SUNS  4318 Friday 6 November 1998


UNITED STATES: DEMOCRATS, CLINTON ELECTION WINNERS

Washington, Nov 4 (IPS/Jim Lobe) -- U.S. voters dealt a major blow to the Republican Party and gave Democrats and President Bill Clinton a major moral victory in mid-term elections, results showed Wednesday.

Defying 60 years of electoral history, the Democrats gained five seats in the 435-seat House of Representatives, narrowing the Republican majority there to a razor-thing just six seats and severely weakening the right-wing leadership of House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Democrats also retained 45 seats in the 100-seat Senate where Republicans, as recently as mid-October, had hoped to pick up as many as six.

The results of Tuesday's elections left Clinton breathing easier as the Republican defeats were certain to dampen their drive to impeach the president for lying about his relationship with former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. Several senior Republicans criticised their leadership, particulary Gingrich, for trying to make the campaign a referendum on Clinton's morality.
Even Gingrich emerged somewhat chastened by the election results. "We have to look carefully at what happened and at what lessons Republicans have to learn," he told party members, some of whom looked for a change in leadership.

In a brief White House appearance Wednesday afternoon, Clinton said the people had shown they wanted "progress over partisanship."

"The message all over the country is that (voters) want us to get back to work on the people's business," added Vice President Al Gore who campaigned hard for fellow-Democrats and whose hopes to succeed Clinton appeared boosted by the election results.

Democrats also made unexpected gains in state contests, winning governorships in several key states, including some, like California, Iowa, and Alabama, where Republicans have long reigned.

Beyond their effect on Republican impeachment hopes, the results should shift the centre of political debate in the United States several degrees to the left. Several unabashedly liberal Democrats defeated Republicans in high-profile races.

Most spectacularly, Rep. Charles Schumer defeated Sen. Alfonse D'Amato in New York; Sen. Barbara Boxer defeated Republican challenger Matt Fong in California; and Sen. Russell Feingold staved off a lavishly financed campaign by millionaire Mark Neumann.

In addition, all 55 members of the two-year-old Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of more left-leaning lawmakers, won re-election, and Caucus staff claimed that as many as ten new
congressmen elected Tuesday were expected to join after taking office in January.

Conversely, avowedly rightwing candidates, particularly those hailing from the Christian Right, fared poorly. With the exception of a Senate race in Illinois, in which a particularly weak Democratic incumbent lost, "every one of the state-wide right-wing candidates lost," noted Curtis Gans, a prominent political observer.

As expected, voter turnout provided the key to the Democrats' performance. Historically, a low turnout favoured Republicans who openly declared their hope that only one-third of eligible voters would actually cast a ballot. But the turnout reached 38 percent - a low number by voting standards of other industrialised nations - but fairly typical in the United States for non-presidential elections.

Political analysts said African-American voters - to whom Clinton had made a special appeal to vote in the days before the election - turned out in higher-than-normal numbers, spelling defeat for Republicans in key races in the South and in large urban areas.

Mid-term elections in the past have favoured whichever party is not occupying the White House at the time. In the last 60 years, for example, the presidential party has lost an average of 27 seats in the 435-seat House and several more seats in the Senate.

That historic pattern, as well as the Lewinsky scandal that appeared to cripple Clinton's own political credibility, fuelled Republican hopes of making major gains this year. As recently as last month, the
Republican leadership was predicting gains of as many as 40 seats in the House and six or seven more in the Senate.

The fact that the Democrats actually gained seats in the House and held firm in the Senate in Tuesday's elections was considered "historic" by leading poll analyst Stuart Rothenberg, who predicted that the impact of the Democrats' feat would prove far greater politically than the
modest numbers of seats that changed hands.

The democratic gains, and the role of the traditional democratic allies like unions, would strengthen the voice of House Democratic leader Gephardt and others, and will make it more difficult for the
administration to push and win any fast-track authority for new trade negotiations, either in the Americas or the WTO.

The vote was not a complete disaster for Republicans. In Illinois, they defeated the only African-American woman ever elected to the Senate, Carole Moseley-Braun, who fell foul of the voters as a result of unresolved ethical charges and a controversial trip to Nigeria in support of the late dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha.

In addition, two sons of former President George Bush won the governorships in Texas and Florida. George Bush, Jr.'s smashing victory for re-election as Texas governor propelled him to the front of the pack of likely Republican aspirants in the 2000 presidential election to succeed Clinton.

Republicans also claimed the seats of retiring Democrats John Glenn of Ohio (currently in orbit aboard the US space shuttle craft) and Wendell Ford of Kentucky, but these results were anticipated.

They had hoped to pick up a governorship in Minnesota, but were frustrated when retired professional wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura won a plurality on the Reform Party ticket.
Ventura, a self-described fiscal conservative and social liberal who has his own radio talk show, said that, henceforth, he would be known as Jesse "The Mind" Ventura.

In ballot initiatives, five states voted to legalise the medical use of marijuana, while Washington State, where Democrats ironically made their biggest gains in Congress, decided to outlaw government affirmative action programmes for women and minorities in hiring, higher education and contracting. California passed a similar controversial measure two years ago, and its supporters said they will now try to introduce it in other states.

IPS New York adds:

Ballot measures favouring campaign finance reforms, and that would crack down on unregulated "soft money" contributions to political candidates, won easily in Tuesday's voting in the states of Arizona and Massachusetts.

Perhaps more significantly, Senator Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who risked his seat by refusing "soft" money - financing from the national party to a local candidate - won a narrow victory over heavily-financed challenger Mark Neumann. Feingold won 50% of the statewide vote to Neumann's 49 percent, even though the Republican received millions of dollars of soft money from his party in recent weeks to fund television advertisements criticising the Democrat.

For critics of the current system, from both the right and left, the election results were a heartening sign of a consensus behind reforming the expensive, corporate-funded election process. Even Arianna Huffington, a conservative columnist - whose millionaire former husband Michael financed his own failed Senate run in California four years ago - cheered Feingold's victory.

"I really thought he would go down, but he demonstrated you can put your principles above your survival," she told Salon, an Internet publication. "That should be a lesson for the Republicans."

In the closing days of the Feingold campaign, the incumbent, who took office in 1992 in a pro-Democratic wave that also saw the election of President Bill Clinton, had conceded he might lose by refusing millions of dollars from the Democratic Party's soft-money coffers. But he insisted, "This is the right fight," and added that he would prefer to lose than to perpetuate the current system.

Feingold, together with Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, authored campaign-finance legislation which Congress repeatedly dropped. He was targeted for political doom by Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, a Republican and ardent reform foe who pushed his party to fund Neumann. But, although the campaign money helped bring Neumann nearly even with Feingold, it was not enough to unseat the Democrat.

The system Feingold opposes is one in which candidates are limited on amounts of money that they can directly receive from corporate sponsors - but face little oversight on money that the Democratic and Republican parties raise from the same corporations.

In New York's expensive Senatorial race this year, for example, winning Democrat Charles Schumer raised $14 million, and losing Republican Alfonse D'Amato scored $20 million - much of it in soft money.

Campaign finance reformers have argued such sums, often lavished on television ads, narrow the range of choices for voters and compel most candidates to lobby for corporate dollars - as Clinton was criticised for doing in his own 1996 re-election, which Republicans hit for using soft-money donations from several Asian-American businessmen.

As a result, the victories Tuesday of two finance-reform ballot initiatives in Massachusetts and Arizona, coming just two years after similar measures passed in Vermont and Maine, sends a strong signal about the popularity of publicly-financed elections. "This sends a message nationwide - there's no doubt about it," said Kaia Lenhart, political director of Arizonans for Clean Elections,
about the initiatives' success.

The Arizona initiative would give the state's public money - acquired from a 10% surcharge on civil and criminal penalties, an increase in fees on political lobbyists and voluntary money - to candidates who agree to limit their campaign spending.

To receive the public funds, candidates for state representative would also be required to raise $5 contributions from 200 people, and those for governor would have to earn 4,000 such $5 donations.
"This is a comprehensive model of public campaign financing which is voluntary," Lenhart said. "If a candidate agrees, there's an absolute cap on spending; to receive money from the clean elections fund, the candidates have to demonstrate broad public support by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people."

Similar principles are reflected in the Massachusetts measure, which won the support of two-thirds of state voters. Under that plan, if candidates agree to limit contributions to no more than $100 per donor and to limit campaign spending, they would receive public funds. The initiative is expected to go into force by 2002, if state legislators can find the money - an estimated $14 million each election year - to pay for it.

"We exceeded our expectations. I think it will have a dramatic impact," said David Donnelly, campaign manager for Massachusetts Voters for Clean Elections.

Still, the political elite made it clear that there was a heavy price to pay for pushing for changes in the current system, which requires so much money to run a campaign that it often leaves incumbents secure.

Feingold was just one example of a politician who faced a funding shortfall, and a near-loss, because he wouldn't touch soft money. On the Republican side, Linda Smith - an anti-abortion, anti-affirmative action conservative who opposed incumbent Washington Senator Patty Murray - loudly called for campaign finance reform, and was low on funds for most of her failed election bid.

"Linda Smith was everything the Republicans wanted, on abortion, on (opposition to) taxes, on welfare, but she said there should be finance reform," one Republican analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. "So what did (the Republican Party) do? They didn't give her any
money until late in the race, and she lost."

In addition, another factor may keep election costs spiralling upwards, no matter how many battles reformers win. By the year 2000, presidential primary elections will be held in dozens of states,
accounting for nearly 80% of all voters - within a month of the first primary in New Hampshire.

Such a compressed race for presidential nominations will likely require prospective candidates to raise tens of millions of dollars by early 2000 - a sign that the reform tide has yet to affect the presidency.