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. Republicans were apoplectic over the prospect that Gore would make them part of the national campaign. “Governor Bush,” Gore might have said, “Republicans on Capitol Hill are blocking a prescription drug benefit for all senior citizens. You can influence them. 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.” And so on. Who knows what would have happened? Bush might have buckled and done what Gore asked. But Gore didn’t ask, and the moment of anxiety passed.
The result was a stunning election performance by House Republicans on November 7 that’s either been overlooked or misreported by the media. The most basic thing that happened was Republicans kept control of the House, 223-212. At worst, they will lose a single seat, not two as reported. That second seat belongs to Rep. Matthew Martinez of California, who was actually a Democrat until he lost in the primary last spring to Hilda Solis. Angry, he switched parties for the remaining months of his term. But the seat remained essentially a Democratic one: In the general election, there was no Republican candidate.
But a single seat more or less isn’t what’s significant. The important thing is Republicans turned back the most focused, lavishly financed, labor-backed, and ruthlessly efficient effort so far by Democrats to recapture the House. Minority leader Richard Gephardt persuaded senior Democrats to put off retirement to make sure their seats didn’t flip. President Clinton recruited candidates. The AFL-CIO, plus individual unions, made winning the House the top political priority for 2000. And Democrats convinced the business community to hedge its bet on Republicans and pour political action committee money into Democratic campaigns.
Up until Election Day, Gephardt and other Democrats were convinced victory was at hand. 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. They failed on all three counts. Yet they won all six of the competitive open Democratic seats, and only four GOP incumbents lost. One was Jay Dickey of Arkansas, who represented the most Democratic district in the country held by a Republican. The other three were from California, where Bush was swamped and Republicans have been steadily losing ground.
There were no Bush coattails, but the presidential race helped House GOP candidates nonetheless. 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. “We were happy to be under the radar screen.” This aided Rep. George Nethercutt in Washington, who had noisily pledged to serve only three House terms but was running for his fourth. Absent a presidential race, he’d have drawn enormous national media attention for breaking his word. That, in turn, would have generated support for his Democratic opponent. Out of the spotlight, however, Nethercutt won 58-40 percent.
National issues like a patients’ bill of rights didn’t dominate House races either. On prescription drugs, Republicans were able to inoculate themselves merely by insisting they were for some kind of benefit. In the end, they also got help from the pharmaceutical companies. The industry “finally stopped playing footsie with the White House” in search of a compromise, says a Republican official. They then pumped millions into GOP campaigns. 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.
There was still another way the presidential contest aided House Republicans. Gephardt was desperate for a government shutdown to embarrass Republicans. According to Roll Call, he asked Clinton to veto a continuing resolution, close the government down for a day, and blame Republicans. 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. 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. They figured right. Now, they’ll finish the budget in a lame duck session, with Clinton’s clout reduced.
House speaker Denny Hastert was an enormous boon to Republicans simply by keeping out of harm’s way. “There was no polarizing figure like Newt Gingrich,” says a GOP official. True, Democrats tried to tar various Republicans as clones of Gingrich. But with Gingrich gone, that tactic didn’t work. Hastert’s choice of Tom Davis of Virginia as head of the campaign committee proved a wise one. Davis decided to intervene early on in a half-dozen races, with good results. 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. She lost, as did Democrat Jim Humphreys in Charleston, West Virginia. 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.
A final surprise emerged on Election Day. 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. It hasn’t. Rather, it helped defeat Democratic incumbent David Minge in Minnesota and win the open Democratic seat in Lansing, Michigan, for Republican Mike Rogers. NRA lobbyist Chuck Cunningham calculates the pro-gun lobby is gaining at least 5 votes in the House. Now, the House “will serve as our backstop for potential anti-gun actions in the Senate possibly driven by a President Al Gore.” Who would have guessed it?
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
