Politics: Holding the House
Norquist, Grover G.
"Politics: Holding the House" surgeon Svyatoslav Fyodorov, and former General Alexander Lebed—to throw their support behind him, not the president. "Gorbachev naturally is in the minds of the electorate," he explained. (Like...
...With more willing candidates and better recruitment, the Republicans have left no Democrat unchallenged...
...The Democrats need a net gain of twenty seats to win back their majority—and to do so, they will need to overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable...
...Nobody has had the opportunity to learn about my stand on various issues," he groused...
...Babich adds that while the Russian media paid some attention to him during the first few years afterhis fall, interest inevitably dwindled...
...Mikhail Sergeyevich wanted very much to become my daddy," he told Russian Public Television...
...Like Bob Dole, he frequently refers to himself in the third person...
...During the Reagan presidency this included votes on South Africa sanctions, legislation on plant closing notification, and other hot-potato issues...
...In 1995, the Republicans' national and two congressional committees amassed $no million for the party war chest, compared to just $58.5 million for the Dems...
...I preferred to remain an orphan...
...If muzzling fails, then there are other methods...
...Of course, the Western press not getting it is the only thing in Russia that isn't news...
...They weren't following Yeltsin...
...Bill Paxon's prediction of a net GOP gain of 20-30 seats may even be surpassed...
...Six Texas Democrats are retiring (a mass "Texodus"), and of the twenty-five "Blue Dog" Democrats who united in 1995 to rally the dwindling "moderate" caucus, four have joined the GOP and four are retiring...
...While contributions from the 400 largest PACs were weighted to the44 This will mark the first time since 1928 that the GOP has re-elected a House majority...
...publications have been beefing up their staff for the June elections, and that he himself was heading off to Volgograd with several correspondents...
...In 1994, the seventy-three freshmen who ran for Congress had to work for a living while campaigning or else forego family income during the race...
...The former general is an open admirer of Gen...
...Such is the Republicans' underlying strength...
...For one thing, of the forty-seven House members leaving as of mid-April, twenty-eight are Democrats and only nineteen Republicans...
...Of 1995's top twenty freshmen fundraisers only three, Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, Lloyd Doggett of Texas, and Bill Luther of Minnesota, are Democrats...
...After Tom Campbell won the open California seat vacated by GROVER G. NORQUIST is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...As incumbents this year they'll be shooting downhill...
...Although each party has about fifteen districts currently held by incumbents considered to be particularly vulnerable, the Democrats have failed to convince their best candidates to become challengers...
...Although Republicans won short-lived House majorities in 1946, 1952, and 1994, this will mark the first time that the GOP has re-elected a House majority since 1928...
...The Democrats are also behind in campaign fundraising...
...By contrast, Republicans have an excellent shot at capturing at least twenty of the Democrats' twenty-eight open seats...
...In Kentucky, Ann Northrup has raised $22o,000 to run against incumbent Mike Ward...
...After the '94 election, Republicans held 230 House seats to the Democrats' 203 (one seat is held by socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont...
...If his party were to regain control of Congress, Gibbons would become chairman of the Ways and Means Committee — a fine way to cap his 34 yearcareer...
...There are many other reasons to expect a strong Republican year: Congressional Quarterly reports that in the twenty-eight states which register voters by party, the GOP has added 4.2 million voters since 1988, while the Democrats have gained only 1.4 million...
...It's impossible to understand why the Western press remains fascinated with Corby...
...POLITICS by Grover G. Norquist Holding the House 0 n November 5, the Republican Party will retain control of the House of Representatives...
...Nationwide, the GOP won the right to fill more than 50,000 patronage positions —a turnaround that's cost the Democrats about $2.5 billion in lost influence...
...What makes Gorbachev seem so pathetic these days...
...I think he just likes to be a public figure," says Dmitri Babich, a political correspondent with Komsomolskaya Pravda...
...Maybe it's his Nobel Prize...
...Some targeted Republicans got lucky...
...Bill Paxon, head of the NRCC, says that there are eighty-six Democrat-held districts whose constituencies are more Republican than that represented by the California seat that Tom Campbell won last December...
...As outsiders in 1994 they were shooting uphill...
...In that race, big labor and other liberal interest groups piled on only to see their candidate lose 59-36...
...Final proof that the Republicans will retain control of the House this year comes from an unlikely source: Democratic Rep...
...Perhaps the ultimate slap in Gorby'sface, at least in the figurative sense, came from Lebed...
...He knows who will win in November...
...In his habitual growl, Lebed dismissed Gorbachev's intention to lead the Third Force...
...Phil English of Pennsylvania, defending one of the most unionized seats in the nation (it also boasts the highest number of bars), drew as an opponent Ron DiNicola, a lawyer who has variously defended a man accused of torturing and murdering an American law enforcement agent in Mexico, an L.A...
...More than half of these open seats are in the South...
...Since then five Democrats have joined the GOP: Mike Parker of Mississippi, Nathan Deal of Georgia, Greg Laughlin of Texas, and Jimmy Hayes and Billy Tauzin of Louisiana...
...And he could not pass up an opportunity to discuss what he believes is an anti-Gorbachev plot...
...He should open the road for new generations of politicians in the future...
...Only three of the nineteen GOP seats are conceivably vulnerable: Steve Gunderson's in Wisconsin, and the Iowa and Louisiana seats vacated by Jim Lightfoot and Jimmy Hayes, who are running for the Senate...
...Indeed, it would be the highlight of his life...
...gang leader, and arms traffickers to Iran...
...Meanwhile, more than 55o potential candidates have contacted the National Republican Congressional Committee about running as challengers, including twenty-five who ran in 1994 and won at least 40 percent of the vote...
...After the Republicans in 1994 won a net gain of eleven governors, 480 state legislators, control of a majority of state legislative chambers, thousands of local positions, fifty-two national House Seats, and eight Senate seats, an additional 206 elected officials switched parties...
...They believe that Gorbachev, as the most experienced man, should be the one to form this alliance...
...But the Democrats' problem is bigger than simply having to defend nearly twice as many open seats...
...Democrats have failed to file any opponents at all against Harold Rogers of Kentucky, Bill Barrett of Nebraska, Sam Johnson of Texas, South Carolina's Mark Sanford and Floyd Spence, and Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Archer...
...Now Republicans can time the votes that Clinton would prefer not to face during the campaign season—as the GOP leadership did with the recent vote on the partial-birth abortion ban...
...With majorities in the House and Senate, thirty-one Republican governors across the country, and fifteen states completely controlled by Republicans (a GOP governor and a majority in both houses), the Republican Party has more control of the country's political and legislative agenda during an election year than at any time in modern history...
...Sam Gibbons of Florida...
...As a whole, Republican freshmen raised an average of $273,000 in 1995, compared to only $201,000 for their Democratic counterparts...
...Instead, Gibbons has decided to retire...
...Maybe it's his commitment to the ecological movement...
...He obviously suffered when he lost his power...
...Yet while the Russians don't take him seriously, the Western media still can't seem to get enough of Gorby...
...The GOP has gleefully put out a list of thirty-six top-tier Democrats who could not be enticed to run this year even by calls from 60 July 199 6 The American Spectator Al Gore...
...In the past, Democrats in the House or Senate could force difficult votes during an election year...
...These ratios include the labor union PACs, which gave 85 percent of their 1995 contributions to House Democrats, and the lawyer and lobbyist PACs, which gave 64 percent of their contributions to House Democrats...
...Gibbons is the most powerful and highest ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee...
...At The American Spectator • July 19 9 6 61...
...That margin reflects not only a disparity in each party's level of commitment, competence, and activism, but also a bet on who contributors believe is likely to win in 1996...
...In the 1994 mid-term election, Republicans won 71 percent of open House seats...
...Sonny Montgomery's Mississippi seat— representing what is now one of the most Republican districts in the nation—will almost certainly be won by Charles Pickering, a former aide to Senate Majority Whip Trent Lott...
...Upcoming votes will likely focus on the assault weapons repeal, tax cuts, welfare reform, and product liability reform—an easy way for all Republican challengers to point out how Democrats are beholden to liberal special interests...
...Democrat Norman Minetta, the Republican advantage swelled to 236-197...
...17 Democratic candidates for Congress in 1994 by 70-30 percent, that ratio shifted last year to 54-46 percent—in favor of House Republican candidates...
...Whatever the case, they don't understand that he's a joke...
...In addition, twenty Republican challengers raised more than Sioo,000 in 1995, including Steve Gill's unprecedented $264,000 for his second run against the vulnerable Bart Gordon of Tennessee...
...An American photographer told me that the Moscow bureaus of most leading U.S...
...To add insult to injury, two of those sought-after candidates, Wes Watkins of Oklahoma and former mayor Kay Granger of Texas, turned around to run as Republicans for the open seats of Bill Brewster and Pete Geren, respectively...
...This year they will have a combined congressional salaryof more than $9 million, along with $73 million in taxpayer-funded staffs performing various constituent and campaign related services...
...Texan Steve Stockman, viewed as quite vulnerable after winning former House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks's seat in 1994, is running against Nick Lampson— recently accused by coworkers of extensive Medicare fraud...
...they were tracking Gorbachev...
...Republican incumbents raised an average of $246,000 in 1995 to the Democrats' $185,000...
...The intent is clearly to muzzle Gorbachev...
...Augusto Pinochet who recently warned that if there is a civil war in Russia, he personally will win it...
...The top seventeen Republicans raised from $686,181 (Jon Christensen of Nebraska) to $364808 (Michigan's Dick Chrysler...
Vol. 29 • July 1996 • No. 7
