An Election Year with No Races
BARNES, FRED
An Election Year with No Races With incumbents more protected than ever, the House will be little changed. BY FRED BARNES DEMOCRATIC REP. Ronnie Shows is a pro-life populist with a moderate...
...Voter intensity is normally with the out party...
...Mark Gersh of the National Committee for an Effective Congress thinks it's 15...
...Of course the rule of thumb is the party that doesn't hold the White House gains seats in midterm elections...
...Hillary Clinton of New York gave him $5,000...
...When Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected Charles Pickering, it infuriated many Mississippians and Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...There's as much difference between us as bluebloods and blue jeans...
...To win, unexpected things would have to happen for Democrats...
...But they'd have had to swipe some Democratic voters from the districts of incumbents, and the incumbents wouldn't have it...
...Keeping Shows in the House has become a Democratic cause...
...In early 2002, Shows was favored to defeat Pickering...
...Four would be a stretch...
...Another downer for Democrats is the issue agenda...
...Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic National Committee chairman, recently told journalist Mort Kondracke he'd given up on winning the House...
...A National Rifle Association rug is ostentatiously placed at the entrance to his office on Capitol Hill...
...But George W. Bush, already enormously popular, has been gaining in polls in recent weeks...
...Because Mississippi lost a House seat in the 2000 census, Shows and Pickering were thrown together in a single congressional district...
...Another cause has aided Pickering: his father's nomination to a federal appeals court...
...Now the best Democratic scenario is for the economy to follow the stock market into stagnation or worse...
...It's also one of even fewer that could be called exciting, interesting, or even mildly intriguing...
...Charlie Cook, a highly respected analyst, says 18...
...True, there are three other races pitting House incumbents against each other (in Illinois, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania...
...In 1996, Republicans were on the verge of losing the House, but President Clinton's questionable fund-raising became the overriding issue with two weeks left—and the GOP held on...
...He's not an opponent you can underestimate," Pickering says...
...He doesn't and neither do Republicans in Washington...
...Plus, a small number of other incumbents such as liberal Republican Connie Morella of Maryland and Democrat Karen Thurman of Florida are in trouble...
...The bluebloods are sending our blue jeans to Mexico...
...Then Democrats filed suit with a chancery court judge, who created a new district that tilted slightly in Shows's favor...
...For the foreseeable future, it's dominated by the war on terrorism and the matter of homeland security...
...The losers are often House members swept in with the president's election...
...So a Democratic victory is still quite possible, if unlikely...
...Pickering has taken the measure of Shows...
...They're the result of population shifts and redistricting...
...In its odd way, the Shows-Pickering race brings together the battle to control Congress and the fight to control the federal judiciary...
...Sherrod Brown and several other Democrats vulnerable...
...The new district voted 65 percent for Bush in 2000 and its percentage of black voters shrunk to 30 percent from 37 percent in the chancery judge's plan...
...Pickups by the out party are usually a reaction against the president...
...The terrorist attacks on September 11 changed that, stirring Republicans...
...This is hardly inconceivable...
...But voters turned away massively in the final weeks of the campaign and they dropped 27 seats...
...And they'd need to win at least 2, probably 3, and maybe all 4 of the incumbent versus incumbent races...
...The paucity of available districts leaves Democrats with a difficult job in trying to capture the House, now held by Republicans 223 to 212...
...Ronnie Shows is a pro-life populist with a moderate record...
...Political professionals argue not over how many House seats are toss-ups in 2002 but how few...
...Republican congressman Chip Pickering is a smooth New South conservative who once was Senate GOP leader Trent Lott's top aide...
...And shamelessly partisan reappor-tionment has made a few House races—in Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—worth watching...
...In 1982, for example, Republican operatives were convinced they'd break even, despite a recession...
...Wolfson, for one, insists one set of issues "doesn't exist at the expense of others" and thus Democrats will be heard...
...indirectly boosted his son's campaign...
...The fear among Democrats is this will drown out their issues— defending Social Security, a prescription drug benefit, a patients' bill of rights, the tax break Enron would have received if Republicans had killed the alternative minimum tax for corporations...
...Their best shot is in Connecticut where Democrat James Maloney, an able campaigner, has roughly a 50-50 chance of beating Republican Nancy Johnson, a moderate...
...In 2000, Democrats won but 5 of 26 GOP open seats and lost 6 of 9 Democratic ones...
...Shows is a hardscrabble Democrat, Pickering a Republican from the party's elite...
...Steve Schmidt of the National Republican Congressional Committee says 10 to 12...
...They'd have to pick up more seats in Georgia, mainly through redistrict-ing, than they lose in Pennsylvania through redistricting...
...He called Kondracke back later to say Democratic prospects would be better by Election Day...
...Which is why Pickering is expected to win and the GOP favored to hold the House one more time...
...But Pickering and his allies, including Lott, intervened in the state senate, and in the end the legislature failed to agree on any reappor-tionment blueprint...
...They'd have to do far better in taking open seats, not their forte...
...The reason is incumbent selfishness...
...All over the country entrenched incumbents, both Republicans and Democrats, used redistricting required by the 2000 census to entrench themselves further...
...And it's a clash of social classes as well...
...It has another distinction: It's one of the few competitive congressional races in the entire country this year...
...Robert Taft feared Brown might run against him for governor and so his district was protected...
...The district favors Gekas, but Holden is a better campaigner...
...The Mississippi House had produced a redistricting plan that chopped up Pickering's old district...
...That would have required at least two Republicans to give up GOP voters, and it proved too much to ask...
...I have nothing bad to say about him...
...Democrats controlled the reapportionment process in Alabama, California, West Virginia, and Mississippi and could have carved out more potentially Democratic seats...
...In Kansas and New York, too, Republicans failed to maximize their chances, thanks to incumbents...
...But he sets the bar pretty low, accepting as competitive any race in which both the Democratic party and the Republican party spend money...
...In any event, the salient issues often change overnight, as does voter sentiment...
...Democrats need to win only six seats to take over, seven if you count Texas Democrat Ralph Hall's promise to vote with Republicans when the House is organized next year...
...Stuart Rothenberg of Roll Call says he can find only 9. Howard Wolfson of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says there are 40 competitive House races...
...The Shows-Pickering showdown, two incumbents going head-to-head, is one of the most competitive races in the midterm election...
...The rule has held all except in two elections—in 1934 and again in 1998, when Democrats netted one seat...
...Slightly less rosy are Democrat Tim Holden's prospects against Republican George Gekas in southern Pennsylvania...
...He's a good guy," Shows says of Pickering...
...Instead of picking up four seats in Ohio, Republicans now will settle for a gain of one...
...The assumption in Mississippi is blacks vote 90 percent Democratic, so this was a blow to Shows...
...And in central Illinois, Republican John Shimkus, a West Pointer, is narrowly favored over David Phelps, a moderate Democrat...
...In Virginia last year, then-governor Jim Gilmore dreamed of eliminating the seat of Democrat Jim Moran inside the Washington Beltway...
...That's a dig at Pickering's support for free trade and a reference to the loss of textile jobs to Mexico and China...
...Bush, however, had no coattails in 2000...
...In Ohio, Republicans were in charge and could have made Rep...
...This spring, though, Democratic intensity has grown...
...Pickering challenged it in federal court and a three-judge appeals panel—all three Republican appointees—imposed its own plan...
...Democrats have won House seats in three straight elections...
...But Gov...
...Republicans are confident they'll hold the House and win seats...
...It's not farfetched to think it might happen a third time in 2002...
...But that's about it...
Vol. 7 • June 2002 • No. 40
