The move left the ritualistic senators both confused on basic levels and also worried that it would further ingrain the already top-down structure of an institution whose hallmark was supposed to be widespread debate.
“No, no, no, no, Tuesday lunches are not canceled,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters early in the day, calling the setup “weird” as she discussed food options that had been so standard for the last 18 years. “What am I going to do for lunch? I got to feed myself.”
Today’s newcomers often express surprise upon learning the importance of these power lunches, which have spread from their original Tuesday mandate to three days a week. That’s where the action happens, where real debate is heard and where decisions get made. Almost all activity on the Senate floor comes pre-scripted from decisions made at a previous lunch.
“What was a surprise was not just how much I learned at lunch, but how few interactions we had other than lunch,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who first took office in January 2019, told reporters Tuesday. “There are very few times when senators get together and just talk about issues that we’re considering.”
Republicans joined Democrats, who canceled their in-person luncheons back in March, in opting to hold these meetings by conference call for the time being. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had spent eight months working with the Office of Attending Physician in the Capitol to keep the lunches going in socially distant settings.
First, the lunches moved into larger committee rooms across the street from the Capitol, before finally settling into a cavernous Hart Senate Building room that was built to hold large-scale hearings.
Just three senators sat at tables that were made to seat eight to 10 people, and the centerpieces were sets of cleaning solution. Lunches came in prepared, individually wrapped boxes, instead of the usual buffet.
And Republicans said they felt safe, even as cases grew across the nation. No coronavirus cases have been traced to the GOP lunches.
Finally, the November surge in coronavirus cases made the risk too unbearable. McConnell announced the abolition of in-person lunches in a note to senators Saturday, just ahead of strict new guidance on Monday from Brian P. Monahan, the director of the attending physician’s office.
Monahan implied that some members of Congress may have contracted the disease through the sort of indoor gatherings that federal health officials have warned against.
“Due to experience in the Congress of increased disease frequency occurring in certain circumstances, I recommend that you DO NOT ATTEND dinners, receptions, or restaurant gatherings outside of your family unit. Select outside seating, or carryout if available when dining alone or with your family unit,” Monahan wrote.
Democrats have already adjusted to their conference-call sessions, but they miss those chances of working a room of colleagues and winning them over to their side.
“It’s not the same. There’s only 100 of us. You know each other,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the longest serving senator who first took office in 1975.
McConnell still held the regular weekly news conference Tuesday, with his leadership team at his side, following their conference call. He did not quite know how to describe what they had just finished.
“We had a lunch — a meeting, by conference call this time — aware of the growing concern of the rise of coronavirus,” he told reporters.
McConnell then explained that their conference call had reviewed a potential proposal for a covid-relief bill, from discussions he has had with top Trump administration officials. Few Republicans have played any substantive role in these pandemic talks in recent months.
Murkowski is worried the lack of in-person interaction just puts more power in the hands of party leaders, who can determine which senators get to speak during the calls.
“It’s gonna really make the conversation difficult. What I think is gonna happen is, you have a few people who will be able to present, and it’s just hard,” she said.
The first Senate lunches began in 1956, hosted by then-Sen. Styles Bridges (N.H.), chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, according to Betty K. Koed, the Senate historian.
The on-and-off Republican lunches were formalized early in the tenure of Everett M. Dirksen (Ill.), the GOP leader from 1959 to 1969.
Democrats were less structured in those days, as Lyndon Baines Johnson (D-Texas), the majority leader from 1955 through 1960, held smaller meetings with his core allies. Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.), his rival for the 1960 presidential nomination, received just one invite to the Johnson lunches, according to Donald A. Ritchie, the former Senate historian.
Democrats started their own version a few years later. No one seems to know why each party settled on Tuesday — it’s just the way it has always been, Leahy said.
In 2001, after losing the majority because of a party switch, Republicans decided to hold all-senator lunches on Wednesday and Thursday, with the latter gathering meant to be a more carefree event hosted by a different Republican each week with his or her state’s culinary traditions flown in.
Democrats added a Wednesday lunch of just the top leaders and senior members of each legislative committee. On Thursdays, Democrats usually gather at a lunch with some guest who is an expert on issues at hand.
Some rank-and-file senators complain that this daily partisan lunch rotation should give way to bipartisan gatherings, whenever it is safe and healthy.
“I wish we had lunches with Democrats now and then, too, so we can feel what the other side of the aisle was thinking,” Romney said.
Leahy recalled the now-shuttered dining room for senators only as a bipartisan bonding place in the 1970s and 1980s.
Walter Mondale and George H.W. Bush, when they were vice president, would visit once a week for those informal, bipartisan lunches to schmooze, he said. “And they got more damn things done.”
Now, the informal bipartisan gatherings and the mandatory partisan lunches have disappeared, another tradition set aside, at least during the pandemic.
Some senators, however, didn’t mind hearing their colleagues through a phone.
“Actually, I paid better attention than usual,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said afterward. “I thought it went well.”
