By David Montgomery and Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 8, 2006; D01

BUFFALO, N.Y., Nov. 7 Cruising around his district yesterday wearing his lucky white shirt, slapping backs, Thomas M. Reynolds, the Republican field marshal responsible for keeping control of the House, rallied his forces. This one, he vowed, would be a "local" election. But a snarling pack of Democrats went national on him, carrying their anger over the war, the president and a congressional sex scandal to the polls.

By the end of his 33rd election night, Democrats exulted "This is our House!" and Reynolds had been rolled. He won his own race but had failed to safeguard the rest of the operation. Back in Washington, in a Capitol Hill hotel ballroom, a giddy crowd of sweaty, beer-soaked Democrats was cheering for Nancy and Rahm and Harry, whipped into a frenzy by eager network yakkers full of projections: Murphy over Johnson! Casey over Santorum! Cardin over Steele! After a while, it felt like a Jerry Lewis telethon gone manic, with the accumulating results inching closer to the magic numbers of power, influence, pushback.

"It's really exciting," gushed Margot Isman, 21, a junior at Stanford, who was 11 when Democrats last had something to cheer about on the national level. "We've never won before! This is the most exciting thing that's happened since I got into college."

Her classmate Kalani Leifer, 20, excitedly pronounced the proceedings "electric and inspiring."

For Reynolds's Republicans, gathered in the faded elegance of the Statler Towers here in Upstate New York, the only thing they had to cheer were certain local successes.

"We have another exciting Republican win to celebrate tonight!" county Republican Chairman Jim Domagalski would announce from time to time -- some state assemblyman or other -- which is how you knew things were bad, too hard to wash down even with several pitchers of Labatt Blue.

Near midnight, Reynolds arrived to shouts of "Tommy Tommy Tommy" and the song "Hit the Road, Jack." That referred to maverick millionaire Jack Davis, who gave the long-term congressman quite a fight, but it played like a wicked taunt. Reynolds accepted the wild cheers for his own victory, then said, "Tomorrow we will address what the United States House of Representatives looks like."

By that time, it looked like revenge. Reynolds had been working hard. Simultaneously the Republicans' ultimate local pol and national congressional reelection commander, he had done his best to make this a day of, say, three dozen red local races, instead of three dozen pieces of one big blue wave.

He knew history was against him. The party in power has never in memory added seats three elections in a row. "This is a wind-in-your-face, second-term midterm election" is the closest Reynolds would come in the last 48 hours to acknowledging things looked bleak. "I'm a believer in timing. Peaking. I believe the Democrats peaked early. I believe we are still peaking until we get this job done tomorrow."

Reynolds became a metaphor for the Republicans' collective predicament: The guy tasked with getting everyone elected appeared in dire need of a lifeline himself. Some polls said he was in a dead heat with Davis, a factory owner with no electoral experience, having managed a late surge from a 15-point deficit weeks earlier.

Snapping open the curtain of the old-fashioned, computer-free voting booth they still favor in his district, Reynolds yesterday marched out and said exactly what a candidate is supposed to say, ever so humbly, at such a moment: "Now it's up to the voters to cast votes. Today we'll see the final verdict." Asked for a prediction, he added, a touch less humbly: "It all depends on turnout. If we get our vote out, we hold the House."

All around Reynolds's district -- and around the country -- Republicans were nervous, defiantly loyal; Democrats were borderline euphoric, also plain angry. The Democrats' emotional fuel appeared superior for driving turnout, but the vaunted Republican 72-hour get-out-the-vote machine had been turbocharged by Reynolds and the national GOP.

It was almost as if the two parties were fighting two different campaigns: "All politics is local," Reynolds said whenever he was near a microphone. Meaning: What mattered in the three dozen closest House races were local issues, not Iraq and congressional corruption.

To which the Dems replied: Each election is a referendum on President Bush, the war and scandal.

In other words, local politics comes in two colors: red and blue. In national politics you have to choose.

"There's a high degree of discontent out there," said William Kindelan, an Amherst town council member and Republican supporter of Reynolds. "That's a wellspring of danger for Reynolds. It has nothing to do with him, he just happens to be up for reelection."

"It's not just a regional issue anymore, it's a national issue," said Laura Perfetto, 44, an Eggertsville mother who recently volunteered for Davis and who arrived at the polls wearing a Girl Scout leader shirt. "To get rid of the Bush hierarchy, the 'evildoers,' as he would say, you have to vote the Republicans out of office."

The discontent -- local and national -- is over everything from jobs and taxes to Iraq and corruption and the scandal involving Mark Foley, the Florida Republican who resigned in late September after the discovery of salacious text instant messages he sent by computer to former congressional pages. Reynolds had known of an earlier set of ambiguous but "overly friendly" e-mails sent by Foley. Reynolds alerted House Speaker Dennis Hastert, but Foley was allowed to continue his bid for reelection. Reynolds apologized to his constituents for not doing more.

The woods beside the straight and flat byways of the district -- gerrymandered super-Republican for Reynolds's benefit four years ago after a call from Vice President Cheney -- stretch across seven counties from Buffalo to Rochester and demonstrate graphically how important clout can be: After thousands of trees were splintered by a freak blizzard last month, Reynolds walked the streets in the snow and helped engineer a federal emergency disaster declaration worth tens of millions of dollars in aid.

"I think Tom was dead in the water," former Democratic congressman John J. LaFalce told the Buffalo News. "He needed an act of God to be competitive. And he got an act of God."

But God stayed too local to help across the board.

David Montgomery reported from Amherst, N.Y.; Paul Farhi from Washington.