House Seats

SAN FRANCISCO -- Republicans may already have lost the fight for control of the House of Representatives throughout the next decade. They may have because California's GOP congressional delegation is at cross-purposes with a California Republican who became a sore winner while successfully pushing an initiative outlawing most bilingual education in California.Republicans currently have a five-seat majority in the House. California has 52 House seats (Democrats have 27, Republicans 24 and a special election will soon fill a seat a Democrat held until his death)

WASHINGTON -- In a surprise ending to the century's last election, Democrats picked up as many as five seats in the House of Representatives yesterday. It was only the second time since the Civil War that the party holding the White House gained House seats in a midterm election.Stunned Republicans maintained control of Congress, but their lackluster showing is likely to slow the push for the impeachment of President Clinton. Instead, congressional leaders are likely to feel increased pressure to accelerate the impeachment inquiry and craft a deal for some punishment short of forcing Clinton from office.

SOME pundits are saying that voters are likely to succumb to the so-called six-year itch for tomorrow's midterm elections. That's the urge to scratch the president's party in congressional elections in the sixth year of his administration.So the Democrats could lose big. That is the historical flow. No doubt about it. But I think you can make too much of it. I think those who subscribe to the six-year itch theory have a point, but they overlook or ignore something, which leads to exaggeration.

WASHINGTON -- Election Day is six months away, but Rep. Martin Frost wishes it were tomorrow.Armed with polls that show the Republican Congress still highly unpopular with the voters, Democrats like Mr. Frost are daring to dream of reclaiming the House of Representatives, which they lost in 1994 after 40 years of control."

GLADE CREEK, N.C. -- At a Republican candidates night here last week an elderly woman rose to make a point. Her voice shaking with emotion, she told her neighbors, "Ever since they took the prayer out of the schools, they've been going downhill."A young farmer told a visitor: "She's right, you know. Those people in Washington, Clinton and them, just keep telling us what we've got to do and we keep going down in Washington."But there is neither much logic nor cohesiveness in the case voters are making against the incumbents they threaten in such large numbers.

With all 435 House seats at stake this fall and voter anger at Washington running high, the 1994 election has the potential to produce major changes in Congress. President Clinton and the Democrats are hoping to keep their losses to a minimum, while Republicans dream of gaining control of the House for the first time in 40 years.This is one in an occasional series on selected House races around the country, and the third report on the campaign in the 5th District of North Carolina.WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- When Gov. Jim Hunt Jr. toured the Mud Pies day care center here the other day, state Sen. A. P. "Sandy" Sands was just over his left shoulder in all the pictures.

WASHINGTON -- Suddenly, and with virtually no fanfare, that throng of voters whose prevailing attitude toward Congress is to throw the bums out is getting its wish: Incumbents are leaving. In droves.Swept out by a generational change, forced out by public cynicism, unforgiving politics and unrelenting fund-raising demands, up to 90 of the House and Senate's 535 members are likely to be gone when the next Congress convenes.Some will lose elections. But most are just retiring.So many members are leaving the House of Representatives this year -- 46 already, atop 45 departures in 1990 and a record 110 in 1992 -- that the majority of the next House is virtually certain to consist of politicians with four years of Washington experience or less.

Howard County Democrats picked up three open seats in the state House of Delegates in yesterday's voting, evening the score after Republicans controlled the county delegation for the last four years.The six House seats from Howard will be split between the two parties, posing the prospect of continued partisan wrangling. But Robert Flanagan, a Republican and Howard delegation chairman who was re-elected yesterday in District 14B, said he hoped the shift in power wouldn't mean hard times ahead for the delegation.

Republicans must feel good about their party's prospects in 1994. How else to explain the fact that more than twice as many Democrats as Republicans (8 to 3) have announced their retirements from the House of Representatives (those Democrats are younger on average than the Republicans), and nearly three times as many Republicans as Democrats (11 to 4) have said they will give up safe House seats to run for governor or senator?Traditionally the party not in control of the White House gains House seats in off-year elections.

Washington -- Leaders of the Republican minority in the House of Representatives are secretly drawing up plans to change the rules of that distinguished body.They would like to eliminate a few committees, particularly the Energy and Commerce Committee -- now chaired by Rep. John Dingell of Michigan -- which for some reason has to pass on 40 percent of all legislation before the House. More important, at least to members, is the distribution of staff among the two parties. Under the rules written by Democrats, who have controlled the body for more than 40 years, the majority gets three staffers for every one allotted to the minority.

Just four years ago, a flood of books and essays hit newsstands and shelves, all diagnosing what went wrong with the Democratic Party and how to fix it. A cottage industry emerged, of which my own book was a small part. What a difference a few years makes. After the 2006 midterm and 2008 presidential election cycles, a new set of analyses is emergent, asking the same question but of the other major party: What's wrong with the Republicans? In those back-to-back cycles, the Republicans have lost not only the White House but also a dozen U.S. senators and more than 50 House seats, seven net governorships and hundreds of state legislative seats.

WASHINGTON - An adviser to John McCain's campaign sums up 2008 this way: Republicans are "not going to elect dogcatchers, but we may have the presidency." Pity those Republicans running in the other election, the one in the shadow of the McCain-Barack Obama contest. Their party is in the grip of a full-fledged Bush depression, and there's no sign of turning a corner anytime soon. Deep and prolonged dissatisfaction with President Bush's performance has been amplified by pessimism about a sour national economy and high food and fuel prices.

WASHINGTON -- The most expensive midterm campaign ever -- and one of the nastiest -- wraps up today with Democrats positioned to end 12 years of Republican control of the House and possibly take the Senate as well, according to independent analysts and politicians in both parties. Projections of Democratic gains range from 20 to 40 House seats, more than the 15 needed to erase the Republican majority. Senate control will likely be determined in four tossup states. National polling in the final days of the campaign showed an uptick for Republicans.

VOTERS ARE PLAYING an increasingly minor role in choosing their congressional representatives. Political manipulation of congressional district lines has become so brazen and so sophisticated, the outcome of contests between Democrats and Republicans is all but predetermined for the vast majority of the 435 House seats. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy recently observed that state legislators who draw these lines are "in the business of rigging elections." Yet the high court effectively threw up its hands last month, declining to intrude in legislative mapmaking when the lines are gerrymandered for partisan advantage -- saying it had no standards to determine how much was too much.

WASHINGTON - After all the rallies, the handshaking, the millions of dollars spent and the barrage of negative television and radio advertising by the candidates of both parties, the country today remains about where it was politically 24 hours ago - split down the middle. But in a campaign in which no central issue seemed to sway the voters across the nation, President Bush, by investing a huge amount of his time and prestige, bucked the history of first-term presidents in a midterm election.

WASHINGTON - Republicans regained control of Congress in yesterday's election, preserving their majority in the House of Representatives and sweeping back to power in the Senate. It was a strong showing for President Bush and the Republicans, though they did not gain a large number of seats in either house of Congress - reflecting a nation that remains split almost evenly down party lines. The Senate tipped back into Republican hands shortly after 2 a.m. today, when Missouri Sen. Jean Carnahan conceded defeat in her bid to retain the seat her late husband, Mel, won posthumously two years ago. With the possibility of picking up two more seats, in South Dakota and Minnesota, Republicans had a chance to slightly increase their numbers in the Senate, which they controlled for the first half of 2001 by virtue of Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote.

WASHINGTON - While the country remains split down the middle politically after yesterday's fiercely contested mid-term campaign, President Bush heads into his next two White House years personally strengthened. With the Republican retaining control of the House and recapturing the Senate, the GOP can reclaim the dominance it held last year before Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont switched party allegiance from Republican to Independent, stripping the Democrats of the one power base it has held.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - Betting that a congressman will win re-election is like predicting that temperatures will soar in July. Well over 90 percent of the time, they do. But this year, a number of sitting members of Congress in both parties are sure-fire losers. That's because they face challengers who, like themselves, already have a seat on Capitol Hill and are fighting them to keep it. Incumbent-vs.-incumbent showdowns could go a long way toward determining who controls the House. With Congress divided almost evenly between the parties and relatively few competitive races nationwide, Democrats need just six seats to gain a majority, while Republicans are hoping to add to theirs.

WASHINGTON - As a president elected with a minority popular vote, George W. Bush and his political strategists obviously recognize that he faces a stiff test between now and 2004 to position himself for re-election. For all the brave talk about having a mandate, the jury is still out on the comfort level the American people feel with him in the Oval Office. That test in fact may have a much closer deadline of less than 16 months from now, in the next congressional elections. If the Democrats manage to hold onto or increase their one-vote majority in the Senate and pick up the six seats they need to control the House, the second half of President Bush's term could be a nightmare for him. Events of recent weeks on Capitol Hill have already demonstrated how critical to Mr. Bush's agenda the loss of Senate leadership and disaffection of Republican moderates in the House have become.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Republicans may already have lost the fight for control of the House of Representatives throughout the next decade. They may have because California's GOP congressional delegation is at cross-purposes with a California Republican who became a sore winner while successfully pushing an initiative outlawing most bilingual education in California.Republicans currently have a five-seat majority in the House. California has 52 House seats (Democrats have 27, Republicans 24 and a special election will soon fill a seat a Democrat held until his death)