What's Driving Miss Shelia?

One of the people Lee dismissed was James Daily, an MIT graduate in engineering. He was one of Lee's most outspoken assistants, and one of the few who flatly refused most requests to drive Lee to events and perform personal services. Now working at a technology company in the Washington area, he views his time with Lee as an eye-opening, if extremely unpleasant, episode.

Daily, a political novice fresh out of school, landed the job with an entree provided by his grandparents, who were close friends of the late Mickey Leland, one of Lee's predecessors in the 18th District. Daily says he signed on with the congresswoman because she seemed "a very strident, opinionated person, the sort of person I tend to be. And forceful, seemingly intelligent. I thought, 'Okay, I can do this.' "

As a legislative assistant, Daily covered the Science Committee, one of Lee's major assignments, and one that she gave high priority. She had beaten Craig Washington in part because he took unpopular stands against the space station and the supercollider. Both Lee and Daily understood that for her district, a pro-technology position was a political necessity.

At first, Daily found his job challenging and interesting. He didn't mind that his days began at 8:30 a.m. and often lasted until late evening. The presence of chief of staff Pauline Higgins, a Houston lawyer who had left Exxon to run Lee's office, also helped. Higgins provided a buffer between the staff and Lee. During December 1995, for instance, Higgins told staffers to take the long Christmas-through-New Year's break that is standard in Congress. Lee, though, ordered them to stay. Eventually, Higgins confronted the congresswoman and told her that people had already made plans and bought airplane tickets, and that the holiday could not be revoked.

(Higgins is not able to give her own account of working for Lee. After Higgins left the staff, she had to threaten legal action to receive back pay from the congresswoman. One of the terms of their agreement was a confidentiality clause that prohibits Higgins from discussing her stint with Lee.)

Daily grew frustrated by Lee's insistence on amending almost every piece of legislation that moved in her committees, and often on the House floor, where amendments that haven't been approved in advance by party managers usually have no chance of acceptance.

"She didn't care what it was," he says. "She had no idea what she wanted, so we'd have to go find something that was at least halfway pertinent. It could be as minor as changing one number to another."

For a Medicare bill, Daily concocted an amendment to expand the coverage of mammography exams for women over a certain age. Like almost all Lee amendments, it was not accepted, and to her staff, the exercise seemed bizarre. "She knew they weren't going to allow any amendments," recalls Daily. "Everyone on Capitol Hill knows the Rules Committee wasn't going to allow amendments. Yet she had us do all this anyway."

Of an estimated 30 to 40 amendments the congresswoman put forth in her first term, only two offered on the House floor passed: one increasing the funding for the African Development Foundation, and another requiring the State Department to weigh Ethiopia's human-rights progress before awarding the country funds. Lee's office says several other amendments were accepted in committee. While those passage numbers are more than adequate for a freshman, former aides say Lee's barrage of amendments irritated fellow committee members, with little other effect.

When Lee sat for an interview with the Press, she defended her spew of amendments, explaining that former staffers didn't realize the value of the legislation they wrote. She produced an imposing list of "near passes" that she said would have become law if only Democrats had been in the majority. And she maintained that many of her former employees weren't used to laboring in the minority and having to fight for every bill. "This was a shocking experience to come into," she explained. "The good thing about me was I didn't know anything else." Lee said that more senior members of Congress passed fewer amendments.

But ex-aides wonder who Lee is fighting for. "I don't believe she came to Washington with a legislative agenda," says one. "I think she's out for her own personal benefit, to make a national name for herself. I think now she realizes she's stepped into some big shoes, not so much Craig Washington but Mickey Leland and Barbara Jordan. And she probably can't hold a candle to them."

Another former employee is more acidic: "She's not fit to carry their tennis shoes."