Twelve years after the Contract With America and the staggering GOP sweep, architects of the storied manifesto concede it played a more mythical than material role in victory.

Yet as Democrats position for their first credible shot at regaining a majority, those Republicans say the Contract provides a lesson for the opposition, one it ignores at its peril.

Predictions vary on the likely outcome of the coming midterm elections, and the forces behind the unprecedented results of 1994 are still in dispute.

Democrats have closely studied the lessons of the GOP takeover of Congress. Criticized for lacking a unified agenda, they repeatedly noted that Republicans did not release their Contract until October 1994. Others have said the Contract was a merely a bit player in the Republican Revolution.

Exit polls showed that a majority of voters had not heard of the Contract With America on Nov. 8, 1994, when the GOP won 60 races to gain control of the House and Senate. Yet Republicans credit a bold act — of coalescing around an agenda and signing a pledge — with creating new unity among disparate camps of incumbents, bettering the campaigns of their challenger candidates and providing an anchor for the turbulence of governing.

‘A POSITIVE AGENDA’

While Democrats are expected to make gains this fall by riding a backlash against President Bush, the drafters of the Contract insist the minority can’t win on passivity and reaction alone.

Certainly Republicans enjoyed a nice tailwind from President Clinton, said Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National Committee chairman who was a principal author of the Contract while working for former Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas). But, Gillespie said, “We wouldn’t have picked up 52 seats [in the House] if it weren’t for the fact that we ran on a positive agenda.”

Former Rep. Bob Walker (R-Pa.), another founding father of the Contract, agreed. “Did the Contract ultimately win the election, in and of itself? No,” said Walker, chairman of Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates.

“But the remarkable thing was how many new people voted — 9 million — compared to the previous midterms. That really caused the tsunami. And I think the Contract played some role in that because those issues had popularity with the vote that is now described as our base vote.”

Pollster Frank Luntz, who helped Republicans produce the Contract, said it was “crafted to demonstrate that this party was focused on action, on getting things done. On doing, instead of talking.”

In 1994, Luntz’s polling showed voters rejecting the Contract when it was presented as Republican, which led to its being titled without a party label. Luntz said the voters of 2006 are thirsting for results much the same way as they did in 1994 but Democrats are misreading the polls, relying too heavily upon Republican mistakes to change their political fortunes.

“It’s actually the same this time. The public doesn’t want partisanship,” Luntz said, adding that in the midterm elections voters angry at a Republican majority are more likely to stay home than vote. “That’s where the Democrats have it wrong. They think they can win the majority by beating up on Republicans.”

After years of partisan bomb throwing, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was convinced his party should run on its own ability rather than Democratic failures. Gingrich told The Washington Post before the election in 1994, “We thought a positive party, standing on the Capitol steps, offering a positive set of things people actually want … would be a healthy antidote to the level of anger at [then-President] Clinton and the level of negativism.”

The evolution of the Contract dates back to 1980, when Gingrich participated in a campaign event on those same steps with Republican candidates and incumbents and presidential candidate Ronald Reagan. Together they pledged to cut taxes and government spending.

Gingrich told reporters that “Governing Team Day” was planned to show accountability, to contrast with the “alienation” he saw between the Carter administration and the Democratic Congress, “which attack and blame each other.”

It was 12 years for Gingrich before a Democrat won the White House, energizing Republicans to join his crusade. “House Republican conservatives were almost like the crazy aunt in the attic,” said Mike Franc, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, who once worked for Armey. “They were not taken seriously by K Street, by the moderate country-club Republican establishment or by the Senate.”

 ‘JUST US CHICKENS’

Once Clinton took office, restive conservatives began working on a document dubbed the “alternative agenda.” The core members — Gingrich, Walker, Armey, former Rep. Bill Paxon (R-N.Y.), Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) — met regularly on the seventh floor of the Longworth Building and at a nearby Chinese restaurant. Some top staff members also joined the group, which came to call itself “Just Us Chickens,” the response they agreed to use should their minority leader, the less politically aggressive and retiring Rep. Bob Michel (R-Ill.), ever knock on the door and ask who was inside.

On Sept. 27, just six weeks before the 1994 election, Gingrich and his loyal soldiers signed the Contract in the Cannon conference room and then walked to the Capitol steps, where a band played in the sun. There they announced their poll-tested, consumer-driven set of policies aimed at voters weary and frustrated by two years of scandal, rapid government expansion and partisan battles over the federal budget, crime, healthcare and more.

Within 100 days of taking over the House, Republicans promised, they would bring to a vote reforms of Congress, constitutional amendments requiring a balanced budget and term limits for federal office holders, a variety of tax cuts, a $500-per-child tax credit, a cap on punitive damages in civil lawsuits, a ban on U.S. troops serving under U.N. command, an increase in defense spending, anti-crime legislation and welfare reform. All but two GOP incumbents — Reps. Don Young of Alaska and Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida — signed the pledge.

It was a gamble, a majority of them agreed. Paxon called the Contract “a revolution against convention.” However, forcing a mutual commitment from members, in the face of resistance, was an enormously effective disciplinary tool.

“It caused us to be on that team and subjugate personal agendas and personal ideas,” Paxon said.

House Republicans and the Republican National Committee set up a clearinghouse for the Contract to pump press coverage of the agenda. Nearly $1 million was spent on an unprecedented political advertisement — inside TV Guide’s Oct. 22-28 edition, readers found the Contract printed on an insert: a prescription for curing Clinton fatigue, packaged on a wallet-size card.

‘TOO MUCH HAND-WRINGING’

Congressional Democrats recently circulated an internal briefing paper about the Contract. In it, they cited key findings from a memo Luntz wrote to Republicans in September 1994, describing the appeal of a nonpartisan and complete package that “represents the willingness of certain politicians to come together over a set of important issues and put their names and their careers on the line.”

Yet Democrats in Congress have rejected the idea of a pledge, according to aides privy to the negotiations. Taunted by Republicans and pestered by the media, the party has struggled through an arduous process of developing an agenda in conjunction with Democratic mayors and governors. Leaders announced several looming deadlines, which then passed.

Most accounts predicting the release of the complete agenda vary between several more weeks and June. The first two items, “Honest Government” and “Real Security,” have been unveiled. Proposals on economic security, healthcare and education are supposed to follow shortly.

Steve Elmendorf, a veteran of several Democratic agendas since 1994 as chief of staff to former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), said there has been “far too much hand-wringing” over drafting one for this cycle.

“People want to be positive. That’s fine,” said Elmendorf, president of Bryan Cave Strategies. “But I don’t think it’s the most important thing in this election. The most important thing is that Bush is unpopular, people don’t like the war and they want new leadership in Washington.”

Republicans question the ability of Democrats to present specific proposals that enjoy majority support. To attract independents, they must avoid throwing blue meat to their base, lest they turn off any lavender voters.

Even with majority support, of course, the Contract — which gave Republicans a disciplined, unified, momentous beginning — led to a rapid breakdown in the GOP’s ability to govern. By the second and third hundred days, the new majority bore permanent scars.

One year and one week after their historic victory, Republicans shut down the federal government, and as public support for the Contract With America continued plunging in polls, Luntz admits, it had not been properly poll-tested after all.

“I didn’t poll the legislation,” he said. “I polled the items.”

Unless Democrats can truly unite behind an agenda and muster universal commitment, they are better off dodging, Franc said.

“In some ways the best advice to give them is to get as far along in the cycle without offering an agenda,” he said, adding that otherwise the media will write stories about the outlying members of the party who don’t agree with the leadership’s proposals.

And in the meantime Democrats can take comfort in Luntz’s discomfort. He said he sees Republicans talking more about their vision for the future and less about what they have accomplished for voters.

“After controlling the House for more than a decade, they have to give people the next story,” said Luntz, who already fears the worst.

“I feel it. I taste it. It keeps me up at night,” he said. “I have started getting headaches.”