Cole Hopes to Make GOP's Stay in House Minority a Short One

[Ron Burgundy]

CQPolitics - House Republicans on Friday elected Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole (news, bio, voting record) — who has a background as a campaign operative — to head the party’s efforts to reclaim the House majority it lost resoundingly to the Democrats in the Nov. 7 elections.

In choosing Cole to head the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), GOP members are turning to a veteran strategist who previously served as chief of staff to the Republican National Committee (1999-2001). He earlier served as executive director for the NRCC in the 1992 election cycle, when Republicans gained House seats even as President George H.W. Bush was defeated for re-election by Democrat Bill Clinton.

Campaigns “are really about ideas and vision. And when you have that, you attract the candidates you need,” Cole said Friday following his election. “The vision of a smaller, more conservative, more responsive government that gives the American people the freedom they want is the one we’ll be running on in 2008.”

Cole — who was easily re-elected to a third House term last week in Oklahoma’s 4th District — defeated Texas Rep. Pete Sessions (news, bio, voting record), 102-81, on the second ballot taken by the Republicans who will be House members in the 110th Congress that begins in January.

Pennsylvania Rep. Phil English was eliminated from contention on the first ballot, which Cole led with 80 votes to 73 for Sessions and 32 for English.

Cole will succeed Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, who is stepping down as NRCC chairman after two terms per a requirement in party rules. It is unlikely that Reynolds would have been a viable contender even had he been eligible to run again, given his party’s loss of at least 29 seats and his own struggle to narrowly win a fifth House term in New York’s usually Republican-leaning 26th District.

Cole has vowed that he will work to put many more competitive seats “in play” in the 2007-08 cycle. Republicans on Nov. 7 failed to defeat a single Democratic incumbent or win a Democratic-held open seat, and many Democratic incumbents who were expected to face challenging races wound up winning overwhelmingly.

“The idea that there are only three dozen competitive congressional districts in America is a myth,” Cole wrote in a letter to House Republicans Nov. 9. “If we accept it, we doom ourselves to playing on a constricted battlefield that will benefit the incumbent majority party. Both parties have made that mistake in recent elections. We will not make it in 2008.”

Cole also predicted that there will be dozens of Democratic incumbents who will stand for re-election in districts in 2008 that the Republican presidential nominee will win, and noted that voter turnout will be much higher that year than in the 2006 midterm elections.

Barring any major surprises in several uncalled races and in December runoffs for one seat each in Louisiana and Texas, Cole’s NRCC in 2008 will need to make a 15-seat net House gain to reclaim the GOP’s just-lost majority. That happens to be the same exact requirement faced by House Democratic strategists at the outset of this campaign cycle.

Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has not yet announced who will be Cole’s counterpart at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Outgoing Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a major architect of last week’s Democratic victory, was unopposed for the chairmanship of the Democratic Caucus, the No. 4 leadership position in the incoming majority.

Jonathan Allen contributed to this report.