But even workaholic Fenwick wasn't quite prepared for a Congressman's workload. "I had no idea, no inkling, as to the scope and complexity of the job," she says now. "I had no idea that the mail would be so heavy, that there was this special responsibility of righting wrongs and easing the sufferings of individuals. There is no question that this is the busiest thing I've ever done. When I get home at night, I just have time to eat my spaghetti and go to bed."
Her conscience, it appears, is about the only thing that guides her voting. Certainly it is not her party label, because Fenwick's record bears little resemblance to the official Republican position. In fact, the liberal Americans for Democratic Action give her a higher approval rating than the Conservative Americans for Democratic Action give her a higher approval rating than the Conservative Americans for Constitutional Action. She has voted against the B-1 bomber, increased defense spending, and a measure to scuttle ratification of the ERA. She supported former President Jimmy Carter's human rights policy and worries about Reagan's approach to human rights abuses in foreign countries. Fenwick tells about the time she asked another representative how he was voting on amendments and got the response, "Staff says to vote no on everything but number two."
"I can't imagine living like that," Fenwick says. It would make me so nervous, giving that kind of power to someone else. Into whose hands do you commit your conscience?"
Her liberal views helped Fenwick strike up a special friendship with former New York representative Bella Abzug, an odd-couple combination, to say the least. Fenwick the aristocratic, cultured woman of wealth--an old friend of the Rockefellers and the Dillons--and Abzug, the tough and sassy daughter of a New York meat market owner.
Debate in the House chamber did give the two plenty to write about, for Fenwick remains true to the spirit of her party, supporting President Reagan's economic bills and sharing his belief that less government is best.
"We've got to cut back. The deficit is getting crazy. Congressmen are too concerned with getting elected and getting pork barrel programs for their states. They don't take time to think of the children inheriting the system, don't trust government, you see. I think that Democrats tend to believe that more government is the solution. The real reason I'm in this is because of my terrible discovery hat government can be so vicious. But of course there are times when government is the best answer. That was the case with civil rights."
That kind of approach has led observers to call Fenwick a liberal Republican, a label she scorns. "What is liberal about that?" she asks in reference to her support of civil rights and legal aid for homosexuals and women seeking abortions. "When you really think about it, these are actually conservative positions. I'm neither homosexual nor pregnant, but the Constitution guarantees everyone--no matter who or what he is--equal rights. I'm just sticking to the Constitution."
She prefers instead to think of herself as a no-nonsense legislator who calls the shots as she sees them. Her votes are cast only after absorbing hours of testimony and debate, as well as relying on the "practical experience" she acquired attending numerous community meetings and rallies as a New Jersey legislator. Probably the worst insult to hurl at Fenwick, other than to call her insensitive, would be to suggest that she is impractical. Freshman representative Barney Frank found that out when he accused her of being "theoretical." Fenwick, who had yielded the floor to the Massachusetts congressman during a House debate, reacted as though she had been accused of murder in the first degree. Promptly seizing the microphone, she glared at Frank and flailed her fist in the air.
"Mr. Chairman, I would like to reclaim my time. I never talk theory because I don't know theory. I only know practice."
"Will the gentlewoman yield? I believe the gentlewoman misunderstood me," Frank cut in, but Fenwick was still raging. "I never talk from theory!"
When Fenwick first came to Congress in 1975, she took Washingtonians by surprise. How could they know that the elegant, gracious Mrs. Fenwick was also an outspoken, steel-strapped pipe-smoker? As Bella Abzug told her, "Everyone expected you to be an uptight dowager." Perhaps Lacey Davenport, her caricature in the Doonesbury comic strip, explains best what Capitol Hill denizens really found. Charming and upbeat, she was unafraid to tangle with the personalities that might have had the power to end her career.
She leans back in her chair and muses about the Depression era, and for the moment she seems not at all the assertive Hepburn the press portrays her as--the one you see marching around the House floor, but rather like a grandmother. Only her pipe adulterates the image. She likes to reminesce, for instance, about the good old days when the family Packard was the big thing, or the time she hitchhiked through Texas.
"I was pretty then and a trucker drove up next to me and said 'You going to the depot? Want a ride sister?' I said 'You betcha, fella' and hopped right in." She is older now; her hair is silver, but she is still pretty. Somehow, it's not hard to imagine the Congresswoman from New Jersey doing the same thing today Illegible.