GOP Seen Keeping Control of Congress

In a remarkable reversal, the Democratic Party on Tuesday celebrated victories in pivotal Senate races and faced the stunning possibility that it might defy history and make small gains in the House.

The president’s party has almost always suffered heavy losses in midterm elections. But Democrats toppled Senate incumbents in New York and North Carolina, rescued as many as three endangered Senate Democrats from defeat and seemed to be doing far better than expected in House races around the country.

The bottom line for the House remained murky late Tuesday. It still appeared unlikely that the Democrats would pick up the 11 seats they would need to wrest control of the House from the GOP. Still, any Democratic gains in the House would not only make it harder for Republicans to press ahead with impeachment proceedings against President Clinton but could invite a GOP rank-and-file rebellion against House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

If Democrats gain seats, it would be the first time since 1934--and only the second time in the 20th century--that the party controlling the White House has picked up House seats in a midterm election.

In the Senate, Republicans made some offsetting gains so that the partisan balance there may not change dramatically. But early returns marked a surprising show of strength for Democrats in New York and North Carolina, where Democratic challengers toppled GOP incumbents, and in South Carolina, where one of the party’s most endangered incumbents won a relatively easy victory.

Quickly seeking to set a tone for election post-mortems, Democratic National Committee Chairman Roy Romer declared the evening “a very strong victory” for his party. “We had history against us, money against us. I thought we would do well, but I never thought we would do this well.”

Mike Russell, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that he thought Democratic crowing was premature.

But as returns began to come in, some Republicans shifted the focus from how many seats they might gain in Congress--if any--to the fact that they were expecting to retain a majority.

“This will be the first time in 70 years that Republicans kept control of the House for a third term,” said Gingrich.

And Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said: “The important thing for us is to get the election behind us” and move on to consider the Republican agenda.

Scandal, Good Times Shaped Campaign

The balloting capped a campaign shaped by political scandal and economic prosperity, as voters selected a new Congress that could face a momentous job description. These lawmakers may decide the outcome of the impeachment proceedings against Clinton, as well as determine what he can accomplish during the rest of his term.

“We are going to elect a Congress that will deal with the challenges of Social Security and whether it can be reformed . . . , that will deal with the Medicare challenge, that will deal with the challenge of providing an excellent education opportunity for all of our people,” Clinton told reporters before a morning meeting with some of his top advisors.

Clinton brushed aside suggestions that the election was a referendum on charges stemming from his illicit relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky. Indeed, few candidates made much of a campaign issue of the affair. Still, Tuesday’s vote amounted to jury selection for the impeachment proceedings that will decide Clinton’s future.

Gingrich, voting in his home district early in the day, predicted Republican gains that would continue “an ongoing, slow-motion collapse of the Democratic majority that Franklin Roosevelt created.”

But the returns brought surprisingly good news for Democrats.

In New York, Democratic Rep. Charles E. Schumer trounced GOP Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato in one of the highest-profile slugfests in the nation. The Schumer victory may be a bellwether of backlash against the GOP drive to impeach Clinton, which Schumer has criticized.

Democrats also racked up side-by-side victories in the Carolinas, the heart of the South that for years has been slipping away from the Democratic Party.

In North Carolina, Democratic challenger John Edwards defeated conservative GOP Sen. Lauch Faircloth despite a heavy blitz of national GOP advertising.

In South Carolina, Democratic Sen. Ernest F. Hollings defeated Republican Rep. Bob Inglis, a conservative with tremendous political appeal in one of the most heavily GOP states in the South. Exit polls indicated that Hollings, who has held statewide office in South Carolina for five decades, won largely on the strength of strong support from the African American community.

Black Voters Called Key Factor

Indeed, exit polls indicated that in several states, a key factor in the solid Democratic showings was high turnout among black voters, a reliable Democratic constituency that has been targeted by the party’s muscular get-out-the-vote drives.

Republicans had their share of gains to offset some of their losses. Republican George Voinovich, as expected, won the Ohio Senate seat now held by retiring Democrat John Glenn. And in Illinois, Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun lost to Republican state Sen. Peter Fitzgerald.

Two key Senate races--in Kentucky and Nevada--proved especially close. With virtually all of the votes counted in Kentucky, Republican Rep. Jim Bunning clung to a small lead. In Nevada, incumbent Democratic Sen. Harry Reid scored a narrow victory.

In another closely watched race, Democratic Sen. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, a leading advocate of campaign finance reform, withstood a Republican challenge.

If Bunning emerges the victor in Kentucky, the result in the Senate would be a wash: 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats, exactly the number before Tuesday’s vote.

In the House, early returns were mixed. In Kentucky, a Republican candidate won one open seat and a Democrat claimed another.

Democrats were encouraged because in Indiana, Rep. Julia Carson, one of the incumbents the GOP had targeted for defeat, took an early lead. But Republicans, for their part, were cheered by the victory of Rep. Anne M. Northup, a rising GOP star facing a challenger who tried to appeal to voters’ disenchantment with impeachment.

Elsewhere, there were enough promising showings by Democrats to inspire predictions of House gains that few had dreamed of.

In an Indiana race that boded ill for the GOP, Democratic candidate Baron Hill won in a conservative district that the Republicans had high hopes of capturing.

Other Democratic House victors included Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, who became the first openly gay women elected to Congress.

At least three Republican House incumbents were headed for defeat: Rep. Bill Redmond (R-N.M.), Rep. Jon D. Fox (R-Pa.) and Rep. Vince Snowbarger (R-Kan.), one of the few Republicans in a competitive race who called on Clinton to resign because of the Lewinsky scandal.

Overall, up for grabs in Tuesday’s balloting were 34 of 100 Senate seats and all 435 seats in the House. Democrats, who have been in the minority in the House and Senate since 1994, headed into election day with little hope of recapturing control of either chamber. Their principal aim was to hold the line on Republican gains or, if trends broke their way, to pick up a handful of seats.

GOP’s Goal of 60 Goes Up in Smoke

In the Senate, Republicans’ Holy Grail was to achieve a 60-seat majority. That is the number of votes needed to end a filibuster--the delaying tactic that Democrats have used to great effect to stymie GOP initiatives in this Congress. With at least five Democratic senators in electoral jeopardy this fall, including Californian Barbara Boxer, Republicans dared to dream of hitting 60. But those hopes faded in the closing weeks of the campaign as several of the Democrats rallied.

In the House, Republicans were eager to expand their 11-seat majority, the narrowest margin of control since 1955. Going into the campaign, history was on their side because, in all midterm elections since World War II, the president’s party has never gained seats in the House. The tendency to lose seats is particularly strong in the sixth year of a two-term presidency.

Going into Tuesday’s vote, strategists for both parties were predicting relatively small shifts in the makeup of Congress. Still, the campaign’s final weeks proved surprisingly volatile.

Late polling indicated a generic swing in favor of Democratic House candidates, but Republicans dominated the airwaves with millions of dollars worth of eleventh-hour advertisements. There were so many House and Senate contests that were too close to call--and no clear national force pushing them all in one direction--that election day began with the strategists shaking their heads in befuddlement.

“We have no clue,” said Dan Sallick, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “It is really confounding.”

No politician had more at stake in the election’s outcome than Clinton. Not only will it affect how Congress handles the impeachment proceedings against him, but, assuming he is able to remain in office, Tuesday’s results will help determine what he can accomplish legislatively during his last two years in office.

Despite GOP control of Congress, Democrats have held enough seats to help Clinton effectively bargain for some items on his agenda--such as increased spending for education--as well as to help him uphold his vetoes of Republican measures that he strongly opposes, such as a ban on a type of late-term abortion procedure. Large GOP gains would significantly reduce Clinton’s legislative leverage.

The political future of Gingrich also was at stake. He has barnstormed the country on behalf of House GOP candidates and approved an eleventh-hour roll-of-the-dice strategy of airing GOP ads that used Clinton’s sex scandal as a theme.

If the GOP does lose seats, a key question will be whether Gingrich’s colleagues, especially conservatives who already were disillusioned by the year-end budget deal he cut with Clinton last month, mount a challenge of his leadership. “If we lose seats, all bets are off,” said an aide to a key House conservative.

Ironically, these high-stakes political battles are being fought on very small pieces of political real estate. There were only about 30 House races considered truly competitive. In the rest of the nation, an unusually large number of incumbents are running without major party opposition. Others are facing token or underfinanced challengers.

The absence of competition was a result, in part, of trends that made this seem a pro-incumbent year. With the economy booming, voters no longer seemed gripped by the throw-the-bums-out mentality that propelled U.S. politics in the early-to-mid-1990s.

In this changed environment, politicians found that incumbency was not regarded as a mortal sin. Fewer of the political outsiders who thrived in the anti-establishment climate earlier this decade sought office this year, while candidate rolls were packed with experienced politicians. In Senate races, for example, seven of the candidates are sitting members of the House.

Despite the seemingly mellower public mood, the campaigns were rife with tough negative advertising and harsh personal attacks, tactics widely decried but considered effective in rousing voters, especially in a year without pressing foreign or domestic concerns.

Voter Turnout Being Assessed

Voter turnout across the nation appeared roughly equal to turnout in the last midterm election in 1994, according to initial tabulations. “It’s too early to be sure, but we may end up with a number slightly lower than 1994,” said Curtis B. Gans, director of the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

Turnout was sharply up in several states with hotly contested races, including Kentucky and North Carolina--a trend that may have helped Democrats there. But in other states, turnout declined from its 1994 level.

One closely watched factor, the turnout among black voters, showed similarly mixed results.

Clinton and other Democratic leaders made a major effort to urge African Americans to go to the polls this year, seeing them as a bloc of support that could counter conservative Republican votes.

But on a nationwide basis, exit polls indicated that black turnout was lower than in 1994. The Associated Press said its exit polls found that 10% of all voters were black, down from 13% in 1994.

Nevertheless, black voters still provided the margin of victory for Democrats in several key Southern races. In North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, small majorities of white voters voted Republican, but a solidly Democratic black vote swung Senate and gubernatorial races the other way.

Times Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus and staff writers Ann L. Kim, Heidi Sherman, Zerline A. Hughes and Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this story.

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