I am the Newton Family Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary, where I have been on the faculty since 1987. My main research and teaching interests are in the area of American national institutions. I am the author of two books: Congress Under Fire: Reform Politics and the Republican Majority, with Walter Oleszek (Houghton Mifflin, 1997) and Leadership in Committee: A Comparative Analysis of Leadership Behavior in the U.S. Senate (University of Michigan Press, 1991, 2001), as well as a number of articles and book chapters about congressional politics.

I have several ongoing research projects. One is an analysis of partisan coalition building in Congress. With funding from the National Science Foundation and along with a team of William and Mary students, I am coding extensive data from the archival records of past party whip counts. Currently, whip count data have been collected for House Democrats, 1955-86, and for House Republicans, 1975-80 and 1989-90. As part of the project, I intend to collect analogous whip materials for the Senate and more recent data for the House. As the multi-year project proceeds, these data will be made available to the entire research community via an elaborate project website. Not too long ago, a New York Times political blog featured an entry about the project and the role of congressional whips in general.

Over the years, I have served in a variety of staff positions in Congress and I enjoy advising students about professional opportunities on Capitol Hill. From 1991-92, I was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, working in the personal office of former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, D-Indiana. From 1992-93, I was Mr. Hamilton’s staff associate on the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. During 2003-07, I was co-editor of the Legislative Studies Quarterly, the leading scholarly journal specializing in legislatures.

I received my Ph. D. in political science from the University of Rochester, where I was fortunate to be able to take courses from Professors Richard F. Fenno, Jr., William H. Riker, and Larry M. Bartels, among other scholars. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to coauthor publications with congressional scholars of the caliber of Rick Hall, Dan Lipinski, and Walter Oleszek.