Fixing Congress: A New Batten Professor Shares Her Insights

To many, Congress can feel gridlocked. But to SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor, solutions are far from impossible. “My research shows that we can transform Congress with changes that are actually quite small, but that add up to make a major difference.” 

Gaynor, who joined the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in August, worked for years on Capitol Hill as a communications assistant, press secretary, and speechwriter. She was also selected during graduate school to serve as the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Public Service Fellow on the Select Committee for the Modernization of Congress. These experiences have profoundly shaped her research and teaching, first as a professor at the College of the Holy Cross and now at the Batten School. 

“Professor Gaynor brings a powerful synergy of real-world experience and rigorous empirical research that is so central to our work at Batten. Her insights into congressional reform not only advance the field, but also equip our students with the knowledge and tools to tackle the most complex leadership and policy challenges,” says Eileen Chou, associate dean for academic affairs at the Batten School. 

Gaynor’s time with the Modernization Committee in particular sparked her lasting interest in strengthening and reforming Congress. When the problems that plague the institution—like partisanship and power imbalances—loom large, she finds breaking them into pieces helps. That often comes down to something simple, she says: “just making Congress a better place to work.”

Empowering rank-and-file members of Congress

Since graduate school, Gaynor has been fascinated by how Congress has changed over time–and by how those changes have impacted not only how the institution works, but also how members connect with the American people. “We’d be reading these texts from the 1960s or 1980s, and I’d think, ‘This isn’t really how it is anymore,’” she says. “A lot of my research questions came out of the differences that I saw.” 

From her time in DC and her own academic research, Gaynor says she’s found that the average member of Congress doesn’t get to participate much in major legislation.Today, party leaders dominate not only the bill negotiation process, but also both internal and external communications—a situation that both leaves rank-and-file members disempowered to act on behalf of their constituents and perpetuates deep-seated partisanship.

“Much of my research asks, ‘How have party leaders come to control so much, and how do you undo that?’” Gaynor says. “I’m interested in ways Congress can be changed to allow for more voices.”

Her forthcoming book, under contract with the University of Chicago Press and titled Echo Chambers: How Partisan Communication Took Over Congress, dives deeper into how the unchecked power of party leaders is feeding our partisan environment—and what can be done about it. In the book, Gaynor says she emphasizes that rank-and-file members of Congress “don’t have the time or capacity to write or amend big bills, and often not even to read them.” Consequently, it’s the party leaders—with their well-funded and robustly staffed communications offices—who generate press releases, talking points, and other materials on the bills. These are then shared with other members and with journalists.

“The result is that many bills are viewed by members, constituents, and the media through a partisan lens,” Gaynor explains. “In reality, the vast majority of bills are passed along overwhelmingly bipartisan margins, but you would never know that.” 

In a paper recently accepted by The Journal of Politics, Gaynor and co-authors propose a more nuanced way to chart legislators’ ideological positions: by analyzing their floor speeches and social media posts (rather than simply how they vote on bills). By considering the public-facing aspects of congressional representation, Gaynor hopes to capture a more realistic view of how the chamber operates.

Rebuilding trust: Small tweaks, big results 

The challenges of rebalancing power in Congress and rebuilding the public’s trust in the institution are complex ones. But Gaynor remains confident that change is possible. The reforms she proposes in her scholarship are often surprisingly small—things like paying rank-and-file members and staff more, allowing members to hire staff with more experience and advanced degrees, and creating opportunities for bipartisan interaction among members of Congress.

“These might seem like minor fixes that won’t affect the overarching problem,” she says. “But they add up.” Gaynor points to the underresourced offices of rank-and-file members as an example. “You can’t overcome hyperpolarization if you don’t even have the resources to read legislation in your own office.”

One of Gaynor’s recent papers focuses on a Capitol Hill tradition that might seem insignificant: the Congressional Baseball Game. Since 1909, two teams of Congresspeople—one Democratic, one Republican—have played each other in an annual game of baseball. Gaynor wanted to know: Were members of Congress who played baseball together more likely to co-sponsor bills with their peers? She worked with a student to analyze relevant data, including team rosters and records of bill co-sponsorship, looking at data across four different congressional sessions.

Gaynor found that between 2015 and 2022, playing on the baseball team increased a person’s likelihood of co-sponsoring bills with other members of their party to an average of 54%. The increase in likelihood of bipartisan co-sponsorship was even higher, at 56%. Both figures are about 10 points higher than the rates for members who didn’t play baseball during that same period. 

Put another way, members who joined the team gained a median of nine additional co-sponsors, and many of those were bipartisan connections. Little fixes, like “more neutral social settings, removed from the chamber and campaign trail, create needed space for social bonds to form,” the paper asserts.

These days, well-supported bipartisan spaces for rank-and-file members (like the Congressional Baseball Game) are rare. That’s something Gaynor would like to see change. Especially in the context of a polarized and leader-controlled Congress, she says, “there needs to be a pressure release at the bottom where members can work together, out of the spotlight.”

Gaynor’s belief in realistic reform also makes it into the classroom. She hopes to impress upon students that change is possible, even in an age of disillusionment. “Our government is always reforming: our congress, our presidency and our courts are all vastly different than they were even five years ago,” she says. “My goal is to frame reform as something as doable—which it absolutely is.”