SUNS  4317 Thursday 5 November 1998


UNITED STATES: VOTERS DASH REPUBLICAN MID-TERM ELECTION HOPES

Washington, Nov 4 (IPS/Jim Lobe) -- Voters in the United States Tuesday dashed Republican hopes of substantially increasing the party's majorities in both houses of Congress in mid-term elections.

While Republicans were expected as of midnight to pick up as many as one or two seats in the Senate, Democrats were headed for at least a four-seat gain in the 435-seat House of Representatives, leaving Republicans with a razor-thin majority in the lower house of just half-a-dozen seats, severely weakening the right-wing leadership of House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

"(It) does not look good for the Republican Party," said Susan Molinari, a former New York Republican Congresswoman, who credited the current health of the economy for the Democrats' better-than-expected showing.

As recently as one month ago, Gingrich and other Republican leaders were predicting a landslide election in which Democrats would lose as many as six seats in the Senate and 40 seats or more in the House. Those predictions were based in large part on the belief that the Monica Lewinsky White House sex scandal would demoralise Democratic voters who would stay away from the polls and energise core Republican voters, particularly from the Christian Right, to cast ballots in record numbers.

But that does not appear to have happened. Although voter turnout figures are not yet available, early indications suggest that Democrats were at least as motivated as Republicans to get to their polling places.

That was especially true of African-American voters, whose turnout was decisive in key southern races and in some of the big northern and western states where Democrats did better than expected. Labour unions were also effective in turning out the vote, according to political analysts.
Congress entered Tuesday's elections with a 55-45 Republican majority in the Senate and a 228-206 majority in the House, which also holds one independent socialist who generally votes with Democrats.

If Republicans had been able to increase their Senate majority to 60, they would have gained major procedural advantages in moving their legislative agenda.

But they actually lost incumbent seats in New York, where Rep. Charles Schumer handily defeated Sen. Alfonse D'Amato and in North Carolina, where political newcomer John Edwards, a wealthy lawyer, beat Sen. Lauch Faircloth, a follower of the state's other senator, Jesse Helms.

In addition, vulnerable seats in California and Washington State were retained by Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Patty Murray, respectively. The Democratic candidate for governor also won in California for the first time in 16 years, making it appear that the state which launched Ronald
Reagan to the presidency has become steadily more Democratic under President Bill Clinton.

One Democratic incumbent senator, Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, however, lost her seat to a right-wing Republican, Peter Fitzgerald. The first African-American woman in the Senate, Moseley-Braun fell out of favour with the voters due to charges of ethical violations and a trip to Nigeria where she supported the late dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha.

As of midnight, two close races where Democratic incumbents were running for re-election had yet to be decided, although in one, Wisconsin, Sen. Russell Feingold, who has pushed strongly for
campaign-finance reform and for the democratic movement in Indonesia, had pulled ahead with about half the vote counted.

If Democrats hold those two seats, the balance of power in the Senate would be unchanged. If, in addition, a closely-fought race in Kentucky were to fall to the Democrats, they would actually gain a seat in the upper house.

The House of Representatives, however, held the big surprises for the night. For the last 60 years, the party which has not occupied the White House has historically made major gains - an average of 27 seats - in mid-term elections. That historical tendency would strongly favour Republicans, particularly given the Lewinsky scandal which, according to conventional wisdom, has all but crippled Clinton's presidency.

But Democrats looked set to gain at least four seats, effectively reversing two generations of political history and possibly laying the groundwork for a challenge to Gingrich who had masterminded Republican strategy, particularly the running of a controversial set of television
ads which tried to transform the election into a plebiscite on Clinton's popularity.

That strategy now appears to have backfired badly, according to political analysts who said Clinton's hand will now be strengthened. "The White House is popping (champagne) corks," said Tim Russert, an NBC news analyst. Indeed, Republican bigwigs appearing on the television networks as the results came in Tuesday night all agreed that the party had failed to get its "message" across to the voters.

"I suspect there's going to be some recriminations over (Gingrich's) direction," noted former White House spokesman Mike McCurry.

Republicans were already badly divided over how to handle Clinton's impeachment over the Lewinsky scandal between the right-wing factions who made no secret of their wish to see the president hounded from office and more moderate forces who will come away greatly strengthened
from Tuesday's election results.

Indeed, exit polls showed that two-thirds of voters disapproved of the Republican handling of the scandal and 60% believe the impeachment, which is expected to go forward later this month, should be dropped.

In addition to heartening Clinton in his battle to avoid impeachment, Tuesday's elections also bolstered the possible presidential ambitions of two others - Texas Governor George Bush, the son of the former president, who won close to 70% of the vote in his re-election bid, and Vice President Al Gore, who campaigned hard for Democrats all over the country.

Another possible political titan also impressed the pundits with her campaign clout. First Lady Hillary Clinton spent much of her last month stumping for favoured Democratic candidates in New York, California and Washington where the party won especially big elections.