during the lighting of the Capitol Christmas Tree,” Jackson said.
“It probably does make it harder to go scorched earth against someone whose acquaintance you gained—or you know, whose first conversation was had under those circumstances,” he continued.
Recently out of their new-member orientations, this freshman class has now had opportunities like this to start meeting their opposing colleagues.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told The Daily Beast he introduced himself to “a number of the Democratic members from New York,” and is hoping to find a time to meet with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), too. He said he wants to build relationships with members he can work with, even if they “fundamentally disagree.”
“At some point in the new Congress, I certainly would be interested in having a New York delegation meeting… to find commonality and importance of dealing with some issues that are meaningful to New York,” Lawler said.
Rep.-elect Nikki Budzinski (D-IL) told The Daily Beast she’s met with Republicans from her neighboring districts including Reps. Mary Miller (R-IL) and Mike Bost (R-IL). She also met with freshman Rep.-elect Zach Nunn, an incoming Republican from Iowa.
“We talked a lot about agriculture… In the course of that conversation, he invited me to his state fair. I invited him to my state fair. I think that's where it really begins, it’s relationships,” Budzinski said.
Rep.-elect Greg Casar (D-TX) told The Daily Beast he got to know his fellow Texas Rep.-elect Nathaniel Moran (R). Casar said the two men “probably disagree with almost every major issue,” but still took time to chat.
“We were kind and talked about each other’s families to each other in the hallways. Got to know each other a little bit. But I’m looking forward to more opportunities for us to really get to know each other as people,” Casar said, later adding he hopes to meet more fellow members at the gym or in the cafeteria.
Casar pointed to times during new-member orientation like the office-selection event as moments where freshmen could come together, if even working for opposing causes. All joined in the same room, members were pulling random numbered buttons out of a box, which assigned each freshman their turn to head to the office buildings to pick a figurative home for the next two years.
When a member pulled a low number, meaning they got to pick their office earlier, everyone rejoiced. When a member got a high number, others playfully consoled them. Some offices, like those in the Longworth or Cannon House office buildings, are largely considered more desirable. They’re more recently renovated, easier commutes, and have better food. The other option, the Rayburn office building, is known to be a confusing labyrinth.
It was the first time since the onset of COVID that members did office selections in-person, adding an opportunity to bond that the last class didn’t have. It was genuine fun, per Casar.
“People cheer for each other, support one another,” he said.
To be sure, even the bipartisan events weren’t immune from partisanship.
“Somebody yelled ‘Let’s go Brandon’ at the top of his voice there at some point and kind of tried to mess it up,” Casar said of the office-selection event. “But I think most people ignored that.”
As these freshman members get closer to their swearing-ins, there is a catch to their budding bipartisan bonds: they might not want to put them on display.
There are political liabilities—for better or worse—to members from differing parties publicly associating themselves. What if a cheeky moment or picture with an opposing member is used in your re-election? What if an opposing member you showed camaraderie with becomes the next ire of your base? Will your voters understand it’s collegial, or could ad makers construe it into something bigger?
Rep.-elect Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) told The Daily Beast he suspects those bipartisan friendships never really went away in the aftermath of Jan. 6 or during the fraught Trump years. They’ve just gone into the shadows, he said.
“When the cameras aren’t on, right, there’s a lot of relationships in Washington that still exist,” Moskowitz said. “But what’s happening is that, because people are so divided at home, and they’re so divided on social media, members don’t want to be seen with each other.”
The reality for many members after Jan. 6 was that they pretended to get along with members from the opposite party a lot more than they were pretending to be enemies.
Jackson told The Daily Beast about another moment during House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s floor speech announcing she’s stepping back from leadership. The incoming congressman said he ventured physically across the aisle to say hello to a Republican “who I'd never met in person but whose campaign I followed on social media.”
“We wound up talking for several minutes. The conversation immediately became about our hope that we could find a way to work together. I don't know to what extent that's going to happen, but I know we both meant it while we were talking to each other. It was really refreshing,” he said.
Asked to name that Republican he spent a moment with, however, Jackson declined. He didn’t want to put that member in the awkward public position of hanging out with a Democrat. In private allegiances, he said, members have more flexibility to be human.
“I want to preserve that to the maximum extent. I don't want to make that situation even worse by outing them, I guess,” he added.
Moskowitz argued the key to restoring some collegiality in Congress is to bring those relationships into the light.
“If we want Americans to be less divided at home, then we have to be less divided in Washington… It doesn't mean we're going to agree, but we have to provide the example,” Moskowitz said.
Budzinski said she knows not every member is ready to make nice, but considers it important to try. She thinks voters would reward members finding connections across the aisle—not punish it.
Not to mention, with the House run by Republicans and the Senate run by Democrats, it will take some sort of bipartisan collaboration for practically anything to get done over the next two years.
“There’s going to be many places where we are going to disagree, I’m not hiding from that. But I do still think that we all care about our communities,” Budzinski said. “And so it’s a commitment to trying to find those places where we can agree.”
