How the House Was Won
BARNES, FRED
How the House Was Won It's the overlooked story of the election: no Speaker Gephardt. by Fred Barnes THE MOMENT that House Republicans feared came and went on October 3. That was the day of the...
...The most basic thing that happened was Republicans kept control of the House, 223-212...
...But a single seat more or less isn't what's significant...
...This aided Rep...
...We were happy to be under the radar screen...
...After last year's massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, the National Rifle Association was supposed to have become a pariah in American politics...
...The result was a stunning election performance by House Republicans on November 7 that's either been overlooked or misreported by the media...
...But with Gingrich gone, that tactic didn't work...
...There was no polarizing figure like Newt Gingrich," says a GOP official...
...Out of the spotlight, however, Nethercutt won 58-40 percent...
...The AFL-CIO, plus individual unions, made winning the House the top political priority for 2000...
...That second seat belongs to Rep...
...According to Roll Call, he asked Clinton to veto a continuing resolution, close the government down for a day, and blame Republicans...
...Davis decided to intervene early on in a half-dozen races, with good results...
...It hasn't...
...They failed on all three counts...
...That, in turn, would have generated support for his Democratic opponent...
...They then pumped millions into GOP campaigns...
...Now, they'll finish the budget in a lame duck session, with Clinton's clout reduced...
...The president declined, afraid this would play into Bush's hands, allowing him to cite the shutdown as a compelling reason for new leadership in Washington...
...A final surprise emerged on Election Day...
...by Fred Barnes THE MOMENT that House Republicans feared came and went on October 3. That was the day of the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush...
...You can influence them...
...Even before Republicans had picked a nominee in an Orlando, Florida, seat, the Davis committee aired TV ads attacking popular Democrat Linda Chapin, notably one zinging her for authorizing, as a county commissioner, public money to buy an $18,500 bronze frog and provide cable TV for prisoners...
...On prescription drugs, Republicans were able to inoculate themselves merely by insisting they were for some kind of benefit...
...Minority leader Richard Gephardt persuaded senior Democrats to put off retirement to make sure their seats didn't flip...
...And Gore not only didn't challenge Bush to lean on House Republicans, he made Social Security, not a Medicare drug benefit, his chief issue in the final week of the campaign...
...Angry, he switched parties for the remaining months of his term...
...Now, the House "will serve as our backstop for potential anti-gun actions in the Senate possibly driven by a President Al Gore...
...NRA lobbyist Chuck Cunningham calculates the pro-gun lobby is gaining at least 5 votes in the House...
...George Nethercutt in Washington, who had noisily pledged to serve only three House terms but was running for his fourth...
...It's imperative that you personally call on them to stop blocking this legislation, so seniors will be able to get the drugs they need...
...Absent a presidential race, he'd have drawn enormous national media attention for breaking his word...
...He spent $6 million of his own money, but that didn't offset the negative TV spots on his tax troubles aired by the GOP committee...
...There were no Bush coattails, but the presidential race helped House GOP candidates nonetheless...
...And Democrats convinced the business community to hedge its bet on Republicans and pour political action committee money into Democratic campaigns...
...Matthew Martinez of California, who was actually a Democrat until he lost in the primary last spring to Hilda Solis...
...President Clinton recruited candidates...
...One was Jay Dickey of Arkansas, who represented the most Democratic district in the country held by a Republican...
...In the end, they also got help from the pharmaceutical companies...
...Governor Bush," Gore might have said, "Republicans on Capitol Hill are blocking a prescription drug benefit for all senior citizens...
...House speaker Denny Hastert was an enormous boon to Republicans simply by keeping out of harm's way...
...Up until Election Day, Gephardt and other Democrats were convinced victory was at hand...
...It "sucked so much oxygen" out of the political environment that House contests never became nationally visible, says Jim Wilkinson of the House GOP campaign committee...
...House Republicans, wary of leaving town without completing the budget, ultimately figured they'd be better off adjourning than yielding too much in new spending to Clinton, as they'd done in 1998...
...There was still another way the presidential contest aided House Republicans...
...Gephardt was desperate for a government shutdown to embarrass Republicans...
...They figured right...
...backed, and ruthlessly efficient effort so far by Democrats to recapture the House...
...Yet they won all six of the competitive open Democratic seats, and only four GOP incumbents lost...
...After all, the conventional wisdom earlier in the year had been that Republicans would be in dire straits if they didn't enact a prescription drug benefit under Medicare, pass a patients' bill of rights, and complete the 2001 budget on time...
...Who knows what would have happened...
...National issues like a patients' bill of rights didn't dominate House races either...
...At worst, they will lose a single seat, not two as reported...
...And so on...
...The industry "finally stopped playing footsie with the White House" in search of a compromise, says a Republican official...
...Republicans were apoplectic over the prospect that Gore would make them part of the national campaign...
...Hastert's choice of Tom Davis of Virginia as head of the campaign committee proved a wise one...
...Bush might have buckled and done what Gore asked...
...True, Democrats tried to tar various Republicans as clones of Gingrich...
...The other three were from California, where Bush was swamped and Republicans have been steadily losing ground...
...Rather, it helped defeat Democratic incumbent David Minge in Minnesota and win the open Democratic seat in Lansing, Michigan, for Republican Mike Rogers...
...She lost, as did Democrat Jim Humphreys in Charleston, West Virginia...
...Who would have guessed it...
...The important thing is Republicans turned back the most focused, lavishly financed, laborFred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard...
...But Gore didn't ask, and the moment of anxiety passed...
...But the seat remained essentially a Democratic one: In the general election, there was no Republican candidate...
Vol. 6 • November 2000 • No. 10
