Politics: House Sweet It Is
Norquist, Grover G.
POLITICS by Grover G. Norquist House Sweet It Is On election day the Democratic Party lost what it wanted most: the House. In recent years the Democrats have learned to survive the periodic loss...
...L ooking beyond November's crash and burn, the Democratic future looks bleak...
...Finally, Florida voters defeated an initiative to raise a penny-apound tax on sugar to "save" the Everglades...
...For the Republicans it was a minor retrenchment...
...Oregon's Bill Sizemore led a successful initiative to cut property taxes by lo percent and limit any property tax increase to 3 percent a year...
...Martin Hoke...
...Hard to blame him...
...According to Leo Troy of Rutgers University, the AFL-CIO spent more than $300 million on the 1994 campaign—about five percent of the total dues exacted from the union's 13 million members—and that was before new chief John Sweeney took over the union in the fall of 1995 with a vow to expand its political activities...
...Democrats won back only 67 seats this time around, 25 of them in New Hampshire — a state that remained under GOP control anyway...
...Ultimately, the left's biggest failure was its prediction that Newt Gingrich would be a millstone around the Republican Party: 75,000 anti-Newt ads couldn't dislodge him...
...Just as they used the Nixon scandals to delay GOP realignment in the 1970's, the Democrats were hoping a recapturing of the House would put the brakes on a much bigger shift in America's political balance: Recent years have seen Republican strength grow inexorably at all levels of government...
...If he only spent to percent of dues on politics, then the soft-money contribution by the AFL-CIO's unions in 1996 would have been $60o million, an amount that dwarfs the$170 million the RNC spent in the 1995-96 election cycle...
...Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois stands litBig Labor spent itself silly in '96—for what...
...Florida, one of six states without a state income tax, is likely to remain that way: an initiative put together by David Biddulph44 For the Democratic coalition this election was the strategic equivalent of the Battle of the Bulge...
...party...
...Asked if the Republican Congress had gone "too far," 57 percent said it had not...
...Labor's real spending came from unreported soft-money donations: office space, phones, campaign mailings to the rankand-file, and the "volunteer" efforts of thousands upon thousands of workers whose salaries were paid by unions and affiliated companies...
...Taxes trump the environment any day...
...California, whose Proposition 13 set the tax limitation movement in motion back in 1978, has now gone further: voters passed an initiative to require popular votes for any local tax hike and a two-thirds majority for any "special purpose" tax...
...Republicans will also continue to gain strength in state legislatures...
...Abortion was a wash: 21 percent said they voted against Dole because of his pro-life position...
...They also had their eye on rewriting labor law in order to force more workers, especially public employees, to pay union dues...
...Taxpayers won strong victories for tax cutting and limiting initiatives across the country...
...Frank Luntz's exit polling found that 52 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress had done, its highest rating since 1989...
...When it failed, Germany's collapse was assured...
...By a margin of 43-28 percent voters credited the Republican Congress rather than Bill Clinton for welfare reform, and by 35-33 percent credited Congress over Clinton for the falling deficit...
...In all, labor and its allies defeated only thirteen freshmen and six other Republican incumbents...
...Eight years ago the nation was still split 50-50 on the issue...
...The Republicans meanwhile pushed out three Democratic incumbents—Ward of Kentucky, Orton of Utah, and Volkmer of Missouri—and captured ten of the twenty-nine Democratic open seats...
...But they always had the House...
...in 1993 and 1994 they picked up 514 more...
...As for the fabled gender gap, married women voted equally (4444) for Dole and Clinton, and the so-called soccer moms—white females between the ages of 25 and 49 —voted 4544 for Clinton over Dole...
...In recent years the Democrats have learned to survive the periodic loss of the presidency—to Eisenhower first, and then Nixon—without slowing the growth of government...
...Joe Gaylord, a senior Republican strategist, says the Democrats' big mistake was targeting Gingrich personally rather than tackling issues...
...Labor spent $1.8 million in attack ads against Arizona freshman Rep...
...In the North, where the GOP strengthened its statewide numbers in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Democrats hold only 49 percent of state legislative seats...
...It was a mediocre performance that left the numbers like this: 2,880 Democratic state representatives nationwide, compared to 2,536 Republicans...
...In Washington state, Republican officials estimate that $4-6 million was spent to oust freshman Randy Tate, who ran what the GOP called a "picture perfect" campaign that itself raised $1.5 million—three times more than the average winning GOP candidate spent in 1994...
...The establishment left is having a hard time explaining this election...
...For the Democrats this election was a final try to win back control of the House, not least because it would give them the votes to close down congressional investigations into the raft of Clinton scandals that threatens to wipe out both the presidency and his GROVER G. NORQUIST is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...Pollster Richard Wirthlin's numbers should also be discomfiting to Democrats...
...A nation itdescribed as revolted by an "extreme" Congress re-elected a GOP House and Senate...
...Fifty-three percent of voters said they approved of the 1994 Contract With America and 51 percent wished more of it would have passed...
...It was widely reported during the campaign that the AFL-CIO was spending $35 million on anti-Republican ads, but that enormous sum was just the tip of the iceberg...
...Today, Republicans have complete control of twelve states, the Democrats only six (and all of them small: Georgia, Hawaii, Missouri, Kentucky, Vermont, and Maryland...
...The Senate, too, looks promising for the GOP: Fritz Hollings is expected to retire, and it's not likely that another Democrat will be elected to the Senate from South Carolina for decades to come...
...Hayworth, who nonetheless defeated former Gore staffer Steve Owens...
...The liberal coalition undertook a frantic effort to undo the disaster in '96: the labor unions, environmentalists, trial lawyers, big city machines, feminist groups, and welfare-state lobbyists spent more than ever on this year's campaign...
...and of the twenty-three open GOP seats, the Democrats took only four...
...One million dollars wasn't enough to defeat Nevada freshman John Ensign, but $1.6 million did dislodge two-term Ohio Rep...
...South Dakota passed an amendment requiring either a popular vote or a two-thirds vote of the legislature for any tax increase...
...Growing power at the state level also means that Republicans will control redistricting in the year 2000, thus adding as many as ten additional congressional seats for the GOP and dozens of statewide seats...
...State senators are also still a Democratic majority (999-930), but the GOP will continue gaining here also, particularly in the South, where 64 percent of state legislators remain Democrats...
...B ob Dole's loss to a Democrat running on a promise of lower taxes, a balanced budget, more cops, and a stronger death penalty was not exactly a repudiation of Dole's recently adopted tax cutting stance...
...21 percent voted against Clinton for his pro-abortion stance...
...Kellyanne Fitzpatrick's exit polls found 63 percent prefer smaller government with fewer services, while only 26 percent long for bigger government with more services...
...In Nevada, Jim Gibbons was not only elected to the House, but saw his amendment to require a two-thirds vote of the legislature for any future tax hike win 70 percent approval...
...Four high-profile races involving targeted Republicans produced mixed results at best...
...All this spending wasn't enough to win back the House...
...The Democrats now fear they may be a minority party for generations to come...
...And still they lost...
...Two years ago the small government question won only 59 percent support...
...In the 1980's, they failed to win the Oval Office at all, and even lost the Senate for six years (though not enough to give the GOP a filibuster-proof 6o vote majority...
...In this century, the president's party has lost roughly thirty-five House seats in the off-year election of the second term...
...In 1992, only two states had a Republican governor and Republican-controlled state legislatures, versus seventeen for the Democrats...
...Republicans also held onto their 32-17 gubernatorial advantage...
...Indeed, Gingrich raised more than $110 million for the Republican candidates this election cycle —three times what Big Labor bragged it would spend to bring him down...
...Clinton won big only with single women...
...For the Democratic coalition this election was the strategic equivalent of the Battle of the Bulge, Germany's last serious effort to break the Allied advance...
...In 1992, when Clinton won 43 percent of the vote, Republicans added i5o state legislative seats...
...17 and his Tax Cap Committee won 7o percent of the vote to require a two-thirds popular vote before any state income tax could be imposed...
...Only 34 percent wished for less...
...Fifteen percent of voters described themselves as members or supporters of the Christian Coalition, and they voted for Dole over Clinton by 67-20...
...Nor could the $3.5 million Michael Coles spent of his own money in trying to win Gingrich's congressional seat: Gingrich won in a landslide, 58 to 42...
...only 30 percent said it had...
...Those Democrats elected in the bad Republican year of 1992 will be up for reelection, too: a filibuster-proof majority may finally be within GOP reach...
...Then came 1994's mid-term election, and the Democratic Party's debacle...
...Finally, they'd hoped to change campaign finance laws to keep the spigot open for labor "soft" money, while limiting individual donations and capping total (i.e., nonunion) spending...
...44 The American Spectator • January 1997 49...
...And those were just their short-term goals...
...Democratic staffers now report that minority leader Dick Gephardt, who was all set to become speaker, seems terribly depressed these days...
...Since 1992, 5o Democratic state legislators have switched parties...
...48 January 3997 • The American Spectator tle chance to hold on to her seat, and John Glenn most probably will be replaced by popular Ohio governor George Voinovich...
...Four years ago, they won 230 seats election night (five party switchers and a special election in California eventually gave the GOP as many as 236 seats...
...Election day polling confirmed we live in an increasingly conservative age...
...Asked by Fitzpatrick to describe themselves ideologically, 17 percent said they are very conservative, 32 percent somewhat conservative, 32 percent moderate, 13 percent somewhat liberal, and 4 percent very liberal...
...What's more, another twenty to thirty Democrats are expected to retire over the next four years—all of them in districts that have been gradually tilting Republican...
...Republicans won this election because of Newt Gingrich," says Gaylord, "not despite him...
...When the dust settled, Republicans had held at least 228 House seats...
Vol. 30 • January 1997 • No. 1
