Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 9, 1994 TAG: 9411090095
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN KING ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Persistent misgivings about President Clinton propelled the Republicans just two years after voters put him in the White House.
The GOP needed to gain seven seats for Senate control, and they were on the verge after taking Democratic seats in Arizona, Ohio, Michigan, Maine, Oklahoma and two in Tennessee.
That would be enough for a GOP majority as long as Republicans held all their seats. One, an open seat in Minnesota, was leaning the GOP's way, and Republicans were pre-election favorites in others still to be decided.
Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, in line to be majority leader in a Republican Senate, cast the results as a ``vote of no confidence in the Clinton agenda.''
GOP Chairman Haley Barbour said voters were sending a booming message: ``Government is too big for its britches.''
If one man personified the Democratic Party's plight, it was 30-year Rep. Thomas Foley of Washington, at risk of being the first House speaker voted out of office since 1860.
Democrats began the day in a familiar position: controlling the Senate 56-44 and the House 256-178. On average, a first-term president's party loses three or four Senate seats and perhaps two dozen in the House. But this was not to be an average year, and Democratic dominance of the statehouses was in jeopardy, as well.
Voters were settling 36 governorships, and were cutting into the Democrats' 29 spots. Liberal icon Mario Cuomo bid for a fourth term in New York against Republican George Pataki.
Two other mainstays, Lawton Chiles and Ann Richards, were in neck-and-neck races with sons of George Bush - Jeb Bush in Florida and George W. Bush in Texas, respectively.
In the biggest state of all, California Gov. Pete Wilson hoped anger over crime and illegal immigration would be his ticket to a second term despite a rocky first four years.
The Republican governors of Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts and New Hampshire were re-elected easily, and the GOP captured the statehouses in Kansas and Oklahoma - two contests in which the Democratic governors did not seek re-election.
As the Senate results streamed in, Republican optimism for capturing the Senate was reinforced by the early gains - and by the victories of several GOP incumbents.
Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana won handily, and was in line to be Agriculture Committee chairman in a Republican Senate. Florida Sen. Connie Mack crushed the closest thing to a Clinton on the ballot - Hillary Rodham Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham. GOP incumbents also won in Texas, Delaware and Vermont. John Ashcroft retained an open seat for the GOP in Missouri.
Democratic incumbents won in Connecticut, Maryland, West Virginia and Massachusetts - where Edward Kennedy survived an early challenge.
One defeat brought particular pain to the White House: GOP attorney-actor Fred Thompson won Gore's old seat. And the GOP wins in Oklahoma and Maine were more painful than most: Democrats likely would have held those if not for the surprise retirements of George Mitchell and David Boren.
Other Republicans winning Democratic seats were Mike DeWine in Ohio, Olympia Snowe in Maine, Jim Inhofe in Oklahoma and heart surgeon Bill Frist, who trounced Jim Sasser in Tennessee.
Crime was on the mind of voters almost everywhere, as was a clamoring for change. Clout, on the other hand, didn't seem to matter.
Fewer than 25 percent of Tennessee voters said Sasser's power as a committee chairman mattered to them. Voters worried about health care tended to side with Democrats, but those worried about taxes favored the GOP candidates.
Clinton was an issue in most of those campaigns and dozens of House races, too. Democrats sprinted from their unpopular president in droves. Overall, the 1994 campaign was dominated by mudslinging attack ads and free spending to the tune of more than $500 million dollars.
In the House, the Democrats had the same problem as in the Senate: an unusually high number of incumbent retirements. Of 52 open seats, 31 were Democratic, and more than half of them were at risk of falling into GOP hands.
Embattled Democratic incumbents were easy to find, starting with Foley and 36-year-Rep. Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, the former Ways and Means Committee chairman under indictment on ethics charges.
Early exit polls conducted by Voter News Service for The Associated Press and four TV networks showed that nationwide, voter preferences for Democrats and Republicans in House races was about evenly split, except in the South, where Republicans had a 60-40 percent edge.
Rep. Newt Gingrich, conservative firebrand, stood to take over as speaker if the Republicans were to win the House, and he eagerly awaited the returns in Georgia.
The election results were sure to reshape next year's debates over health care and welfare reform, a balanced-budget amendment, curbs on costly benefits programs such as Social Security and Medicare and perhaps even congressional term limits. At the White House, Clinton made an Election Day call for more bipartisanship, an indication he expected a conservative tide.
Coast to coast, 35 Senate contests and 435 House races gave the restive electorate plenty of chances to shift course two years after putting Democrats in charge of both Congress and the White House.
A bevy of term-limit and anti-tax propositions offered another outlet for voter frustration.
``I'm tired of the government spending too damn much money,'' construction worker Neal Dejarnette said after voting Republican in New Mexico where the three-term incumbent governor, Bruce King, was fighting to keep his job.
The elections carried broad implications for the second half of Clinton's term, his re-election prospects, and the direction of a Democratic Party that has yet to adjust fully to having one of its own in the White House and now faced losing its congressional dominance.
It was a sharp turnaround for the GOP, staggered by the 1992 debacle but now looking for a long-term realignment that would strengthen GOP prospects at the state level, particularly in the South and West.
Republican leaders expected to gain in state legislative bodies, a breeding ground for future political leadership. And the 1996 Republican presidential campaign was under way already, and sure to intensify.
Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein in California, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico were likely to escape the GOP tide. Feinstein was challenged by Rep. Michael Huffington, who spent more than $25 million of his own money.
In California, the immigration debate was being played out in a hotly contested initiative that would deny most state services to those in the country illegally.
With four Senate pickups under its belt, the GOP hopes turned to these targets: The seats of retiring Democrat Donald Riegle in Michigan, Sasser's in Tennessee, Virginia's Robb and Sen. Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania.
by CNB