About Parties and Leadership | Conference Secretaries

Members of each political party convene in private meetings known as party conferences (or party caucuses) to elect floor leaders, make committee assignments, and set legislative agendas. Each party elects a conference secretary, who is responsible for keeping the minutes. The party conferences first began electing a secretary in the 1890s, but a lack of surviving minutes of conference meetings makes it difficult to identify who held the positions prior to 1903 for the Democrats and 1911 for the Republicans.