WASHINGTON (By Carl Hulse, NYTimes)
November 3, 2009 — Outspent and under
siege in a hostile political climate,
Congressional Republicans scrambled this
weekend to save embattled incumbents in
an effort to hold down expected
Democratic gains in the House and Senate
on Tuesday.
With the election imminent, Senate
Republicans threw their remaining
resources into protecting endangered
lawmakers in Georgia, Minnesota,
Mississippi, New Hampshire, North
Carolina and Oregon, while House
Republicans were forced to put money
into what should be secure Republican
territory in Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky,
Virginia and Wyoming.
Sensing an extraordinary opportunity to
expand their numbers in both the House
and Senate, Democrats were spending
freely on television advertising across
the campaign map. Senate Democrats were
active in nine states where Republicans
are running for re-election; House
Democrats, meanwhile, bought advertising
in 63 districts, twice the number of
districts where Republicans bought
advertisements and helped candidates.
“We are deep in the red areas,”
Representative Chris Van Hollen of
Maryland, chairman of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee, said
on Sunday. “We are competing now in
districts George Bush carried by large
margins in 2004.”
What seems especially striking about
this year’s Congressional races is that
Democrats appear to have solidified
their gains from the 2006 midterm
elections and are pushing beyond their
traditional urban turf into what once
were safe Republican strongholds,
creating a struggle for the suburbs.
Trying to capitalize on economic
uncertainty, House Democrats are taking
aim at vacant seats and incumbents in
suburban and even more outlying areas —
the traditional foundation of Republican
power in the House. With many of the
most contested House races occurring in
Republican-held districts that extend
beyond cities in states like Florida,
Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio, Democrats
said expected victories would give them
suburban dominance.
The same is true for Senate Democratic
candidates, who are seeking to nail down
swing counties outside urban centers and
move the party toward a 60-vote
majority. That majority could overcome a
filibuster, if party leaders could hold
the votes together.
Among open House seats Democrats say
they have a good chance of capturing
include those being vacated by
Representatives Ralph Regula and Deborah
Pryce in Ohio, Jim Ramstad in Minnesota,
Jerry Weller in Illinois and Rick Renzi
in Arizona.
On the list of incumbents Democrats
believe they can defeat are
Representatives John R. Kuhl Jr. in New
York, Joe Knollenberg in Michigan, Tom
Feeney and Ric Keller in Florida, Don
Young in Alaska, Robin Hayes in North
Carolina and Bill Sali in Idaho.
Democrats say they have been able to
peel away suburbanites by emphasizing
Republican culpability for the economic
decline, a point they say House
Republicans helped make themselves by
initially balking at the $700 billion
bailout and sending the markets into a
tailspin that depleted retirement and
college savings accounts.
“Suburban voters are angry that their
quality of life and standard of living
is under attack,” said Representative
Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of
the House Democratic Caucus and a
leading advocate of Democrats trying to
broaden their appeal in the suburbs.
The partisan spending gap was stark. As
of last week, Senate Democrats had spent
more than $67 million against Republican
candidates, compared with $33.7 million
in advertising by Republicans. In the
House, the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee had spent $73
million, compared with just over $20
million for the National Republican
Congressional Committee, according to
campaign finance reports.
Most of the House Republican money was
spent on behalf of incumbents or in
districts where a Republican is
retiring, emphasizing how much the party
was playing defense. By contrast, House
Democrats spent most of their money in
the last month going after Republican
seats in Colorado, Nebraska, Washington,
West Virginia and elsewhere. On Sunday,
Democrats prepared one last radio
advertisement to begin running Monday in
an effort to claim the seat of Thomas M.
Reynolds, a Republican retiring from his
upstate New York district near Buffalo.
“That kind of says it all,” said
Representative Thomas M. Davis III, a
retiring Virginia Republican whose own
suburban seat is likely to go Democratic
on Tuesday. Mr. Davis said Republicans
simply faced too many disadvantages
heading into Election Day, including a
higher number of retirements in the
House and Senate, an unpopular president
and an economic collapse.
“You like to see a fair fight,” said Mr.
Davis, a former chairman of the
Republican Congressional campaign
committee, “but basically we are playing
basketball in our street shoes and long
pants, and the Democrats have on their
uniforms and Chuck Taylors.”
Neither of the national Senate campaign
arms was advertising in Colorado, New
Mexico or Virginia, indicating that
Republicans were virtually ceding those
states, where members of their party are
retiring, to the Democrats. Senate
Democrats were also optimistic about the
prospects of unseating Senator John E.
Sununu in New Hampshire and Senator Ted
Stevens in Alaska, where Mr. Stevens
campaigned despite being newly convicted
on felony ethics charges.
Democrats said they saw themselves with
the advantage in Minnesota, North
Carolina and Oregon, giving them a
reasonable chance at claiming eight
seats and enlarging their Senate
majority to 59 if they hold their
current seats.
If Democrats swept those races, it could
leave the potential 60th vote to break
filibusters resting on the outcome in
Georgia, Mississippi or Kentucky, where
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican
leader, is in a competitive race with
Bruce Lunsford, a businessman. Polls
show Democrats trailing but within
striking distance in all three races,
with the final results potentially
hinging on the presidential race and
turnout among Democratically inclined
black voters.
In Mississippi, which has not sent a
freshman Democrat to the Senate since
John C. Stennis was elected in 1947,
Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican
appointed last year to fill the seat
left vacant by Trent Lott’s resignation,
is in a tight race with former Gov.
Ronnie Musgrove, a Democrat.
“We feel we have a lot of momentum,”
said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New
York, chairman of the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee, “but we
are ever mindful that getting to 60 is
an extremely difficult thing to do
because we are in so many red states.”
Republicans privately acknowledged that
there was little hope for some of their
candidates, including Senator Elizabeth
Dole of North Carolina. But Republicans
have not given up on the idea of
unseating Senator Mary L. Landrieu in
Louisiana, a state where Senator John
McCain was running well against Senator
Barack Obama in the presidential race. A
victory over Ms. Landrieu by John
Kennedy, the state treasurer, would be a
significant moral victory for
Republicans, and they pointed to
internal polls that show a close race.
In Louisiana, North Carolina and Oregon,
Republicans were trying to energize
voters with the threat of Democratic
dominance in Washington, running
advertisements that warn voters about
“complete liberal control of
government.”
“We agree with Chuck Schumer that this
is a tectonic election,” said Rebecca
Fisher, spokeswoman for the National
Republican Senatorial Committee. “And if
Democrats get their way, this country
will shift so far left it will take
generations to get back on track.”
Both parties were focusing substantial
final energies on the Senate race in
Minnesota, where Senator Norm Coleman,
the Republican, was in a heated clash
with his Democratic challenger, Al
Franken, a former comedian and radio
talk show host.
The race remained close as Mr. Coleman
was named in a last-minute lawsuit in
Texas alleging that a businessman had
funneled $75,000 to him through his
wife’s business. Mr. Coleman, who has
filed an unfair campaign practices
complaint accusing Mr. Franken of
broadcasting falsehoods in his
advertisements, denied any impropriety,
but the lawsuit led to a flurry of news
accounts only days before the election.
In Kentucky, Mr. McConnell enlisted
hundreds of volunteers to knock on doors
and to make phone calls in the remaining
hours. He was to embark on a fly-around
of the state’s cities Monday in his
effort to repel the serious challenge
from Mr. Lunsford, who brought in one of
Kentucky’s favorite daughters, the
actress Ashley Judd, to campaign on his
behalf in the closing days.
Strategists for both parties said it
seemed increasingly possible that the
full Senate picture might not even be
settled Tuesday, given that a
third-party candidate could cause both
Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of
Georgia, and his Democratic opponent,
Jim Martin, to fall short of 50 percent
of the vote, forcing a runoff on Dec. 2.
Party operatives also warned that
Tuesday was likely to produce some
surprises, considering the strong
resentment toward Congress that has been
reflected in polls for months. They
predicted upsets of some House
incumbents not thought to be in trouble.
Republicans said they believed some top
Democratic targets, like Representative
Dave Reichert of Washington and
Christopher Shays of Connecticut, would
be able to hang on because they, and
others, had run strong campaigns built
on their individual images and records.
“Republican candidates who have
established their own personal brand,
and have framed their respective races
around creating a clear choice, will
succeed on Election Day despite the
turbulent political environment,” said
Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National
Republican Congressional Committee.
One problem for House Republicans was
that freshmen lawmakers who gave
Democrats control of the House after the
2006 elections were faring much better
than party leaders had expected. Some,
like Representative Kirsten Gillibrand,
who represents the Hudson Valley in New
York, became prime Republican targets
virtually from the moment they were
elected but are now favored to win
second terms after raising formidable
sums of money and cultivating moderate
voting records that insulated them from
attack.
Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky,
the president of the Democrats’ 2006
freshman class, said only two of its
members were in serious trouble:
Representative Nick Lampson of Texas,
who represents a heavily Republican
district south of Houston, and
Representative Tim Mahoney of Florida,
who has been entangled in a scandal over
extramarital affairs.
Mr. Yarmuth credited House Democratic
leaders with pursuing an agenda that
gave the freshmen substantial
achievements to promote back home,
especially a generous new education
benefit for veterans that
counterbalanced the Democrats’
opposition to the war in Iraq
“I think that was a trademark of this
last Congress that created a moderate
image that we were pro-military,
pro-troops,” Mr. Yarmuth said.
