Little Shift in Balance Likely on Capitol Hill

Despite all the sound and fury over the White House sex scandal, the 1998 election is expected scarcely to ruffle the political status quo--an outcome that would probably boost efforts to dispose of the impeachment issue sooner rather than later.

Strategists in both parties predict that Republicans will make additions, but only modest ones, to their majorities in the House and Senate. With a few exceptions, incumbents on both sides of the aisle are projected to win.

“I do not think the president’s situation will be a major factor in this election,” Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“These are local races,” said Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “I never did think it was a referendum on Bill Clinton.”

If there is little change in Congress’ makeup, Democrats will not have the votes to stop the impeachment inquiry into Clinton’s affair with Monica S. Lewinsky from going forward. But pressure will grow on Republicans to wrap up the inquiry with some sort of compromise.

“Impeachment is a political process,” Linder acknowledged in an interview. “The public has got to be for it before you can do it.”

Long term, the anticipated continuation of divided government is likely to mean that legislative attempts to bolster Social Security, reform health care, tighten campaign finance rules and deal with other issues probably will not make much more headway than they did this year.

The predictions of little change in the political landscape reflect a relatively contented public mood, stemming from the strong economy. “It’s a year when everybody is satisfied,” said Democratic pollster Alan Secrest.

One illustration of this is that 55 Republicans and 39 Democrats seeking election to the 435-member House have no competition, the highest total of uncontested seats in 40 years. “It shows the lack of issues that would provoke competition,” said political scientist James E. Campbell, author of “The Presidential Pulse of Congressional Elections.”

Of course, enough time remains before the Nov. 3 election so that the political dynamic could be altered to the benefit of one party or another. But as things stand now, here is the outlook as seen by strategists in the three major arenas of competition:

* In the House, Republicans are looking for gains in the six- to 12 seat range, well below the median benchmark of 22 seats for the last five off-year elections--and well below their expectations in the immediate aftermath of Clinton’s Aug. 17 admission of his affair with Lewinsky. But with the help of the president’s troubles, once-bright Democratic hopes for regaining control of the House--in which Republicans have a 228-206 majority--have all but vanished. (The chamber’s remaining member is an independent who usually votes with the Democrats.)

One factor working against the Democrats from the start was precedent: No party controlling the White House has gained House seats in a midterm election since 1934, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was lifting the country out of the Great Depression.

* In the Senate, Republicans are expected to add two, maybe three seats to the 55 they now hold. Such gains still would leave the GOP short of the 60 votes needed to suppress filibusters but would bolster their chances for mustering a bipartisan coalition to override Clinton vetoes of measures dealing with abortion and other issues close to the heart of social conservatives.

* Among the nation’s governors, Republicans seem all but certain to maintain their dominance of most of the statehouse posts. But Democratic dismay over the expected loss of Florida--and perhaps Georgia--is leavened by the anticipated conquest of the day’s richest election prize: the governorship of California.

On the surface, the campaign’s most remarkable aspect would seem the minimal effect of the Lewinsky affair. Instead of being swayed by the scandal, Frost said, “people will vote on what’s important in their lives.”

Indeed, polls indicate that voters have been turned off by what the GOP’s Linder calls the media’s “obsession” with the Lewinsky story. “The public is sick of it, and so am I. They don’t like [Clinton]. They don’t trust him. But they don’t want to hear about it.”

And, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, said, “the public has been on an even keel while all the pundits have been on a manic roller-coaster ride,” analyzing the scandal’s potential effect.

Still, many analysts think that the Lewinsky case had a significant indirect effect on the campaign by dominating the news for so long.

Needing to gain only 11 seats to win back the House, Democratic strategists reasoned that they could do so by promoting an agenda built around health care, education and Social Security.

With polls continually showing these subjects at the top of voter concerns, “there has never been a better Democratic issue advantage in my lifetime” as when the year began, said Mark Gersh, director of the National Committee for an Effective Congress, a political action committee that aids Democratic candidates. The Lewinsky case, by distracting attention from such matters for months, “could have cost us half a dozen [House] seats.”

Polling evidence also suggests that the controversy helped Republicans by providing a rallying cry for their conservative supporters, which had been lacking.

“What the whole thing has been doing is crystallize Republican anti-Clinton” feeling, said Ken Dautrich, a public opinion expert at the University of Connecticut. “This gives [the GOP] Clinton-haters more reason to say, ‘We were right about this guy all along.’ ”

Added GOP pollster Whitney Ayres: “Republican base voters are furious with [Clinton] and with the sense that he is going to get away” with paying no real price for behavior he has admitted was inappropriate.

In the first weeks after Clinton’s televised acknowledgment that he had lied to the country about Lewinsky, Republicans had hoped that this anger would spread to independent voters and even to some Democrats, opening the way for substantial GOP gains in November.

But “the anti-Clinton surge” some anticipated “never fully materialized,” said Washington political analyst Stuart Rothenberg. Instead, as House Republicans insisted on releasing Clinton’s videotaped grand jury testimony, Democrats saw signs of a boost in interest in the election among their hitherto demoralized loyalists.

“I think the Republicans overdid it,” said GOP pollster Fred Steeper.

Democrats, for their part, have breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m a lot less worried now than I was right after Clinton’s Aug. 17 speech,” said one well-connected party strategist.

“The impact has been checkered,” added Democratic pollster Secrest. “It’s not developing the way Republicans had once hoped it would, but it’s not helping Democrats either. I don’t see voters turning out either to send a message to Clinton or to the Republican Congress” over the scandal.

Clinton’s success in outmaneuvering the GOP in the closing days of Congress also has buoyed Democrats, giving his party’s incumbents a chance to claim victory on such issues as aid to education.

“I don’t think there is any question but that African Americans, liberals and strong Clinton supporters are a lot more energized than they were last month,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff.

But McInturff contended that the Democratic surge has only narrowed the overall preference for Republicans among likely voters, not eliminated it. “We used to have a 10 percentage-point edge in terms of commitment to voting,” he said. “Now it’s 3 or 4 points.”

To help galvanize voters leaning their way in the final days of the campaign, Republicans, as usual, will have more money to spend than Democrats. Federal Election Commission figures for the first 18 months of this election cycle, ending June 30, showed that GOP campaign committees had taken in $193.3 million, compared with $107.7 million for Democrats.

“We may be outspent by 2 to 1 or even 3 to 1,” conceded Frost. But since only about 50 or so House seats are viewed as competitive, Frost said, Democrat candidates in close races will have the money they need. “We’re not going to be drowned in Republican money.”

Republicans already have begun explaining why it appears they will not match past norms for gains by the party not controlling the White House in off-year elections.

“We’ve had our big off-year election in 1994,” Linder said. “We . . . took over most of the marginal seats. We have fewer opportunities than in 1994.”