The man behind SpeakerPelosi’s smooth operation of the House

Meet Jerry Hartz: a member of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s inner circle, a passionate believer in government, a lover of literature and the owner of a cherry-red 1965 Corvette.

As Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) director of floor operations, Hartz’s job is to run the House floor like a Rolex, minimizing drama and — by all means — avoiding anything resembling the three-hour vote Republicans held in the middle of the night in 2003 to pass the Medicare Prescription Drug Act.

{mosads}Hartz knows from spending two decades on Capitol Hill — 12 in the minority — that a floor blowup can become a rallying moment for the beleaguered opposition.

He went to work for Pelosi in 2001 after 14 years serving Democratic Whip David Bonior (Mich.).

A native of Pleasantville, Iowa, Hartz got into politics shortly after graduating from Central College, a small liberal-arts school in his home state.

“When Reagan was elected, that energized me,” he recalls.

Hartz took a job in New York City with Bread for the World, which lobbies on issues related to global hunger, and later moved to a position with SANE, a group that worked on nuclear arms control.

Hartz got to know Bonior, his first boss on Capitol Hill, while working on arms control in Central America for SANE. Bonior was a strong House critic of U.S. aid to Contra rebels in Nicaragua and the U.S.-backed government in El Salvador.

Hartz came to Capitol Hill in 1987, the same year Pelosi was elected to Congress. He’s one of the few staffers left who remembers the bickering of a fractured Democratic Caucus prior to the Republican takeover in 1994.

“I think it’s extremely important that a majority — or a minority — have unity,” said Hartz. “It was hard, at the end of our time in the early ’90s, for us to keep maintaining our majority. We had too many splits in our caucus.”

Pelosi, of course, also remembers. This is why she has made party unity one of her highest priorities, instilling a steely discipline in a group, as Will Rogers once quipped, not traditionally known for its organizational strength.

Pelosi’s signature accomplishment as minority leader was to keep Democrats tightly unified, even on issues where liberals and conservatives disagreed. Her strategy put the burden on Republican leaders, who could not count on Democratic votes, to force members of their own conference to vote against the politics of their home districts.

“DeLay often operated with threats, even threatening people in their own districts,” Hartz said of former GOP leader Tom DeLay (Texas).

“Having your own caucus’s politics figured out is very critical,” said Hartz. “First of all, you’re not going to pass things if you’re not unified. And secondly, the more unified the party is, the more it speaks as a voice.

“The hardest thing is for different parts of the caucus to be saying different things. Even though you’re able to pass things, it undercuts your whole argument.”

Pelosi unveiled her leadership style as Speaker during the epic caucus debates over the Iraq war in 2007. Pelosi gathered her caucus for hours upon hours of meetings to hammer out a compromise between liberals and conservatives on war funding.

Hartz himself is a conductor of sorts. He works with aides to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who manages the floor day to day, Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who counts votes for each bill, and Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (Conn.), who calls the meetings where lawmakers hash out their views.

Hoyer’s office puts together a calendar of legislation ready for floor action, and Hartz makes sure everything is in place before a vote.

“We make sure all the pieces are in place, that this is the right time to do this and that we’re ready to go,” he said of the Speaker’s floor team.

Hartz also works closely with the Rules Committee, one of the chamber’s most powerful panels.

Rules is considered the Speaker’s committee and the source of much of Pelosi’s power. The panel structures the debate rules for legislation on the floor, sets the timeline for consideration and determines what amendments will be in order.

Despite the awesome power of the Rules Committee, the 15 minutes it takes to conduct a vote can become chaotic. That’s because Democrats have granted Republicans the right to offer motions to recommit pending legislation.

A motion to recommit “forthwith” amends legislation before sending it on to conference negotiations with the Senate. A motion to recommit “promptly,” however, sends a bill back to committee, killing it.

Pelosi’s floor team rarely knows what kind of motion Republicans will offer. The GOP often structures these amendments to occasion defections among conservative Democrats. Offering language to expand or protect gun ownership rights is a classic wedge tactic.

A motion to recommit often sets off scrambles by the floor team. As time on the big display board ticks down, its members must quickly understand the nature of the amendment, receive feedback from the relevant committee chairman and disperse advice to rank-and-file lawmakers.

Hartz notes proudly that Democrats have not lost a motion to send a bill back to committee. Hartz admits the accomplishment is not without its price.

“It’s pretty crazy,” he says of his schedule. “It’s as long as there’s legislative business.”

(Republicans might dispute that accomplishment, pointing to the controversial “stolen vote” from August 2007, which the GOP argued was 215-213 in its favor. Democrats cut it off at 214-214, and a special committee later determined that the correct result could not be established.)

Pelosi and her staff have a reputation for working long hours. If the Rules Committee is meeting at night, staff must stick around well into the night — and sometimes early morning.

Hartz finds some respite by spending off days with his wife and two children.

“I spend a lot of time at soccer games and basketball games; I do this job Monday through Friday and become a dad on the weekend.”

He likes to relax by reading literature, which grants him entry into “another world” where he can explore “core elements” such as “values, religion, life, death and love.”

He loves Wallace Stegner.

Befitting someone who works for Pelosi, an activist on carbon emissions and climate change, Hartz totes his kids around in a fuel-efficient hybrid car. But his life isn’t all solemn duty. He has captured his colleagues’ attention by zipping around town in a vintage red Corvette — on special occasions. The car has only 54,000 original miles on the odometer.