THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 3, 1994 TAG: 9410030046
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY R.W. APPLE JR., THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 168 lines
With little more than five weeks until Election Day, the Democratic Party seems to be headed for one of its worst midterm drubbings since World War II, which would present President Clinton with enormous legislative problems in the last two years of his term.
It would also alter the shape of the 1996 presidential campaign.
Though most professional politicians remain reluctant to make firm predictions, a month of episodic campaigning since Labor Day has persuaded leaders in both parties that the Republicans have a genuine chance of making the net gain of seven seats that they would need to seize control of the Senate for the first time since 1986.
They have led the Senate for only 10 of the 62 years since the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
``It's bleak, very, very bleak,'' a leading Democratic campaign consultant in the Midwest said recently, and a senior White House official commented, ``We're in the soup up to our neck, and it's hot.''
Roger Stone, a Republican consultant, who was understandably much more willing to be quoted by name than his Democratic brethren, said, ``It's hard not to be optimistic,'' adding, ``I think we're riding a 1974-style tide, the kind the Democrats rode after Watergate.''
So ebullient are some Republicans that they dream of pulling off a startling political hat-trick by taking control of the Senate, the House of Representatives - which they have not controlled for 40 years - and the governorships of the nation's half-dozen most populous states.
But many races are dead heats, many more remain in doubt, and the lengthy session of Congress means that many incumbents have not yet hit their stride, either on the stump or on television.
Some Democratic strategists think they can still cut their party's losses by emphasizing Republican obstruction of Clinton's proposals and by ridiculing the lack of financing details in Republican proposals put forth in a midterm platform this week.
``So far, they have made us the issue,'' said Robert Shrum, who is advising a number of Democratic candidates, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. ``We need to put the onus back on them - their behavior, their negativism. In 1946, their slogan was `Had Enough?' and they're trying the same thing this time. We can't let them get away with that.''
But so far, all the momentum has been running one way. Democrats who were expected to win easily are hard-pressed, and supposedly vulnerable Republicans are doing well.
Republicans threaten the Democrats in a dozen Senate seats: open seats in Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma and Tennessee; and those now held by Sens. Dianne Feinstein in California, Kennedy in Massachusetts, Frank Lautenberg in New Jersey, Harris Wofford in Pennsylvania, Jim Sasser in Tennessee (where there are two contests), and Charles S. Robb in Virginia.
It is the rule of American politics, not the exception, that the party holding the White House loses congressional seats in midterm elections. It has held true in every such election since 1938 in the House and in all but three in the Senate. But the losses have been truly punishing only when the president was deeply unpopular with voters.
For the Democrats, the years of misery have been 1946, which produced a pair of Republican-led chambers that Harry S. Truman derided as the ``good-for-nothing, do-nothing 80th Congress,'' and 1966, when rising impatience with the grinding war in Vietnam, with the economy and with Lyndon B. Johnson himself cost the Democrats 47 seats in the House and 7 in the Senate.
There is little doubt that Clinton constitutes a major problem for the Democrats this year, with his approval rating hovering around 40 percent in the polls, although he has raised several million dollars for their races.
Many Republicans, like Guy Millner of Georgia, who is trying to oust Gov. Zell Miller, seek to tie their opponents to the president; Democrats, like Rep. Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma, who wants to succeed retiring Sen. David Boren, also a Democrat, tend to stress their independence.
But there are other problems as well, many of them beyond Clinton's control or only marginally affected by his presidency:
A nagging sense of economic discomfort, evident despite the strong business turnaround that has marked Clinton's presidency, is costing the Democrats the credit they might normally expect for good times. Real family income has been declining in the United States since 1972, according to government statistics, and that has engendered pervasive worry about the future.
The rebellion against incumbency, which has been gathering speed for a decade and helped elect Clinton in 1992, seems to be cutting more deeply into the Democrats this year because they control the House, the Senate and the presidency. They are incumbent all over town.
Many more Democratic senatorial seats are up this year, which gives the Republicans that many more chances to score breakthroughs.
The president has had to scramble hard for most of his legislative victories in the last two years, forming and reforming coalitions. The almost inevitable Republican gains in the House and Senate mean that doing so will be harder starting in January.
Anything more than modest health care legislation, for example, seems unlikely, and welfare reform will be an uphill fight.
In the House, in particular, conservatives appear sure to have a stronger voice in 1995. Republican candidates are poised to pick up about a dozen Democratic-held seats in the South, for example. There, though both parties are more conservative than their counterparts elsewhere, the Republicans are clearly the more conservative of the two.
The picture would be more sharply altered if the Republicans took voting control of Congress.
In that event, Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, a hard-nosed partisan who has led his party's charge against Clinton, would probably be speaker of the House; 93-year-old Strom Thurmond of South Carolina would be in line for the chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jesse Helms of North Carolina, perhaps the most tenacious and quarrelsome conservative in the Senate, could demand the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee if he wanted it.
Almost certainly, that would mean gridlock with a vengeance.
Some members of Clinton's circle argue that it might help him two years from now, by giving him a stone on which to strike his flint. He could challenge the Republicans, newly saddled with authority, to devise a legislative program, which would give him a target for 1996. Truman used that strategy in 1948.
Other top Democratic strategists think that the loss of either house would cripple the president.
If the Republicans took control of the Senate, Bob Dole of Kansas would be expected to become the majority leader. That might convince him not to run for president; some Republicans consider it doubtful that the party caucus would let him do both things at once if he wanted to.
A Republican presidential primary contest without a Dole candidacy could produce a wide-open nominating race, though if Gov. Pete Wilson of California is re-elected, as now seems far more likely than it did a year ago, he could quickly emerge as a strong contender.
If the Republicans take eight Senate seats, which seems quite conceivable, they could afford to lose one of the seats they now hold and still take control. They seem to be in the most trouble in Minnesota, where the Democratic candidate, Ann Wynia, a former state legislator, is running a strong campaign for the seat now held by Sen. Dave Durenberger, a retiring Republican.
The Delaware race, where a 73-year-old Republican, William V. Roth Jr., is trying for fifth term, could produce an upset, Democrats think.
Republican House targets are concentrated in the South, but they crop up in all parts of the country. There are a half dozen in Ohio, four in Michigan, a half dozen more in Washington state, five in California.
``There are still weeks to go,'' said Linda Divall, a Republican pollster. ``But the close races tend to go to the party with the surge, and that's us, so far. I think we're sure to go from 178 seats now to more than 200, and it could be 210 or even 215.''
It takes 218 to control the House. ILLUSTRATION: Map of the United States
Harry Truman
1946
The Republicans gained control of the House and Senate. President
Harry S. Truman derided it as the ``good-for-nothing, do-nothing
80th Congress.''
Lyndon Johnson
1966
The Democrats lost 47 seats in the House and 7 in the Senate.
Factors rising impatience with the Vietnam War, with the economy and
with President Lyndon B. Johnson
Bill Clinton
1994
On President Clinton's watch, the GOP could take control of the
Senate, the House of Representatives and the governorships of the
nation's six most populous states.
ASSOCIATED PRESS/File
President Clinton has had to form coalitions to post many of his
legislative victories. Republican gains in the House and Senate
could mean those wins will be harder starting in January.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE CONGRESSIONAL RACE by CNB