Political Horse Race Season Opens

A few weeks ago, conservative columnist Bob Novak wrote that "analysts at the Republican National Committee have sent this warning to the House of Representatives: The party is in danger of losing 25 seats in the 2006 election and, therefore, of losing control of the House for the first time since the 1994 election."

Officials at the RNC and the National Republican Congressional Committee dispute Novak's claim. But they acknowledge historical trends don't work in their favor. Presidents often have difficult second terms, and the public often seems to clamor for change six years into a presidency.

There have been six, sixth-year midterm elections since 1874, said NRCC spokesman Carl Forti, who reeled off the numbers to me recently.

President Ulysses Grant lost 96 House seats, President Woodrow Wilson lost 21, Franklin Roosevelt lost 80, Dwight Eisenhower lost 48, and Ronald Reagan lost 5. Bill Clinton again was the outlier, picking up three seats in 1998.

Forti argues against reading too much into history. For one thing, highly partisan redistricting in recent years has severely diminished the number of competitive districts. He compared the political environment to 1998, when Republicans faced a backlash trying to tie their entire message around the ethical and legal problems of Clinton.

"If you look back at '98, the NRCC tried to run a national message on Bill Clinton on impeachment and the blue dress and all that and we lost seats," Forti said. "That was the first case since 1874 that a president's party picked up seats in a second midterm. House Democrats are now talking about how they're going to make ethics the issue. . . . But Tom DeLay's name ID is less than 50 percent. And I don't know of any congressman who ever lost a seat because of something someone else [in the House] did."

Democrats need to win 15 seats to regain the majority for the first time since 1994.

"It's impossible to know what the playing field will look like just yet, because we don't know all of the retirements," said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Bill Burton. "But we're in great shape. We set a record for first-quarter fundraising -- we raised $12.4 million in this quarter... [and we] feel like we'll be able to make waves in some traditionally competitive seats making the field of play as big as possible."

At this point, probably fewer than 10 percent of the House's 435 seats are considered competitive. Still, there are far too many to mention here.

A few interesting possibilities on both sides:

Forti mentioned a few Democratic incumbents as prime targets: Reps. Melissa Bean (Ill.), Chet Edwards (Tex.), and Jim Marshall and John Barrow, both of Georgia.

Burton said Democrats have opportunities in three districts where the following Republican incumbents are retiring, or might retire to run for governor: Mark Kennedy (Minn.), Jim Nussle (Iowa) and Bob Beauprez (Colo.).

The big kahuna, of course, is DeLay. Democrats have signaled that they're going to go all out in their effort to unseat the House majority leader, much in the same way Republicans targeted former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.) last year.

Former four-term Democratic congressman Nick Lampson, who lost last year after Republicans redrew the state's congressional boundaries, announced just days ago that he was going to move into DeLay's district to challenge him.

Ordinarily, such a move might be quixotic. But two recent polls by local news organizations suggest DeLay's popularity is sagging, and Democrats are hopeful. Republicans counter that the big difference between DeLay and Daschle is that Daschle was in a Republican state, while the electorate in DeLay's district is dominant by fellow Republicans.