Party Lines Cut Across the War

George W. Bush is enjoying some of the highest job approval ratings ever for a president. But his popularity isn’t spilling over to the Republican gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia, who appear on the brink of surrendering seats the party now controls.

As Tuesday’s elections approach, these two contests--the marquee matchups among a smattering of races across the country--offer early lessons about politics during wartime that could foreshadow the larger struggle between the parties in 2002.

Among the key lessons from Virginia and New Jersey: It is excruciatingly difficult to capture voters’ attention when so many unsettling events compete for their time. Also, the terrorist threat is adding new issues to the campaign mix--but has not displaced traditional voter priorities like education. And presidential popularity built on national unity doesn’t easily translate into partisan advantage.

“Voters are smarter than we often give them credit for,” says Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist. “They are perfectly capable of supporting a president in time of war and voting for the opposition party.”

Recent polling suggests Democrats could run the table in the gubernatorial contests and the New York mayoral election, the third race on Tuesday’s ballot drawing national attention.

In New Jersey, the latest surveys give Democrat James E. McGreevey, the mayor of Woodbridge, a commanding double-digit lead over former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, a hero to GOP conservatives both locally and nationally. In Virginia, former Democratic Party chairman Mark Warner holds a narrower advantage over Republican Atty. Gen. Mark L. Earley. In New York City, Public Advocate Mark Green has consistently led GOP businessman Michael Bloomberg, though two polls showed Bloomberg still within range.

Bush Support Lacking

Heavily Democratic New York was always a longshot for the GOP. But with Democrats leading in the gubernatorial races, Republicans in New Jersey and Virginia are arguing over the blame. The acrimony is greatest in New Jersey, where Schundler has publicly accused acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco, a Republican, of walking away from the ticket.

Some fingers are even being pointed at the White House, with quiet grumbles in each state about Bush’s decision not to campaign with either candidate. (He signed mailings for Schundler and Earley.)

That discontent appears localized; national Republicans generally say they accept the White House calculation that voters might recoil if Bush engages too directly in partisan politics at a time when he’s become an almost nonpartisan symbol of national unity. What that means, though, is that Bush’s extraordinary approval rating is providing little apparent benefit for other Republicans this year.

“He hasn’t been generating any sort of partisan message,” says GOP pollster David Winston. “He has been leading the country. So it hasn’t benefited one side or the other.”

Most experts agree that even a sweep this year wouldn’t necessarily signal a tilt toward Democrats in the 2002 elections--when voters will choose 36 governors, 34 senators and all 435 members of the House. In the past, off-year contests such as the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races have been imperfect predictors of the elections that follow them.

In 1993, a Republican sweep in New Jersey, Virginia and New York--as well as in the Los Angeles mayoral election--did herald the GOP landslide of 1994. But Democrats ran well in the 1998 midterm election, despite a second GOP sweep of these four contests in 1997.

This time, the races are probably less revealing about partisan trends than the nature of wartime politics. All of the contests have been reshaped by the reverberations from Sept. 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks in the mail.

Some of the changes are small and symbolic. In an ad touting his support from law enforcement, for instance, Warner now includes images not only of police officers but also of firefighters, who in the past rarely were pictured in political messages. A rally for McGreevey late last week ended with the crowd singing “God Bless America.”

Other changes are an unnerving sign of the times. New Jersey campaigns rely heavily on direct mail. But several mass Democratic mailings have been quarantined because they passed through post offices contaminated with anthrax.

Overall, it’s unclear how much any message from the candidates is reaching voters besieged by news about terror at home and war abroad. In a recent survey by the Newark Star-Ledger and the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University, just 9% of New Jersey voters said they were closely following the governor’s race.

This mass tune-out--slightly less evident in Virginia--adds an element of uncertainty to the races. On the one hand, the Sept. 11 terrorism and its aftermath tended to freeze the races where they stood before the attacks. That benefited Democrats McGreevey and Warner, who held the early leads.

On the other hand, the low level of interest makes it harder to tell who will turn out to vote. “This is a very unpredictable situation,” fretted Steve DeMicco, McGreevey’s campaign director.

What the terrorism threat hasn’t done is significantly change the issue debate in the races, though all of the candidates have sought to address the new public concerns.

Since the attacks, Virginia Republican Earley has increasingly stressed his experience. That’s a potential advantage over Warner, a venture capitalist who hasn’t held office.

In New Jersey, McGreevey has called for a state anti-terrorism task force, and Schundler has urged the launch of a new defense and emergency management center.

But these ideas haven’t moved to the center of discussion in either campaign. “I think people know . . . there is very little a governor is going to be able to do about terrorism,” said Cliff Zukin, director of the Newark Star-Ledger/Eagleton Institute poll.

Instead, the races are turning on the issues that drove them before Sept. 11--a dynamic that could provide one of the most important signals from these contests for 2002. “These races show that even amid terrorism, domestic stuff still really counts,” said Fred Yang, Warner’s pollster.

In Virginia, Warner built his lead around his focus on education--and a backlash against the budget stalemate between outgoing Republican Gov. James S. Gilmore and the GOP legislature. Warner also moved aggressively to reverse the Democratic erosion in rural counties, even courting the National Rifle Assn., which eventually came out against him but not as passionately as it had against Democrats in many other states.

Traditional Issues Rule

The New Jersey race has largely been a referendum on Schundler, an outspoken conservative who displayed a knack for winning minority votes in Jersey City. Schundler won the GOP gubernatorial primary in June over moderate former Rep. Bob Franks, largely by mobilizing religious conservatives and gun owners.

But almost from the hour of that victory, McGreevey has pounded Schundler for his opposition to abortion rights, his indication that he would sign legislation allowing residents to carry concealed weapons and his support of tax credits to help parents send their children to private schools. McGreevey has never let up, and Schundler has never recovered, despite renouncing support of a concealed weapon law.

“Schundler has a very impressive record of accomplishment, but he never got beyond abortion and guns,” said Steve Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee supporting Schundler.

There’s been little that’s been groundbreaking about McGreevey’s offensive against Schundler: The Democrat has relied on the same three issues--guns, abortion and public schools--that his party has effectively used against Republicans in socially moderate states for the last decade. Gray Davis used almost the exact same tactics against Dan Lungren in the 1998 California governor’s race.

Indeed, the familiarity of McGreevey’s argument may be the race’s real point. It suggests that, even in this uncertain new environment, voters are still mostly dividing along the same cultural and economic lines that separated them before Sept. 11, which points toward another tight struggle between the parties next year.