CAMPAIGN ’96 : Democratic Leader Sets Sights on House Races

When Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas) became chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee last year, he got a needling call from Robert S. Strauss, the former party chairman.

“I know why you took this job,” Strauss said, “because things look so bad for the Democrats that if they lose nobody will blame you, and if they win you’ll be a hero.”

In fact, Strauss had it “about right,” says Frost. Democrats’ chances of reclaiming the House in this year’s election after the sweeping Republican victories in 1994 looked so dim that many Democrats and even Frost himself worried that he was on a mission impossible.

Since then, however, as the public has soured on the Republican agenda and with the party engaged in a bruising battle for its presidential nomination, Frost’s chances of becoming a hero have improved notably. And the 54-year-old congressman, who is seeking reelection to his 10th term, now says the Democrats, by recruiting quality candidates and raising sufficient campaign funds, have a real opportunity for regaining control and dumping Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) as House speaker.

The committee has targeted 50 to 60 Republican-held seats it considers vulnerable and is “paying close attention” to another 50 to 60 that are open or held by Democrats running for reelection, he said in a luncheon interview with reporters. Republicans currently hold a 236-195 majority in the House.

Frost said his campaign committee raised $10.9 million in 1995, which was more than it raised in either 1991 or 1993--the years before the last two congressional elections. Already it is raising substantial sums this year, he said, and has 68,000 more donors on file than it did a year ago.

The committee will be able to contribute the maximum of $60,000 to each of the approximately 120 races it has targeted or is giving close attention.

President Clinton’s rising popularity also is boosting the Democrats’ chances, he said. Although the president has said little publicly about whether he will campaign for a Democratic Congress and has indicated he might run independent of congressional candidates, Frost said Clinton “has done everything we’ve asked him to do.”

“The president has been a help and will continue to help, but how close individual candidates align themselves with him is up to them,” he said.

Clinton will be the principal speaker at a committee fund-raiser in New York on March 11 that Frost said will bring in $1.5 million. Vice President Al Gore is scheduled to speak at committee fund-raisers in Dallas and Houston on March 18 and at another in Florida on April 11.

Frost also believes that the GOP presidential race, especially the surge by combative former television commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, is helping Democrats’ chances. “Republicans clearly are in a lot of trouble because of his rise and because Gingrich and other Republicans say if he won the nomination it would make it difficult for them to hold the House,” Frost said.

Gingrich’s unpopularity, as well as disapproval of the GOP agenda, also has hurt Republican chances, Frost said.

Polls in recent months have shown voters favoring Democrats over Republicans by seven to nine percentage points in trial heats for congressional races. Frost predicted that if those numbers hold up Democrats will recapture control of the House.

Frost and other Democratic strategists point to several factors that could help the party. Among them:

* Landslide elections such as the 1994 midterm regularly are followed by an “adjustment,” where the losing party from one cycle reverses these losses the following election. In 1948, for example, Democrats gained 75 seats, overturning the 55-seat loss of 1946 and regaining control of the House.

* Republicans currently hold 28 seats that Democrats traditionally have won at presidential and congressional levels.