Divided Government to Continue in Washington

Voters guaranteed the nation at least two more years of divided government Tuesday as they gave Republicans an expanded majority in the Senate and appeared to put the party on track to maintain control of the House as well.

Numerous House races remained too close to call late Tuesday night, but officials of both parties said Republicans seemed to be snatching enough open seats from Democrats in the South and elsewhere to offset the defeats of several vulnerable Republican freshmen, particularly in the Northeast. The result seemed almost certain to allow Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) to maintain his job as speaker of the House, but with a reduced majority.

“It looks right now we’re certain to keep control of the U.S. Congress,” said Gingrich, who handily won his own bid for reelection in his suburban Atlanta district.

The victory marks the first time since the 1920s that the GOP won two back-to-back congressional elections.

The party’s congressional campaign chief, Rep. Bill Paxon (R-N.Y.), predicted Tuesday night that Republicans would lose roughly a dozen incumbents while defeating a few Democrats, for a net loss of roughly eight seats. Democrats would have needed to pick up 19 seats for a majority.

“This cements the Republican majority right into the next century,” he said. And he blamed party standard-bearer Bob Dole for congressional losses in the Northeast. “We lost seats in the Northeast because the presidential race was nonexistent” in the region, he complained.

Democratic vote-counters offered a similar assessment.

In partial returns so far, Democrats were taking a toll on Republican incumbents, particularly in the Northeast, but that Republicans were stemming their losses by picking up Democratic open seats, particularly in the South. That marked a significant regional shift in keeping with the national trend of the last generation, which has seen the GOP base migrate from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt.

In the Senate, Republicans picked up enough Democratic seats and held on to enough of their own to expand their majority by at least one seat. A final race, in Oregon, may not be known until as late as Friday, when all absentee ballots are counted, election officials said.

The GOP cemented its power base by picking up seats vacated by retirements of Democrats in Alabama, Arkansas and Nebraska.

Political Recovery

The results signaled a remarkable political recovery for a party that hit a public opinion nadir a year ago when budget battles with President Clinton shut down the government--and the GOP bore the brunt of the public’s wrath.

It would also set the stage for two more years of potential confrontation between President Clinton and congressional Republicans. Although that notion was once synonymous with gridlock, Clinton and the Republicans in the last few months showed they could meet each other halfway and produce legislation on such popular issues as welfare reform and improving access to health insurance.

Indeed, some Clinton advisors had argued earlier this year that a Congress with a reduced Republican majority might be easier for the president to work with than a new, more liberal Democratic majority. But Republicans also will surely continue dogging Clinton with their power to conduct investigations into Whitewater, questionable campaign contributions and other ethical controversies surrounding the administration.

Earlier this year, Republicans had been subjected to a blistering campaign of negative advertising against vulnerable freshmen by the AFL-CIO and other Democratic allies.

Turning the Tide

Republicans began to turn the tide in August, when the GOP dropped its trademark take-no-prisoners, confrontational strategy and began compromising with Clinton to produce major laws on such popular issues as welfare reform and expanding access to health insurance.

“The dominant image before August was that the Republican Congress was both ineffective and threatening,” said one Democratic strategist who asked not to be named. “That image was changed in a fundamental way in August.”

In the final weeks of the campaign, the GOP and its candidates began launching an aggressive counterattack that may have helped stem the tide against them.

Democrats said their chances in some House and Senate races may also have been hurt by disclosures about questionable foreign contributions to their party and by the fact that support for Clinton seemed to erode in the waning days of the campaign.

“Clinton is not finishing with a big strong kick,” said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. “He’s not finishing on a high.”

Heading into the election, Republicans enjoyed a 53-47 majority in the Senate. Democrats would have needed a net gain of three seats to secure a tie, which would be broken in their favor by Vice President Gore--and four seats for outright control.

In the House, Republicans entered election day with a 235-198 majority (with two vacancies).

Some Incumbents Fall

The 1996 political climate was much less hostile to incumbents than in the last two congressional elections, but several incumbents were sent packing.

Among the Republicans who were in danger of losing in the House were two moderate Republicans in Massachusetts, where Clinton won by more than 30 percentage points. Democrats also defeated three other freshmen Republicans in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, including Gary Franks (R-Conn.), one of only two black Republicans in the House.

Other freshmen who lost included Michael Patrick Flanagan (R-Ill.), who had won in 1994 by defeating the scandal-plagued Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), James Longley Jr. (R-Maine), and two North Carolina Republicans.

But Democrats failed to unseat many of the Republicans who had been targeted for defeat, and Republicans seemed to be controlling the damage by picking up seats that had been held by retiring Democrats. Most of those pickups were in open Southern seats in Mississippi, Oklahoma and Alabama. But the Republicans also picked up some open seats in the north, including South Dakota’s only House seat, which had been represented by a Democrat. And they picked off a Democratic incumbent early, with the narrow defeat of freshman Rep. Mike Ward in Kentucky.

Many other contests remained so close that the outcome may not be known until absentee ballots are counted.

The Republican hold on the House seemed based in large part on the support of independents. Registered Republicans and Democrats voted a heavily partisan ballot for both president and Congress. But independents were considerably more likely to support Republicans for Congress even as they broke for Clinton in the presidential race, according to a Los Angeles Times exit poll.

In the Senate, only one incumbent, Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), lost his seat. He was beaten by Democratic Rep. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.). Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) overcame an early scare--several television networks declared him a loser--but held on to defeat Democratic Rep. Dick Swett (D-N.H.).

Republicans expanded their hold on Dixie when Alabama voted to send GOP state Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to the Senate over his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Roger Bedford. They also picked up Democratic seat in Arkansas, and scored an upset victory in Nebraska, where GOP businessman Chuck Hagel came from behind to defeat popular Democratic Gov. Ben Nelson.

Elsewhere in the South, Republicans held onto the hotly contested Senate seat held by conservative icon Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), and in South Carolina, 93-year-old Sen. Strom Thurmond overcame reservations about his age and won reelection over Democratic real estate developer and textile heir Elliott Close.

For their part, Democrats managed to hang on to to two of their most hotly contested Senate seats. In Massachusetts’ marquee race, Democratic Sen. John Kerry fended off a tough, costly challenge from GOP Gov. William F. Weld. In Georgia, the race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn was won by Democrat Max Cleland, who had been losing ground to GOP nominee Guy Millner in the waning days of the campaign.

And in New Jersey, Democrats won one of the nastiest fights of the year. Rep. Bob Torricelli (D-N.J.) beat fellow Rep. Dick Zimmer (R-N.J.) in the struggle to succeed retiring Sen. Bill Bradley.

In Iowa, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) overcame a surprisingly tough fight from Rep. Jim Lightfoot (R-Iowa), a late-starting, come-from-behind challenger. Some Democrats attributed Harkin’s surprising weakness to a late attack on Harkin for opposing a bill outlawing late-term “partial birth” abortions.