Here Comes November

...Finally, and most important, the national election trends are fuzzy because neither party has shown that a triumph on its part would substantially affect the life of the nation...

...Those who have spent time in office are known quantities and therefore usually find it easier to gather the big gifts rich individuals and political action committees (pacs) can bestow...

...economy...

...Surviving to stand against each other this fall in most Congressional and gubernatorial races are orthodox candidates—men and a sprinkling of women who, despite marginal disagreements on priorities, think alike on the guts of government...

...Democrats woke up because LaRouche disciples wrecked their Illinois ticket by winning the nominations for lieutenant governor and secretary of state...

...One of several plausible scenarios concerning the 34 Senate slots on the block goes as follows: Of the 12 Democratic seats that are up, nine will be retained by incumbents who survived the 1980 debacle and are running again, but three open seats will be lost (Lousiana, Missouri and Colorado...

...Many contests, lacking either Presidential personification or ideological definition, will be decided by essentially random factors: slips of the tongue, misjudgments in creating commercials, errors in demographic targeting of direct-mail and phone-bank appeals...

...As for the House, because next November 4 marks the third set of elections under the post-1980 redisricting plans, in 19 out of 20 races the winning party is predictable...

...The shift of a few Senate seats would not change the balance...

...Of the 22 Republican seats up, 15 incumbents will be victorious, but two open seats (Maryland and Nevada) will go Democratic, and five GOP incumbents—in Florida (Paula Hawkins), Idaho (Steven Symms), South Dakota (James Abd-nor), North Dakota (Mark Andrews), and North Carolina (James Broyhill)— will be ousted...

...Oil, farm, textile, and steel states languish, while such states as New York, California and Massachusetts derive vigor from the boom in finance and foreign imports...

...Partisan distinctions have been further softened by a dissociation from extremes...

...Part of the explanation for the phenomenon is the marked regional variation in the U.S...

...The result: a51-49 Democratic majority...

...Why care which party has the most governors...

...Where gifts Andrew Mollison is the chief political writer for the Cox Newspapers...

...Democrats, by contrast, cite hard numbers to back up confident predictions that next year they will have control of the Senate agenda, committee chairmanships and majority staffs—for the first time in six years...

...The ratio could even fall as low as 27-23, but it is unlikely to be reversed: Republican governors have outnumbered their Democratic counterparts in only two of the 27 years that the nation has had 50 states...

...These two men are ideological opposites...

...Candidates in both parties react similarly to similar polls analyzed by similar professionals...

...Thanks to pacs, incumbents are often able to amass war chests large enough to frighten off serious challengers...

...In Michigan, for example, fundamentalist Representative Mark Siljander became the only Republican incumbent Congressman in the nation to lose a primary after GOP operatives spotlighted his literally equating mainstream critics with the forces of Satan...

...Why care whether the Democrats have a margin of 65,72, or 85 seats in the House...

...In the Senate, where a Center-Right majority prevails, the case can also be made that a change in leadership would mean little to anyone except the professionals fired as Republican staffs shrink and hired as Democratic staffs expand...

...In prosperous states, incumbents take the credit themselves rather than share it with Reagan, and Democratic challengers are loath to attack the President because of his vaunted popularity...

...Consider, for instance, the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources...

...To some extent this is due to low levels of voter information reinforcing established voting tendencies...

...Reagan's three major initiatives so far—the tax cuts, the Social Security rescue plan, and tax reform—have had bipartisan support...

...Another factor is the rise of full-time, year-round political operatives—Atwater et al...

...The handful of prominent candidates who come from outside the normal political flow consist mostly of holdovers, like Republican Senator Jeremiah Denton of Alabama, whose initial 1980 victory was—and potential repeat in 1986 would be—largely due to Democratic disorganization in his state...

...Since these are the states where switches are most probable, the GOP is bound to reduce the existing 34-16 overall Democratic advantage in control of state houses...

...But the fact is, whenever Hatch tried to eliminate ma-j or pieces of labor or welfare legislation, Kennedy could count on the crossover votes of two fellow New Englanders, Republican Senators Robert Stafford of Vermont and Lowell Weicker of Connecticut, to thwart the move...

...What minor changes are anticipated will probably help the Democrats, who at present hold 252 seats to the Republicans' 180 (three seats are vacant...

...In practice, the Democrats' record of approving Reagan' s nominees to lower courts suggests that they cannot resist White House pressure to confirm, save on nonideological grounds of character or competence...

...The result is a lowest common denominator politics...

...Much the same can be argued about the effect of a Democratic majority in the Senate on legislation...

...under $200 accounted for half the typical Congressional campaign treasury in 1974, today they add up to less than 20 per cent...

...They lost every single one...

...Contributions from these sources increasingly dominateelections, especially since small givers are disappearing from the political scene...

...Regulars swiftly formed a national network to identify fringe threats and alert state party officials...

...More of these voters identify themselves as Republicans now than was true of the corresponding ranges in the past, but the younger ones are in the age group least likely to vote in non-Presidential elections, and the older group is small...

...After Illinois, LaRouche acolytes ran in more than 80 contested Democratic primaries for Congress...

...In theory, a Democratic Senate could block some of President Reagan's Supreme Court nominees over the next two years and keep the Court from lurching too far to the Right...

...Gubernatorial contests will be held in 36 states—27 of them currently governed by Democrats, nine by Republicans...

...Washington - USA HERE COMES NOVEMBER BY ANDREW MOLLISON Washington In Maine this ideologically muddy fall, voters are expected to elect Democratic Governor Joseph Bren-nan to the House seat being vacated by Republican John McKernan, who is himself favored to fill the Augusta chair Brennan is leaving...

...Only one significant change in the numerical balance of party power is likely to result from the November Congressional and gubernatorial contests: In the Senate, the Republicans' 53-47 edge will almost certainly shrink and may well be reversed...

...There are really no House scenarios...

...Nor would it render unattainable Reagan's two remaining declared priorities—nuclear arms reduction and the reform of family support...

...Whichever turns out to be the case, this chamber's majority will continue to be solidly Center-Left...

...By summer's end, party regulars had quashed both threats...

...Relevant to the November tallies as well is the reality that the long-awaited "partisan realignment" of the 1980s still has not really taken place...

...Instead of leading a crusade, the President has settled into the role of entertaining fundraiser, hauled in for a few hours to star at dinners for statewide Republican candidates...

...The National Governors Association has shown in its policy stands on everything from welfare reform to control of the National Guard that its members are far more predisposed to agree with each other than with Reagan or Congress...

...Even Ronald Reagan, f or all his ideological drive, has been a minor factor in differentiating November's candidates...

...As a whole the nation is enjoying moderate, if fitful, growth, yet many noncoastal regions are virtually in recession...

...In states that are hurting, like Iowa and Pennsylvania, both incumbents and challengers attack the Administration's economic policies...

...Noting the fragmentation of campaign appeals, conservative Republican consultant Lee Atwater recently told Congressional Quarterly: "I have been involved in professional politics for over 16 years, and I have never seen an off-year election as denationalized as this one...

...And as Maine goes, many political pundits believe, so in fact shall the nation...

...Among incumbents, a total of 14 Democrats and 4 Republicans are not seeking re-election...

...full-blooded clashes of ideals and agendas have become the exception to the rule...

...Not until the post-1990 redistricting will conservative Republicans or the more liberal Democrats have a chance to shift the House ideological balance...

...At least half of the governors elected in November will be new to the office, yet the crop as a whole will vary little from the preceding one...

...the experts simply expect that the normal 20th-century pattern of losses by a President's party in his sixth year will be modestly sustained...

...Incumbents also are stronger than ever, independent of party affiliation...

...Republican leaders resort to generalities in gamely denying the prospect...

...More important is the incumbent's ability to raise money...

...Think back to the last spring when Republicans in the Midwest worried about the expansion of fundamentalist activism beyond its southern base into such northern states as Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa, and when Democrats were sucker-punched by followers of conspiracy theorist Lyndon La-Rouche in the Illinois primary...

...In the event of a new majority, the chairmanship now held by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah would go to Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts...

...In short, considering the centrist field of candidates facing the voters in November, the President's options in his last two years— no matter which party ends up controlling the Senate—will still be narrow: He can achieve moderate breakthroughs, or make splashy ideological gestures doomed to be as quickly forgotten as the Meese Commission report on pornography...

...The indecisive and even contradictory partisan trends of the Congressional and gubernatorial races clearly suggest that neither major party is exerting a unified nationwide attraction...

...Except in the first few months following each of Reagan's victories, changes in party affiliation have been confined mostly to the under 27 and over 80 sets...

...After the balloting, the 72-seat Democratic maj ority could end up anywhere between 65 and 85...