year-old male page in 1973. Because the age of con-
sent in the District of Columbia was sixteen, the rela-
tionships were not illegal, but they raised serious eth-
ical concerns regarding potential abuses of power
and authority.
Reprimand was the mildest possible punishment
the House could impose on its members. Dissat-
isfied with the Ethics Committee’s recommenda-
tion, Republican representative Newt Gingrich of
Georgia introduced a motion to expel Crane and
Studds from the House altogether. As a compromise
between these two extremes, the House voted 420
to 3 to issue a censure, a formal condemnation of
the representatives’ conduct. Crane subsequently
acknowledged having a consensual relationship
with a page and issued a tearful apology to his fellow
representatives. Studds admitted to exercising poor
judgment by engaging in sex with a subordinate but
insisted that his relationship with the page was
consensual, legal, and private. The page later ap-
peared publicly with Studds in support of his stance.
Crane won the Republican nomination for his con-
gressional seat in 1984 but lost the general election
and returned to Illinois to resume practice as a den-
tist. Studds won reelection to the House in 1984
and was subsequently reelected to six more terms.
Gingrich, having developed a reputation as an en-
forcer of ethical conduct in the House, subsequently
brought charges against House Speaker Jim Wright
in 1987, forcing him to resign from his position as
Speaker.
Impact The Congressional page sex scandal marked
the first time that the U.S. Congress had voted to
censure a member for sexual misconduct. The bi-
partisan scandal intensified the public distrust of
government that pervaded American politics follow-
ing the Watergate scandal, and it prompted a lengthy
exchange of allegations and investigations of mis-
conduct by public officials from both major political
parties that continued to resonate throughout Amer-
ican politics into the twenty-first century. The scan-
dal also led to reforms of the congressional page pro-
gram, including the establishment of a minimum
age of sixteen for pages.
Subsequent Events Studds, the first openly gay
member of Congress, remained in the House of
Representatives until his retirement in 1997, and in
2004 he married his longtime male companion in a
legal ceremony in Massachusetts. He died in Octo-
ber, 2006. Gingrich was elected Speaker of the House
in 1995 and was subsequently accused of various eth-
ical violations of his own, which contributed to his
resignation from Congress in 1999.Further Reading
Hilton, Stanley G., and Anne-Renee Testa.Glass
Houses: Shocking Profiles of Congressional Sex Scan-
dals and Other Unofficial Misconduct. New York: St.
Martin’s Paperbacks, 1998.
Tolchin, Martin, and Susan J. Tolchin.Glass Houses:
Congressional Ethics and the Politics of Venom. Boul-
der, Colo.: Westview Press, 2003.
Michael H. BurchettSee also Abscam; Congress, U.S.; Elections in the
United States, 1984; Iran-Contra affair; Scandals.Conservatism in U.S. politics
Definition A political ideology that tends to
support tradition, authority, established
institutions, states’ rights, liberal individualism,
and limiting the political and fiscal power of the
federal governmentSome twenty-five years in the making, the conservative
movement achieved political success in the 1980’s under
President Ronald Reagan. It effectively attacked the welfare
liberalism of the 1960’s and, in foreign affairs, pursued a
more aggressive policy against communism.Conservatism in the 1980’s can be properly under-
stood only by placing it within the context of the re-
volt against so-called Big Government liberalism
that began in the mid-1950’s under the leadership of
William F. Buckley and his journal,National Review.
Buckley’s “fusionist” collaboration of conservatives
and free market libertarians foreshadowed the coali-
tion President Ronald Reagan would assemble in
the 1980’s. Also crucial was the growth of the New
Right, a populist movement that had its origins in
the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign of 1963-
1964 and that also stressed free market values com-
bined with opposition to the expansion of the federal
government. In the 1970’s, the rise of the Religious
Right, closely allied to the New Right and shaped by
such organizations as the Moral Majority, also con-
tributed to the growth of conservative dominance
within the Republican Party. Additionally, the 1970’sThe Eighties in America Conservatism in U.S. politics 247