Big Money Streams Into House Contests

In a hotel ballroom in this sleepy state capital, hundreds of the GOP faithful have paid up to $1,000 each to eat lunch and hear Vice President Dick Cheney give a fill-in-the-blank campaign speech.

On this summer day, Cheney is extolling Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate running here to keep an open House seat in the party’s column.

At stake, Cheney warns, is nothing less than who runs the American government and the fate of President Bush’s war on terrorism.

Even before the main course arrives--a form of beef--Rogers’ aides spread word that the event has raked in $200,000 to help the state legislator in a tight matchup against conservative Democrat Joe Turnham. Before leaving, Cheney also poses for snapshots with donors. The price: $1,000 a click.

For the Bush White House, such rituals are by now routine. In all, Cheney has raised money for 31 House candidates nationwide, and Bush for an additional 11.

Democratic leaders also have been blitzing the country to shake down donors and pump up candidates. The intensity of the duel reflects the House’s narrow partisan divide: Republicans control the chamber by the slimmest margin since the 1950s. A Democratic gain of just six seats would end eight years of GOP rule.

With Labor Day marking the start of the stretch drive in an election year, the field of battle is taking shape in House races--and a gusher of party and special-interest money is flowing into crucial television advertising.

Although all 435 House seats are up for election, only about 40 are considered truly competitive. If Republicans hang on to their narrow majority, Bush will retain the power to move much of his agenda through Congress in the second half of his term, even if Democrats keep the Senate. But if Democrats grab the House while holding onto the Senate, the party can seize the legislative offensive.

No one knows that better than Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who as the Democratic House leader reluctantly saw Republicans lay claim to the speaker’s gavel in January 1995. Ever since, he has fought to get it back, chipping away at the GOP’s majority in the last three elections.

In a swing through the Northeast, upper Midwest and Southwest last week, Gephardt hammered on themes he hopes will carry Democrats to power: preventing the privatization of Social Security, guaranteeing a prescription drug benefit for the elderly under Medicare and punishing a GOP leadership he said was in thrall to “extreme right-wing special interests.”

In a telephone interview from Arizona, where Democrats are seeking to win two newly created seats, Gephardt noted that modern political history shows that the president’s party traditionally loses House seats in midterm elections. And surveys, including a new Times Poll, show many voters are fretting about pocketbook issues and fear the country is headed down the wrong track.

“You’ve got a general climate in the economy and the country that will have voters looking for change when they hit that button in the voting booth” on Nov. 5, he said.

Republican National Committee Chairman Marc Racicot acknowledged Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the GOP had to “swim against the tide of history” to make gains in this midterm election, but he insisted the party is poised to knock off some Democrats for enough seats to retain power.

One thing that could work in the Republicans’ favor is the debate over a possible U.S. attack on Iraq. Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the focus on Iraq “sucks the oxygen out of some of the other issues in the campaign.”

On the domestic front, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said the GOP could claim credit for passing a raft of bills in the House on issues such as prescription drug benefits, corporate accountability, tax cuts and homeland security.

“Our candidates have good things to talk about. You put the calculus together, and I think we’re in pretty good shape,” Hastert said.

But he acknowledged the partisan dogfight will continue until election day.

Independent analysts Stuart Rothenberg and Charlie Cook, two leading House election monitors, agree that neither party seems poised to rack up major gains.

Rothenberg said his head tells him Republicans could pick up a seat or two, but his gut predicts the Democrats will eke out gains. But he is unsure whether the Democrats will reach their magic number of plus-6. Cook said the GOP’s fate depends on whether a souring national mood curdles into an anti-incumbent backlash.

Amid this uncertainty, there is one constant: the importance of money. Experts predict fund-raising totals for 2002 campaigns could well break records set in 2000, with many of those dollars being poured into a tiny number of districts.

For example, in the liberal suburbs north of Washington, Rep. Constance A. Morella (R-Md.) and a pack of Democratic challengers raised $5.9 million through June, making it the country’s most expensive House campaign so far. By year’s end, the campaign in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District could approach the record $11 million raised and spent two years ago when Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) ousted GOP Rep. James E. Rogan.

Money is swamping other contests as well. Some of it goes directly into campaign war chests and is limited by federal law. But much of the spending is fueled by unregulated donations--known as soft money--to the parties, a practice that will be curbed after the fall’s elections by the new federal campaign law. In the meantime, soft money is alive and well.

Data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group, compiled by University of Wisconsin researchers, also show that interest groups such as the AFL-CIO, the Business Roundtable and the Sierra Club have launched their own TV ads targeting battleground races. The two parties are doing the same through state committees.

In California, the only House race analysts see without a prohibitive favorite is the contest for the seat that Rep. Gary A. Condit (D-Ceres) lost in his party’s primary.

Elsewhere, four races--in Connecticut, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Illinois--pit GOP and Democratic incumbents against each other because of redistricting. In a smattering of other districts in several states, vulnerable incumbents face serious challengers.

And in roughly 20 races, retirements and redistricting have left seats open for either party to claim. One is the newly created 3rd Congressional District in Nevada, which includes the southern half of the casino strip in Las Vegas, the nation’s fastest-growing metropolis in the last decade.

There, Democrat Dario Herrera, a liberal county commissioner, and conservative Republican state Sen. Jon C. Porter have each raised $1.3 million as of June 30, and the money has continued to flow since. Herrera is heavily backed by Democratic Party coffers and organized labor, while Porter has leaned on Republican leaders and corporate political action committees. The gambling industry has given to both candidates.

Herrera stresses such issues as dwindling retirement savings amid corporate scandals, the soaring cost of prescription drugs and the environment--specifically, the nuclear waste dump the government plans at nearby Yucca Mountain. Of his opponent, Herrera said: “He’s taken $70,000 from the House political leadership, who were leading the fight for the Yucca Mountain dump.”

Porter asserts that Herrera is too liberal and, like his GOP counterparts in other swing contests, warns that a Democratic victory would be a defeat for Bush.

In Alabama’s 3rd Congressional District, which a Republican incumbent is leaving to run for governor, Democrat Turnham is at pains to avoid appearances with the party’s leaders--though he welcomes their money.

Turnham, a former state party official and son of a state legislator, stresses his conservative credentials and his distance from Washington. He describes himself as a “pro-gun, pro-life, pro-God, pro-pledge Democrat.”

Even before Cheney brought in the big bucks in August, Rogers had raised more than $700,000 by June 30--nearly double Turnham’s $410,000 at that point.

Turnham has tried to turn that gap to his advantage. At a breakfast with senior citizens the day of the Cheney-Rogers luncheon, he mocked the $1,000 photo ops.

“A photograph with me is free, but a kiss will cost you a dollar,” he told the 100 or so seniors. “If we kiss about a half-million folks, we’ll catch up in this fund-raising game.”

Later, Turnham said the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee “has been very engaged in this race--they see it as one of the winnables.” That’s just what the Democratic state Legislature had in mind when it redrew the district to include more pro-Democratic neighborhoods and towns.

At the Cheney event, Rogers reminds the crowd that no national Democrats have stumped in the district for Turnham.

“They don’t have a single Democratic Party leader they can bring into Alabama that would be more of a help than a hurt.”