Vision, belief, and effort. In 1994, Republicans – led by Newt Gingrich – won the U.S. House, flipping 54 seats, stunning the Democrats. They were in shock, the first loss of majority power since 1952. That year, Maine Republicans also saw big legislative gains. Why – and to what end?
The reasons behind the 1994 victory – arguably – are three.
First, Republicans, Independents (today also called Unaffiliated), and Democrats had grown tired of Democrat monopoly power, their stranglehold on Congress through eight presidents, and a sense that they were entitled to power – no need to earn votes, no need for accountability.
Second, the Republicans set forth a clear, simple, highly resonant agenda, a positive, thoughtful set of concrete objectives. They can be reduced to three: less regulation, lower taxes, and stronger defense and public safety, but were shaped into a multi-point “Contract with America.”
People everywhere, in all times, for all sorts of reasons, tire of unaccountable government. In a republic, they have the chance – every few years – to flip the government, start over again, and be heard.
Often, this is an outcome slow in coming, as voters do not vote. They give up, get lazy, punt that chance, imagine their local representative, senator, legislator is not as bad as they seem. But sometimes, the pot boils over. They see the truth. They revolt at the ballot box. That was the year.
Third, beyond monopoly power, beyond a clear agenda, Republicans swore they would change the way government worked, fundamentally change it, do real oversight, unearth wrongdoing, and go after it – and they did, producing subsequent victories. I was there, on the field, so to speak.
In 1995, hired to be part of the Gingrich revolution, I served as chief counsel and staff director for the largest part of the oversight committee – responsible for finding waste, fraud, abuse, and going after the perpetrators within Justice, Defense, State, and NASA. I was dual-hatted, ran the Speaker’s Task Force on Counter-Narcotics for Gingrich.
The result was Musk before Musk, a blizzard of investigations into the mis-, mal-, and non-feasance in the Clinton Administration. I ran the Waco investigation, months long, 98 witnesses, 13 days of 12-hour hearings, all on C-SPAN, criminal referrals, Janet Reno under oath, massive reports. I did counternarcotics investigations, starting with Nancy Reagan.
Over five years, we unearthed hundreds of failures. I ran the first investigation ever done into illegal immigration in 1996, and the Clinton-Gore machine linking thousands to Democrat voting “non-profits” – then produced the criminal referrals, including for the agency head.
Main point is, what matters – to most of us, voters of all stripes – is a government we can trust, one that does not lie to us, one that is built on accountability, a positive agenda, and real oversight.
Missing for years under Obama, Biden, and prior administrations is any real oversight, a sense that the federal government is under any kind of control, that waste, fraud, and abuse are being stopped.
That is now a focus of the Trump administration, and rightly so. There is comfort in that, even if oversight makes people uneasy; the bureaucracy – at every level – likes to bamboozle, hide, and defeat oversight. They abhor accountability, the way cockroaches hate light.
I learned how to beat the bureaucracy, and Maine is overdue for that kind of oversight, easier in a state. A Democrat governor, legislature, and constitutional officers, all one party, in power for 30 of 32 years, must go. They are corrupt. They are hurting Maine. That is why THE voters will, in 2026, likely throw them ALL out – as Gingrich shocked Democrats in 1994. Then, at last, clean up begins.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).
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