Democratic Majority

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Like combines rumbling through the cornfields these golden autumn days, Republican challengers are aiming to cut down three Democratic senators from the Grain Belt in next month's elections. In the fight for control of the Senate, no part of America is more important than the Upper Midwest. The Senate contests in Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota feature the most endangered Democratic incumbents seeking re-election this fall. Republicans, who have poured millions into their drive to restore what they call "a Bush majority," will likely need to harvest at least one of those vulnerable Democratic seats to reach that goal.

BALTIMORE COUNTY'S next council and new executive will confront issues that have hung over the state's second-largest jurisdiction for some time: managing development in a county without much open space left, keeping urban problems from destroying aging suburban communities, and ensuring that schools maintain high standards for student achievement. Fortunately, several candidates would bring the experience, new ideas and energy needed to address these potential problems. County executive: Experience is what James T. Smith Jr., a former chairman of the County Council and circuit court judge, has over Joseph Walters Jr. in the Democratic primary.

NEARLY EVERYONE expected the Senate debate over helping retirees buy prescription drugs to end exactly as it did yesterday -- in failure. That doesn't make it less disappointing. Driven by election-year urgency, senators were uncommonly willing to compromise. Other political considerations intervened, however, and they couldn't reach consensus. No senator should be smug about blaming the defeat on the other party. There were plenty of missteps by the Democratic majority, but also lots of Republican feet in the path making sure the Democrats stumbled.

WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats and their moderate Republican allies held together yesterday to beat back a major challenge to their patients' rights bill, boosting momentum for the approval of legislation that Democrats have called their top priority. Six Republicans and one independent joined all 50 Democrats to defeat an amendment that would have fully exempted employers from lawsuits by employees who say they were denied necessary health care by their HMO. Last night, several senators worked toward a compromise that would limit the liability of employers who have no direct role in medical decisions affecting their employees.

WASHINGTON - Democrats will begin testing their new majority power in the Senate today as they push for their top priority: a plan, long delayed by Republicans, for regulating the managed care industry that would give patients a broad right to sue their HMOs. Sen. Tom Daschle, the new majority leader, will need to cobble together a bipartisan coalition of at least 60 votes to overcome a possible filibuster. His ultimate success will also require dealing with the Republican-controlled House and with a Republican president, who has threatened to veto the measure in its current form.

ON WASHINGTON'S political Richter scale, today's expected announcement by Vermont Sen. James M. Jeffords that he's leaving the Republican Party rates as a historic earthquake. It would reshape the landscape and shake the Congress and White House - assuming it doesn't touch off a spate of GOP and Democratic moderates jumping ship for the other party. Reverberations and after-shocks could continue for years. Suddenly, Democrats would control the Senate. Suddenly, the Bush administration's ambitious right-wing agenda would be in trouble.

WASHINGTON - New blood may soon mix with old grudges as George W. Bush prepares to send his first batch of judicial nominees to the Senate for confirmation, triggering what could be the next big battle of his presidency. As Bush moves to fill nearly 100 vacancies in federal district and appellate courts, Democratic senators are serving notice that they expect to play a major role, not just in the confirmation of judges, but also in their selection. The Democrats have made it clear that in a Senate divided 50-50, they do not intend to passively approve judges in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court's most conservative justices and the ones Bush has said he most admires.

WASHINGTON -- With the 2000 census behind us, state legislatures around the country are grappling with the politically thorny matter of congressional redistricting, with population shifts from the East to the South and West requiring major decisions to be made. None is more difficult than satisfying the Voting Rights Act requirement that race must be taken into account in drawing congressional district lines so that minority voters are not for all practical purposes disenfranchised. Until last week, the Supreme Court had gone along with lower courts' rulings that lines drawn specifically on race to create majority or near-majority districts of African-American voters were unconstitutional, as violations of the rights of white voters in such districts under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

WASHINGTON -- As Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt readily concedes, there's nothing subtle about the campaign he and his fellow Democrats are waging to wrest control of the House back from the Republicans they regard as usurpers. Their Web site is takebackthehouse.com. -- which blares the message: "6 seats to a Democratic majority!" Candidate recruitment and fund raising, intended to erase the Democrats' six-seat deficit, have dominated the party leaders' time for months. And with a sense of anticipation that is almost palpable, Gephardt and company are now daring to tempt fate by debating exactly how they will run the House after they take over.

A teacher, a lawyer, a former volunteer firefighter and nine other Severna Park and Broadneck area residents applied by yesterday's deadline to fill the vacancy left when County Councilman Cliff Roop died of a heart attack Jan 3. Most of the 12 candidates have little political experience but are active in their communities -- attributes that some council members said could be more of an asset than a detriment. The candidates are a professionally diverse group, but all are Republicans. Roop was a Republican, and his replacement must be from the same party.