As Election Nears, GOP Prospects Even Brighter

By DAVID LAUTER

Sept. 25, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

The gloomy message that Democratic political consultants had been delivering to their candidates all summer has become increasingly bleak in the last several days: With November’s midterm elections only six weeks away, even Democrats whose seats seemed secure are in trouble in state after state, district after district.

In Massachusetts, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a veteran of 32 years in the Senate and the best-known liberal political figure in the country, is suddenly running even, and perhaps slightly behind, his challenger, Mitt Romney, a wealthy businessman.

In Wyoming, where Democrats once thought they had a better than even chance of winning a Senate seat that has long been in Republican hands, the GOP candidate, Rep. Craig Thomas, appears to be pulling away from Gov. Mike Sullivan, who has been weighted down by his close friendship with President Clinton.

In Ohio, traditionally a state that is closely divided in national politics, the Republican Senate candidate, Lt. Gov. Mike DeWine, has put together a substantial lead over Joel Hyatt, the Democratic candidate and the son-in-law of the incumbent senator, Howard M. Metzenbaum.

And in Tennessee, where Democrats thought they faced one close race--between Rep. Jim Cooper and Fred Thompson, a lawyer and actor, for the seat once held by Vice President Al Gore--they now find two close contests. Not only are Cooper and Thompson in a dead heat, but Jim Sasser, the state’s senior senator and a man who aspires to be Senate majority leader, has slipped into a close race against William Frist, a surgeon from Nashville.

Those are only some examples of what delighted Republicans insist is a wave building beneath their feet. Some of the Republican claims are clearly puffery designed to demoralize the opposition and attract campaign cash, but nonetheless, Republican strategists in Washington have begun to talk out loud about such previously whispered fantasies as Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Republicans running not only the nation’s two largest cities--New York and Los Angeles--but six of its largest states.

Republicans would need to win 40 House seats and seven in the Senate to gain majorities in both chambers for the first time since Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first term. But while the goal still seems a considerable stretch, it is no longer an inconceivable one.

“In late August, there was a sense that things couldn’t get any worse,” says Democratic consultant Alan Secrest, who handles races for a number of Democrats in the South. “But it’s tapered off a bit more.”

The result, predicts Dan Leonard, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, “could be one of the best Republican years since the Reagan landslide of 1980.”

His Democratic counterpart, Mike Casey, concedes that the tide seems to be running against his party despite its best efforts. “We’re running a very good ship in 65-foot seas,” he says.

The concern on Capitol Hill deepened even further this week when Rep. Mike Synar (D-Okla.), a well-liked House veteran, lost his primary race to a 71-year-old retired teacher, and House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) won only 35% in the state’s unusual open primary in which candidates from both parties compete on the same ballot.

Political experts from both parties offer several cautionary notes. “Republicans have whistled this tune many times in the past, and it hasn’t come true,” notes Secrest. “Democrats have developed some pretty good political survival skills.”

Even Republicans concede that point. Democrats tend to field candidates with more political experience than do Republicans. Furthermore, GOP candidates often are business people with little campaign savvy who are prone to make mistakes in the closing days of an election or who have politically fatal problems in their pasts that previous campaigns might have revealed.

In Colorado, to take one dramatic example, Democratic Gov. Roy Romer had been facing a difficult reelection. In the past two weeks, however, his Republican opponent, Bruce Benson, has owned up to two drunk driving arrests, admitted cheating on his wife of 30 years before divorcing her and said at a press conference that while he may have threatened once to kill her, as she claimed in divorce papers, “it was a statement made on the spur of the moment.” Romer is now expected to prevail.

In addition, notes Democratic consultant Joe Trippi, Republicans in a number of states have nominated candidates who simply may be too conservative for public tastes. The Virginia Senate race between incumbent Democratic Sen. Charles S. Robb, retired Col. Oliver L. North, a Republican; and independent Marshall Coleman “is going to go down to the wire,” said Trippi. “But if they had just found a moderate Republican to put up against him, Chuck Robb would be out of there.”

Similarly, Republicans in Minnesota could lose the seat now held by Sen. Dave Durenberger, who is retiring, because their candidate, Rep. Rod Grams, is considerably more conservative than most voters in that traditionally liberal state.

Finally, says Republican consultant William McInturff, “this is not a pro-Republican year. We just happen to be the beneficiaries” of voter sentiment that has turned against incumbents in general, and Democrats in particular. Or as Secrest notes, “There are very few people in our focus groups or polls who are calling for a return to the George Bush era.”

Ellen Malcolm, director of EMILY’s List, which raises money for Democratic women candidates, adds that “I don’t see much of a wave building for anyone. What I see is a lot of voter anger and cynicism, which makes for a very unstable political environment for anybody.” Malcolm notes that while her organization had 16 Democratic women on its list of endangered candidates earlier this year, that number has been pared to only six.

Because they see the election more as a case of general voter anger than of a Republican surge, many Democratic strategists hope the Republicans have erred in trying to turn the election into an ideological referendum. The Republican congressional leadership has summoned all the party’s candidates to Washington this week to unveil a “Contract for America” that Republicans will pledge to run on. The contract, which promises to increase defense spending, cut taxes, balance the budget and revive such projects as the Reagan-era “Star Wars” missile defense program, could provide Democratic candidates with some tempting targets, Democratic consultants believe.

Nonetheless, Democrats still face a series of difficult, interlocking problems. Among them:

* Incumbency. Two years ago, angry voters turned against incumbents and voted into office the largest class of freshmen House members in half a century. This time around, the public mood remains bitter, cynical about politics, and angry at incumbents. That hurts both parties, of course, “but the problem is, we have more incumbents than they do,” says Democratic consultant Mark Mellman.

* Turnout. President Clinton’s unpopularity does two things, both of which hurt Democrats--he fires up the large number of Republicans and conservatives who strongly disapprove of his performance in office, making them more likely to vote, and he demoralizes Democrats, making them less likely to show up at the polls. As a result, even Democrats who go into the last week of the election a few points ahead are in danger of losing. A similar effect hammered Republicans in 1974, after then-President Gerald R. Ford issued a pardon to Richard Nixon for his Watergate offenses--leading to massive GOP losses that year.

* Gridlock. Democrats insist that Congress has accomplished far more in the last two years than voters give it credit for. Unfortunately, most of the accomplishments they point to--passage of family leave legislation and deficit reduction, for example, happened last year. Most of this year has been a series of frustrations, including the collapse of the health reform effort and the partisan battle over the crime bill. Democrats have tried to turn the gridlock issue against Republicans, but it mostly seems to be hurting them.

* The South. A generation ago, the Solid South gave Democrats a seemingly permanent cushion of congressional seats. Long after most Southern states became reliably Republican in presidential elections, popular Democratic incumbents managed to hold on to many of those seats. This year, many of those incumbents have chosen to retire, and at least a dozen, perhaps as many as 20, Southern seats seem headed from the Democratic to the Republican side of the aisle.

Two of those problems--the fact that Democrats have more seats to defend and the long-term political and demographic shifts in the South--are simply part of the landscape, something that Democrats must adapt to but cannot change. The turnout and gridlock problems are susceptible to resolution, but doing so will be difficult.

On gridlock, Democrats are clinging to thin hopes of passing a few eye-catching bills before quitting for the fall. Republicans are doing their best to block almost anything and no longer bother to deny that they are doing so.

The top candidates for action are bills to put new restrictions on lobbyists and their ability to give gifts to members of Congress and legislation that would require Congress to operate under the same health, safety and environmental laws that affect the private sector. Those bills, Democrats hope, would assuage some of the voter anger directed at Congress.

And Democrats hope to score points with legislation on aid to education that is likely to pass before Congress adjourns.

Democratic candidates also are likely to step up efforts to convince their own supporters that the consequences of a Republican victory would be so scary that they need to get out and vote. Because of that, voters likely will see both a barrage of negative advertisements and efforts to tie Republicans to the positions of the “radical right” on issues such as abortion.

Some of those strategies may work. For now, however, Republicans remain confident. “There have been times in the past when this party has erred and wrongly tried to impose a national focus on local elections,” says McInturff. “This time, however, we are going to have a national referendum on Nov. 8, and that referendum is going to be on your thoughts about Bill Clinton.”

“I’ve seen an election like this before, it was 1982,” McInturff adds, recalling the year when anger at a deep economic recession caused large GOP losses and derailed much of Ronald Reagan’s agenda. “That time the shotgun was against my head. This time, it’s a lot more fun.”

Times staff writers Karen Tumulty, William J. Eaton and Robert Shogan contributed to this story.

Hottest Senate Races

Although only a small handful of Democratic incumbents feel truly safe this year, there are a dozen Senate seats currently held by Democrats that the party is most worried about, including six incumbents who face strong challenges and six more seats in which retirements have put a seat in jeopardy. Republicans are mostly worrying about only five seats, including two incumbents.

Vulnerable Democratic Seats

1. Arizona

Democratic primary winner not yet declared

John Kyl (R)

2. California

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D)*

Rep. Mike Huffington (R)

3. Maine

Rep. Thomas A. Andrews (D)

Rep. Olympia J. Snowe (R)

4. Michigan

Rep. Bob Carr (D)

Spencer Abraham (R)

5. Massachusetts

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D)*

Mitt Romney

6. New Jersey

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D)*

Chuck Haytaian (R)

7. New Mexico

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D)*

Colin McMillan (R)

8. Ohio

Joel Hyatt (D)

Lt. Gov. Michael DeWine (R)

9. Oklahoma

Rep. David McCurdy (D)

Rep. James M. Inhofe (R)

10. Pennsylvania

Sen. Harris Wofford (D)*

Rep. Rick Santorum (R)

11. Tennessee (2 races)

Rep. Jim Cooper (R)

Fred Thompson

Sen. Jim Sasser (D)*

William Frist

12. Virginia

Sen. Charles S. Robb (D)*

Oliver L. North (R)

J. Marshall Coleman (I)

Vulnerable Republican Seats

1. Delaware

Charles Oberly (D)

William V. Roth Jr. (R)*

2. Minnesota

Ann Wynia (D)

Rep. Rod Grams (R)

3. Missouri

Rep. Alan Wheat (D)

Ex-Gov. John Ashcroft (R)

4. Montana

Jack Mudd (D)

Sen. Conrad Burns (R)*

5. Wyoming

Gov. Mike Sullivan (D)

Rep. Craig Thomas (R)

* incumbent

GOP Targets Southern House Seats

In the House, dozens of seats held by incumbents of both parties are up for grabs, but Republicans start off with a major head start. The reason is that a series of retirements of longtime Democratic representatives in the South have put in play seats that by most political measures, such as votes in presidential elections, should have been in Republican hands long ago. Including incumbents who face very strong challenges, the Democrats fear losing as many as 20 seats in the increasingly Republican South.

GOP House Targets

1. Florida

1st District--no incumbent

5th District--Karen L. Thurman

15th District--no incumbent

2. Georgia

7th District--George Darden

8th District--no incumbent

10th District--Don Johnson

3. Kentucky

1st District--Tom Barlow

3rd District--no incumbent