2000 Election Looms as Triple Witching Hour

Now that he’s won the keys to the House speaker’s comfortable Capitol offices, Louisiana Republican Bob Livingston may want to think twice about unpacking all his bags.

With the two parties operating at a fiercely fought parity, the election of 2000 is shaping up as a triple witching hour when control of the House, the Senate and the White House will all be up for grabs. “We are in a position where the two parties . . . are competitive for all three institutions,” said Gary C. Jacobson, a political scientist at UC San Diego. “You have the possibility in the 2000 election that the winner wins everything.”

That prospect looms partly because in the next election, Republicans will have to defend the narrowest House majority in 43 years. Also, for the first time in recent years, Republicans will have more senators facing reelection than Democrats.

But the larger reason why both parties face such an unsettled future is that the public is now so closely divided between them that it takes only small changes in attitude to tip the balance of power.

Indeed, in a new book, veteran Republican pollster V. Lance Tarrance argues that the parties are as evenly balanced as at any time in U.S. history--with each drawing support from 40% of the electorate and the critical remaining 20% increasingly attracted to the idea of dividing power between them.

Political Loyalties Closely Divided

In that environment, many believe that the nation may be entering a period when control of Congress will change hands with more frequency than has been the case in many years.

Since 1900, the two parties have exchanged control of the House only eight times. But some analysts predict that, with political loyalties so closely divided, the early years of the next century may reprise the late 19th-century pattern of narrow congressional margins, frequent turnover in dominance of the two chambers and divided control of the White House and Congress.

“As we go into the new millennium, we kind of ended this millennium in a stalemate,” said GOP lobbyist Don Fierce, the former director of strategic planning for the Republican National Committee.

In the long run, the historical significance of the 1998 election may be in what did not happen. If Republicans had made significant gains in Congress, as the party out of the White House almost always does in midterm votes, they might have solidified their majority to the extent that Democrats could not realistically challenge it in 2000.

Instead, with the GOP losing five House seats--and failing to gain any Senate seats--most analysts now believe that the party that wins the White House will be strongly favored to capture the House as well. In nine of the last 14 presidential elections, the party winning the White House has also won at least six additional House seats--the number the Democrats would need to recapture a majority in the lower chamber.

“I can’t tell you we are going to win,” Democratic strategist Mark Gersh said. “But I can tell you with 100% certainty that we are within range.”

This year’s election left the two parties almost even, not only in House seats but in the number of near-misses they can target next time. Political strategists usually classify incumbents as potentially vulnerable if they win reelection by 10 percentage points or less. By that standard, Republicans emerged from this election with 24 vulnerable House incumbents, the Democrats with 20.

“You have a few districts moving toward one side or the other, but I don’t think either party has a fundamental advantage,” said Stu Rothenberg, publisher of a political newsletter on congressional races.

The list of potentially vulnerable incumbents includes all but one of the 17 first-termers elected this year. But it also includes some veteran legislators in swing districts who survived with surprisingly narrow victories this year, including: Republicans Richard H. Baker of Louisiana and Anne M. Northup of Kentucky, and Democrats Lane Evans of Illinois and David E. Bonior of Michigan, the House minority whip.

One ominous sign for Republicans is that five GOP representatives from California won by 10 percentage points or less. Of those five, Brian P. Bilbray of San Diego, James E. Rogan of Glendale and first-termer Steven T. Kuykendall of San Pedro, all won with 50% of the vote or less in districts that President Clinton carried in 1996. With California trending toward Democrats in presidential years, “all three of those seats are strong potential Democratic pickups in 2000,” Los Angeles-based Democratic consultant Bill Carrick said.

Ultimately, the battle for the House will be shaped mostly by large national forces--particularly assessments of the economy, the next Congress’ performance and the 2000 presidential candidates. But within that unpredictable broad environment, Democrats are likely to be in a stronger tactical position than they were in this cycle.

With control of the House within reach, Democrats are likely to recruit more first-tier candidates than they did in 1998--when the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal shadowed the party’s recruitment efforts. And now that the GOP hold on Congress is less secure, many Republicans fret that business groups may hedge their bets by channeling a larger share of their campaign contributions toward Democrats.

“The bad thing is the business-money advantage has disappeared,” said a GOP leadership aide.

The most significant challenge facing House Republicans in 2000, though, may be term limits. In 1994--when the term limits movement was at high tide--10 of the newly elected House Republicans agreed to serve only three terms in Congress. By comparison, just one Democrat elected that year made such a pledge.

That means in 2000, Republicans either would have to defend open seats in those 10 districts--or face the prospect that incumbents, if they break their pledges and run again, would face thousands of dollars in attack ads from groups advocating term limits. Several of the seats potentially affected are safely Republican but others are clearly in play--in particular districts in Washington state held by Reps. Jack Metcalf, who has indicated that he intends to keep his pledge, and George R. Nethercutt Jr., who has hedged.

GOP Rules Could Prompt Retirements

Republicans could face even more vulnerable open seats if House committee chairmen--such as International Affairs Chairman Benjamin A. Gilman of New York--choose to retire in 2000 when House GOP rules adopted in 1994 force them to relinquish their chairmanships after three terms.

Holding down the number of open seats also will be critical for each party in the battle for the Senate, where Republicans now hold a 55-45 advantage. Democrats already have one open seat to defend in New York, where Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan has announced that he will step down--and New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani looms as a potentially imposing GOP contender. Republicans dodged a potential threat in Rhode Island, where veteran GOP Sen. John H. Chafee shows all signs of running again. The party still faces the risk of open seats in Delaware--and perhaps Vermont and Missouri, the latter if Sen. John Ashcroft seeks the presidency.

Overall, though, the battle for the Senate in 2000 almost certainly will pivot on the fate of the large Republican class elected during the GOP’s 1994 landslide. Democrats believe that 2000 could replay 1986--when six of the 16 GOP first-term senators elected during Reagan’s sweep in 1980 were unable to win reelection without that wind at their backs.

But most analysts agree the nine “class of ‘94” Republicans facing reelection in 2000 are generally better politicians than the class of ’80. Ironically, Republicans also are drawing encouragement from their lack of success this year. Though the GOP initially hoped to unseat several of the Democratic senators first elected with a tail wind from Clinton’s 1992 victory, all but one of those Democrats survived --in significant measure because they were boosted by voter satisfaction with the economy and the country’s direction.

“If the climate stays this good,” said Steven Law, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, “the more likely analogy for this cycle isn’t 1986, it’s 1998--when we learned again [that] it’s not easy to knock off an incumbent senator when times are good.”

* IMPEACHMENT OUTLOOK

Speaker-elect Bob Livingston hopes for a vote on impeachment before year’s end. A13