Congress Up for Grabs as Races Tighten

With just two days to go before voters go to the polls, Republicans are still scrambling to secure their grip on the House and Senate in a turbulent political environment that has made this one of the most bitterly fought, closely contested congressional elections of the last generation.

For weeks, many Democrats have believed that control of the House is within reach, but now they fear it may be slipping from their grasp. Still, Republicans, with an extraordinary number of vulnerable incumbents, are continuing to play defense.

As a result, the one thing that seems almost certain is that whichever party wins a House majority, it will hold it by a very narrow margin. That all but guarantees that whoever is the next speaker of the House will not have the power to dominate the political process as Newt Gingrich has in the past two years.

“If the election had been held two weeks ago, a month ago, the Democrats would have won everything,” said Larry J. Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. “That’s changing.”

“Do we have a good chance? Yes,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “Do we have it nailed? No.”

An extraordinary number of congressional races from coast to coast, including as many as a dozen crucial contests in California, remain too close to call, and political professionals of both parties are finding it unusually difficult to guess who will call the shots on Capitol Hill for the next two years.

At stake is whether Republicans’ conquest of the House and Senate in 1994 will turn out to have been just a blip on the screen of long-term Democratic dominance or whether the GOP will have another two years to cement its power base.

In the Senate, most Democrats concede that even a large win for President Clinton at the top of the party’s ticket will probably not be enough to overturn Republican control of the chamber.

That has focused attention on the House. There Republicans are encouraged by signs that they have fixed some of the damage inflicted on incumbents by a yearlong barrage of negative advertising. Some once-endangered incumbents have resurrected themselves. And several recent polls indicate that the public’s general preference for Democratic over Republican candidates has narrowed during the last few weeks.

*

Republicans are trying to fortify their congressional redoubt against the force of a possible Clinton landslide. The GOP has poured $4 million in the last week into an ad campaign to recast the elections as a referendum not on Gingrich (R-Ga.) and his conservative agenda, but on whether to give Democrats a “blank check” to control both Congress and the White House.

But the outcome, however narrow, will have a big effect on what direction Clinton will steer his second term if, as polls predict, he is reelected.

“The one thing we know about Bill Clinton is that he is eminently pushable,” Sabato said. “Will he be pushed to the left or the right? That’s what the congressional elections are all about.”

Tuesday’s ballots will be cast in a radically different political climate than the one that gave rise to the Republicans’ triumph in 1994. They won control of the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years at a time of intense voter hostility toward Congress in general--and Democrats in particular.

Today, the Republican-controlled Congress still does not get high marks. The latest Los Angeles Times Poll found that just 39% of those surveyed said Republicans deserved to maintain control of Congress. That late-October poll also found respondents generally favored Democratic congressional candidates by a 48%-44% margin.

But that Democratic advantage was down from early September, when the party enjoyed a 10-percentage-point lead. Moreover, a number of polls have found the public’s attitude toward Congress is on the rebound. In October 1994, just before the Republicans took control of Congress, a whopping 73% of those surveyed in a New York Times/CBS poll disapproved of Congress. In a mid-October survey this year, only 47% disapproved.

The Senate

Republicans now control the Senate, 53 to 47. Democrats need a net gain of three seats to win control, assuming Vice President Al Gore is reelected and exercises his tie-breaking authority in the Senate.

Many of the 34 seats up for reelection this year are on unfavorable terrain for the Democrats. Due to a record number of retirements, there are 13 open seats. Eight of those seats are now held by Democrats. Half are in the South, where Democrats can no longer take their party’s dominance for granted.

To win a majority, Democrats would first have to keep all the open seats they now hold--including one in Alabama that is leaning Republican and one in Georgia where the Republican candidate, Guy Millner, has been gaining on Democrat Max Cleland.

Democrats are also struggling to hold on to two seats in Louisiana and Arkansas, and both races seem too close to call. Clinton traveled to Little Rock, Ark., and New Orleans this weekend in a final attempt to boost the chances of Democratic candidates Winston Bryant and Mary Landrieu in those states.

Clinton also was traveling to New Jersey, where two congressmen, Democrat Robert G. Torricelli and Republican Dick Zimmer, are locked in a race for the seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley. The most notable factor there seems to be the voters’ dislike of the tactics of both candidates. Clinton also was going to Massachusetts, where Democratic Sen. John Kerry is neck-and-neck with GOP Gov. William F. Weld.

*

For their part, Republicans are concerned about at least five seats. The most worrisome appears to be that of Sen. Larry Pressler of South Dakota, who is trailing Democratic Rep. Tim Johnson. Another incumbent, Republican Sen. Robert C. Smith, has been in a close race in New Hampshire, a state where Democrats seem likely to do well this year. The other main points of Republican vulnerability are open seats in Oregon, Colorado and Maine.

But in recent days, polls have shown that races that once seemed settled are getting tighter. In Wyoming, a longtime GOP stronghold, Democrat Kathy Karpan appears to be gaining ground on the Republican nominee, state Sen. Mike Enzi. But Democrats who had been in good shape in Montana and Nebraska are now facing diminished leads.

Overall, a dozen or more Senate races are still too close to call, and the field is still in flux. So Democrats could still win a majority, but only if they get all the breaks.

“It depends on winning five or six very close elections,” said Gary Jacobson, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “It’s conceivable, but it’s hard to imagine.”

The House

In the House, by contrast, the odds of Democrats gaining a majority have seemed tantalizingly close. Republicans now control the chamber, 235 to 197. (One seat is held by an independent, Bernard Sanders of Vermont, who usually votes with the Democrats; two seats are vacant, including one held by a Democrat who resigned soon after Congress adjourned.) So Democrats need a net gain of 19 seats to regain control.

Both parties are waging the battle for the House with obvious vulnerabilities: Democrats are struggling to defend a large number of open seats; Republicans are saddled with a cadre of vulnerable freshmen.

Of the 53 open House seats, 30 are now held by Democrats. Republicans are hoping to pick up enough of those--especially from the 19 open in the increasingly Republican South--to make up for losses elsewhere.

Heavy GOP losses are possible among the party’s freshmen, many of whom won longshot victories in the big GOP tide of 1994. Democrats contend that 14 Republican incumbents, mostly freshmen, are in a dead heat or behind.

But Republicans are increasingly optimistic about retaining their majority because several incumbents once seen as top targets are coming on strong.

*

Rep. Jon Christensen (R-Neb.), who won in 1994 by less than 2,000 votes, has been bombarded with union attack ads. Democrats recruited a blue-chip candidate to oppose him. Early polls showed them neck and neck. Now, thanks to an aggressive counterattack, Christensen seems poised for easy victory. A recent independent poll put him ahead, 54% to 38%.

Other incumbents in Democratic-leaning districts, such as Reps. Peter G. Torkildsen (R-Mass.), Phil English (R-Pa.) and Jon Fox (R-Pa.), have shored up their position by keeping a distance from the national GOP leadership in their campaigns.

Further fueling Republican hopes are signs that Democrats are having a harder time than expected sewing up open seats in Northern states, such as South Dakota, Indiana, Illinois and Montana.

However, the late-breaking trends have not consistently favored the GOP. Some Republicans who had once enjoyed wide leads, like Rep. Peter I. Blute (R-Mass.), are facing stiffer competition. Democrats believe that they are doing better vying for many Southern open seats than had been expected. They have a very good chance of knocking off two Republican incumbents in North Carolina.

And Democratic incumbents are, for the most part, sitting pretty. The Cook Political Report, an independent newsletter, in late October identified only seven Democratic incumbents, including Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-San Bernardino), as being in tossup races; 34 Republican incumbents, including four in California--Reps. Andrea Seastrand in the Santa Barbara area, Bill Baker in the East Bay, Frank Riggs in the far north and Brian P. Bilbray in San Diego--were rated as tossups.

But some Democrats say privately that they have not yet seen the kind of national surge for Democratic candidates that they need to nail down the majority.

Democrats are hoping that if Clinton comes through with a double-digit lead on election day, he will carry enough Democrats on his coattails for a majority.

James Campbell, a political scientist at Louisiana State University who has studied the coattail effect in congressional elections, predicts that he will. “Given the normal patterns of coattails, the Democrats will probably pick up 25 to 30 seats,” he said.

But other analysts question the power of presidential coattails, saying that even a landslide might not deliver the 19-seat gain Democrats need. In 1984, the last presidential landslide, Ronald Reagan won the White House with 58.8% of the popular vote, but Republicans picked up only 14 House seats and lost two seats in the Senate. In Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide, his party picked up only 12 House seats and again lost two Senate seats.

Some Republicans and other analysts argue that the coattail effect might work in reverse: That some voters--especially independents and Ross Perot supporters--might be more inclined to vote for Republican congressional candidates because of the near certainty that Clinton will be reelected.

“This is a Democratic year, but the presidential race was decided so early that voters’ remorse set in even before the election, and people started to think about the effects of giving the Democrats everything,” Sabato said. “Voters are of two minds.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

House Hot List

These House incumbents are embroiled in some of the most hotly contested congressional races. How they fare may be a bellwether of political trends sweeping through the rest of the country.

REPUBLICANS

* Dick Chrysler (R-Mich.) is locked in a tough race for reelection against state Sen. Deborah Ann Stabenow, in a key test of GOP strength in a midwestern battleground state.

* Michael Patrick Flanagan (R-Ill.), who won his Democratic-leaning district in 1994 by beating scandal-plagued Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), is the underdog in his fight against Democratic state Rep. Rod Blagojevich.

* J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.), an unapologetic ally of Newt Gingrich, is battling former Democratic state party chairman Steve Owens in a tough race that has attracted the interest--and money--of national business and labor groups.

* Fred Heineman (R-N.C.), who faces a rematch against the Democratic incumbent he narrowly beat in 1994, may lose and help Democrats show they haven’t totally lost their grip on the South.

* Martin Hoke (R-Ohio), a second-termer, is one of the few non-freshman Republicans considered vulnerable in a year likely to be friendly to the survival of senior Republicans.

* Rick White (R-Wash.) is one of several vulnerable freshman Republicans in a state where Democrats are hoping to recoup the heavy losses they suffered in 1994.

DEMOCRATS

* Ken Bentsen (D-Texas), left with a much more difficult fight after his district lines were redrawn by court order earlier this year, may have to keep fighting for reelection until a December runoff if no one in the multi-candidate field wins a majority in the court-ordered special election on Nov. 5.

* Bud Cramer (D-Ala.), facing a stiff challenge from GOP banker Wayne Parker, provides a test of whether white Democrats are an endangered species in the South.

* Elizabeth Furse (D-Ore.) is facing a rematch against GOP businessman Bill Witt, whom she beat in 1994 by only about 300 votes.

* Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) is one of several black Democrats who face a much rougher road to reelection since a court ruling forced a redrawing of their district lines.

* Bill Orton (D-Utah) is struggling for survival in one of the most Republican districts in the country.

* Mike Ward (D-Ky.) is in a toss-up race against state Rep. Anne Northrup in a state that will be one of the first to close its polls on election night.

Senate Races to Watch

Republicans hold 53 of the 100 seats in the Senate, but Democrats could have a shot at regaining the majority. Republicans seem likely to pick up a Democratic seat in Alabama, but two Republican incumbents are in trouble and several open seats are:

DEMOCRATIC SEATS IN JEOPARDY

Alabama: Open

Arkansas: Open

Georgia: Open

Louisiana: Open

Massachusetts: John Kerry

New Jersey: Open

REPUBLICAN SEATS IN JEOPARDY

Colorado: Open

Maine: Open

New Hampshire: Bob Smith

Oregon: Open

South Dakota: Larry Pressler

Wyoming: Open

Source: Published state polls, Time staff interviews