Danny Glover

Torres’ loyalty to the Democratic leadership in Congress and its key constituencies, including organized labor, helped earn him a deputy whip’s post in the 102nd Congress and a seat on the Appropriations Committee in the 103rd Congress.

After the 1994 election, when voters booted Democrats out of the House majority for the first time in four decades, Filner had a harder time making headway with his philosophy of “practical politics defined by a true commitment to progressive ideals.

Kingston, who took the 1st out of Democratic hands in 1992, got a thank you from the GOP leadership at the start of the 104th Congress, in the form of a seat on the Appropriations Committee.

“Send a Working Man to Congress,” was Collins’ campaign slogan in 1992, and this high school-educated trucking company owner quickly worked himself into a good spot in the House, taking a seat on the Ways and Means Committee in 1995.

McKinney scored a comfortable victory in the newly drawn, white-majority 4th District. Only one-third of the district’s voting-age population is black, compared with 64 percent in her old 11th, yet McKinney won by double-digit margins.

After Republicans took control of the House, Deal drew attention for his plan to overhaul the welfare system. Then, to the chagrin of Democrats and delight of Republicans, Deal announced that he was joining the GOP.

The first Democrat in state history to win a third Senate term, Harkin gives Iowans a leading voice on agriculture issues with his ascension to the ranking minority post on the Senate Agriculture Committee in the 105th Congress.

Sawyer’s move onto the Commerce Committee at the start of the 105th Congress finally gives this diligent and detail-minded Democrat a place on a plum committee, something he had sought for a number of years.

With the retirement of Democratic Sen. J. Bennett Johnston in 1996, Breaux became Louisiana’s senior senator. And with Republican Mike Foster in the governor’s office, Breaux also is now the leading voice for Democrats in his state.

McCrery turned in a studious and restrained first term on the Ways and Means Committee in the 103rd Congress, but after Republicans gained control of the House in the 104th he became a prominent activist in the committee’s social-policy work.

As the new chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Thompson found himself in a familiar position: investigating the alleged abuses of a sitting president. This time, his subject was a Democrat, President Clinton.

Just reelected to a third term, Rockefeller has adopted two seemingly contradictory political personas during his 12-year Senate tenure: consummate compromiser and party loyalist. He played both roles in the 104th Congress.