From CQ Weekly: Voter Discontent Fuels Democrats Day

[Ron Burgundy]

CQPolitics - Nationwide dissatisfaction with the Bush administration and local disgust with the scandal-plagued Republican-controlled Congress propelled House Democrats on Nov. 7 to their biggest gains since the Seventies.

In ending a dozen years of GOP control and wresting a House majority from the Republicans for the first time since 1954, Democrats were poised to make a net gain of at least 28 House seats — and possibly more, pending the results of many close races where final vote tallies were pending. It was the party’s biggest electoral gain since the Watergate era.

Buoyed by a strong showing among political independents, the Democrats easily surpassed the threshold of 15 seats they needed to clinch a majority. They were guaranteed to exceed the 26-seat net gain their party made in 1982, the first midterm election in the presidential tenure of Ronald Reagan.

The House:
Should every outstanding House race break in favor of the party that is currently leading — and if the parties split a pair of December runoff elections in Louisiana and Texas, as is expected — the 110th Congress will feature 232 Democrats and 203 Republicans, a precise partisan mirror image of the Congress that convened two years ago. Barring any partisan turnovers in the 110th Congress, the GOP will need to match the net gain of 15 seats in 2008 that was required of the Democrats this year.

The Democrats did that — and then some. They defeated a minimum of 20 House Republicans and also wrested away eight other districts that GOP incumbents had left open to resign, retire or seek other office.

The Democrats registered seat gains across the nation — particularly in the Northeast and in the Ohio River Valley. They began Election Day with a bang, unseating four Republican incumbents in Indiana and Kentucky, the first states to report results. On the West Coast, the party cheered the defeat of California Rep. Richard W. Pombo, chairman of the Resources Committee.

The Democratic upswing even spread to reliably Republican-leaning states such as Kansas, where Rep. Jim Ryun (news, bio, voting record) was defeated by Democrat Nancy Boyda — two days after President Bush campaigned for Ryun in Topeka.

“From sea to shining sea, the American people voted for change,” said California Rep. Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record), who stands to become House Speaker when Congress convenes Jan. 3.

Pending a final vote count in one Georgia district, the Democrats retained every one of the seats they defended — a task neither party had accomplished in nearly 70 years.

Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), said some of his members failed to prepare themselves to run in a turbulent political environment where low public approval ratings of the Congress and disenchantment with the Bush administration hampered many Republicans.

Those members, he said, did not “localize” the contests and draw sharp enough issue contrasts with their Democratic rivals, who tended to “nationalize” the election by linking Republicans to Bush.

“Unprepared members were swallowed up by the sour national environment,” Reynolds said Nov. 8.

Opposition to the War More to the point, the election results yielded significant evidence that voters repudiated Bush — and, by extension, his House Republican allies — for their handling of the unpopular Iraq War.

A CNN exit poll found that 56 percent of respondents disapproved of the Iraq War — and they preferred a Democratic member of Congress to a Republican member of Congress by a margin of 80 percent to 18 percent. An exit survey conducted by Democratic pollster Douglas E. Schoen found that a 22 percent plurality of voters identified the Iraq War as the most important issue in their vote for Congress — and 82 percent of those voters backed a Democrat.

“I know there’s a lot of speculation on what the election means for the battle we’re waging in Iraq,” Bush said Nov. 8. “I recognize that many Americans voted last night to register their displeasure with the lack of progress being made there.”

Nowhere was this more evident than in New Hampshire’s eastern 1st District, which takes in Dover and Manchester. Two-term incumbent Jeb Bradley was upset by Democrat Carol Shea-Porter, a little-known liberal activist whose underfunded campaign concentrated heavily on her opposition to the war. Shea-Porter’s win almost certainly was the biggest surprise of the 2006 election.

Her win also typified the Democrats’ resounding success in the northeastern United States, a historically “Yankee Republican” region that has shifted decidedly to the Democrats in recent years — a partisan counterweight to the Republican political realignment in the South.

In New Hampshire’s western 2nd District, which includes Concord and Nashua, moderate six-term Rep. Charles Bass (news, bio, voting record) was defeated by Democratic lawyer Paul W. Hodes, whom Bass trounced by 20 percentage points two years ago. The victories by Hodes and Shea-Porter delivered both of New Hampshire’s House seats to the Democrats for the first time since 1912.

In New York, Democrats defeated two Republican incumbents, nearly knocked off three others — including Reynolds — and also won the seat of retiring moderate GOP Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (news, bio, voting record). The GOP will hold just six of 29 House seats in New York next year.

The Democrats also unseated four House Republicans from Pennsylvania: Curt Weldon and Michael G. Fitzpatrick in suburban Philadelphia; Don Sherwood, who fell to political scientist Chris Carney in northeastern Pennsylvania; and Melissa A. Hart, who was upset by Jason Altmire, a former hospital association executive and congressional aide, in a culturally conservative district near Pittsburgh.

Gloom for GOP Moderates Republican moderates bore a disproportionate brunt of the losses on Election Day.

Many GOP centrists represent districts that were politically competitive or even lean Democratic in politically neutral years, and Democrats pounced on them in an election year that trended strongly to their party — even though many of the Republican moderates had voting habits that were frequently at odds with the Bush administration.

Rep. Jim Leach (news, bio, voting record), a 30-year House veteran and one of the GOP’s most prominent and widely respected moderates, was shockingly defeated by Democratic college professor David Loebsack in a Democratic-leaning district in southeastern Iowa that nonetheless had re-elected Leach by handsome margins in most of his previous 15 elections.

Leach in 2002 voted against the resolution that authorized the president to wage military operations in Iraq — part of a contrarian voting record that made him the least conservative Republican in the House. But Loebsack argued that Leach’s party affiliation was a detriment to the Democratic-leaning district.

Other prominent Republican moderates who lost Nov. 7 included Nancy L. Johnson, a senior member of the Ways and Means panel who was trounced by Democratic state Sen. Chris Murphy in Connecticut’s northwestern 5th District, which includes Danbury, New Britain and most of Waterbury; and Pennsylvania’s Fitzpatrick, who lost to lawyer Patrick Murphy, one of a handful of Democratic veterans of the Iraq War who were victorious on Election Day. In eastern Connecticut’s 2nd District, Rep. Rob Simmons was narrowly trailing Democratic former Rep. Joe Courtney in a race still too close to call.

Scandals Take Toll
Decline of the Kerry Republicans:
Click Here to View Graphic The Republicans would have limited their losses had some GOP incumbents not been buffeted by personal scandals separate from the unfavorable national political environment.

A top Democratic prize in the Nov. 7 election was the suburban Houston district long represented by former Majority Leader Tom DeLay — the veteran political infighter whose aggressive efforts to ensure a “permanent” Republican majority caused ethics problems that ultimately led to his resignation from the House in June.

Democratic former Rep. Nick Lampson, a 2004 casualty of a DeLay-engineered redistricting map, fended off Houston city councilwoman Shelley Sekula Gibbs, who was forced to wage a write-in campaign after DeLay decided to renounce the GOP nomination. (At the same time, Sekula Gibbs did win a separate special election to serve the final two months of DeLay’s unexpired term).

The GOP also surrendered the rock-ribbed northeastern Pennsylvania district of Sherwood, who was felled by Carney in no small part because of the incumbent’s admission last year of an affair with a young woman (whose allegations of physical abuse the congressman vigorously denied).

Democrat Zack Space, an elected municipal attorney, won a seat in a landslide in the culturally conservative eastern Ohio district recently vacated by six-term Republican Bob Ney.

Ney had recently pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges that stemmed from an investigation into his ties to former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Republicans were badly hurt by the fact that their preferred candidate, state Sen. Joy Padgett, was asked by Ney to run in his stead (and the fact that the disgraced congressman did not immediately resign his seat following his guilty plea). That enraged GOP leaders and allowed Space and his Democratic surrogates to continuously link Padgett to the embattled Ney. Padgett won just 38 percent of the vote — an embarrassing showing in a district that Bush dominated just two years ago.

In Florida’s south-central 16th District, encompassing Port St. Lucie and parts of Port Charlotte and Wellington, Democratic businessman Tim Mahoney edged Republican state Rep. Joe Negron to win the seat that Republican Mark Foley resigned in September after disclosures that he sent inappropriate electronic messages to teenage boys who had served as House pages. Foley’s name appeared on the ballot, though votes cast for him were automatically awarded to Negron.

All four districts comfortably backed President Bush’s re-election in 2004.

“We also lost several seats by self-inflicted wounds,” Reynolds said. “We had a number of reliable Republican seats where the member had a problem. And either they could not straighten it out with their constituents, or they left it to the candidate succeeding them to deal with it.”

Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel (news, bio, voting record), Reynolds’ counterpart at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), said, “Every district that had an issue related to the professional conduct of that [Republican] member switched and became Democratic.”

“That was eight seats — half of the 15 that you needed,” he said.

Playing the Field Republicans entered Tuesday in a deep defensive crouch: On Election Day, more than 50 GOP-held districts featured highly competitive races, a playing field much larger than in previous election cycles.

Of the $83.6 million that the NRCC reported in “independent expenditures” — funds that the parties expend on television ads and mail pieces without consulting their preferred candidates — $80 million, or 96 percent, was spent in districts defended by Republicans.

The NRCC was forced to spend money in unlikely venues such as the Kansas district won by Boyda and an open Idaho district that the GOP barely held despite the fact that Bush took nearly 70 percent of the vote there two years ago.

“If we’re going to be a national party, we have to be able to compete everywhere,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Nov. 8. “And last night we did compete everywhere. That’s very, very important. Can we do better? Yes. But this is a huge step forward — and, frankly, one I didn’t expect.”

DCCC chief Emanuel said his team early on recognized the importance of fielding top-flight challengers, in the expectation that they would be well-positioned to win in the campaign’s home stretch.

“What you couldn’t see a year out, but which became apparent three months out, was we were going to have an expanded field with expanded opportunities for Democrats,” Emanuel said Nov. 8.

As a case in point, Emanuel pointed to the victory of Arizona state Sen. Harry Mitchell over six-term Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth (news, bio, voting record) in a politically competitive district that takes in Scottsdale and Tempe. Democratic strategists recruited Mitchell as a much stronger challenger than the hapless foe Hayworth crushed by more than 20 percentage points in 2004.

By contrast, the Republicans failed to put many Democratic-held seats in play. Just five districts now held by Democrats were considered to be highly competitive, and the party appeared to retain them all.

Democrats retained the at-large Vermont seat that liberal Independent Rep. Bernard Sanders (news, bio, voting record) gave up to wage his successful Senate campaign. Freshman Rep. Melissa Bean of Chicago’s northwestern suburbs and exurbs and five-term Iowa Rep. Leonard L. Boswell (news, bio, voting record) of Des Moines defeated strong GOP challengers.

It is still unclear whether Democratic Rep. John Barrow will be re-elected, though he held a narrow lead in his eastern Georgia district over a seasoned Republican challenger, former Rep. Max Burns (news, bio, voting record). The other close race in Georgia finally fell in favor of incumbent Democrat Jim Marshall, who beat former Rep. Mac Collins.

Several House Democrats whom party strategists expected might face highly competitive contests wound up winning handily. They included Rep. Chet Edwards (news, bio, voting record), who trounced Republican Van Taylor, a businessman and Iraq War veteran, in a strongly conservative district in central Texas that includes Bush’s ranch in Crawford.

An unusually large number of races remained too close to call at week’s end. As of Nov. 9, there were nine contests — not including the runoffs next month in Louisiana and Texas — for which the final vote was too close to call.

Excepting Barrow’s Georgia seat, the GOP is the incumbent party in each of those districts. Republican incumbents in uncalled races are Robin Hayes of North Carolina; Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico; Jean Schmidt and Deborah Pryce of Ohio; Dave Reichert of Washington; Barbara Cubin of Wyoming; and Simmons of Connecticut. All except Simmons have nominal leads in the balloting.

The Republicans also have a tiny lead for the open Florida seat held by Katherine Harris, who ran unsuccessfully for Senate.

This story originally ran in the Nov. 13 edition of CQ Weekly. For more information about CQ Weekly, please visit CQ.com.