He challenged the Democratic incumbent John Jarman, who had held the seat for 24 years. Edwards raised almost no money, and spent only $30,000 for the entire cycle. Despite this, he held Jarman to 51 percent of the vote in what was mostly a bad year for Republicans because of the Watergate Affair. However, Oklahoma City had been trending Republican for some time. Edwards's campaign slogan was "Take a bite out of Big Government" and featured Edwards biting an apple on camera. Jarman switched parties and became a Republican in January 1975 in protest of several older conservative Democrats being stripped of their committee chairmanships. Jarman did not run for reelection in 1976. That year Edwards defeated former State Attorney General G. T. Blankenship for the Republican nomination and narrowly defeated Democratic businessman Tom Dunlap, the son of the academic E. T. Dunlap, by 3,900 votes. He was the first Republican elected to represent this district in over half a century. However, he would never experience another general election that close in a district that rapidly became one of the most Republican urban districts in the country. During Edwards's 16 years in Congress, he served variously on the House Budget and Appropriations committees and was the ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations. He was also a member of the House Republican leadership, serving as the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, the party's fourth-ranking leadership position. However, in 1992, he was defeated in the Republican primary, by this time the real contest in the district. He failed even to make the runoff, finishing third behind State Representative Ernest Istook and former federal prosecutor Bill Price. Istook went on to win in November. The loss was mostly because of his involvement in the House banking scandal since he had written some 386 overdrafts totaling $54,000. Edwards was one of three founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation and the national chairman of the American Conservative Union. Along with former White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler, he has served as co-chairman of Citizens for Independent Courts, a national organization devoted to preserving judicial independence, and as co-chairman with another former White House Counsel, Abner Mikva, of Citizens for the Constitution, a national organization concerned with limiting the use of constitutional amendments as a substitute for the normal legislative process. Edwards has also served as co-chairman of a Brookings Institution/Council on