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House GOP Face Slim Majority

Voters reelected a Republican House majority for the first time in nearly seven decades on Tuesday, but Democrats narrowed the margin by defeating 18 GOP lawmakers, including 13 freshmen.

With two California races still too close to call yesterday and others headed for recounts or runoffs, Democrats had made a net gain of eight seats--well short of the 19 they needed to regain the control they lost in the GOP electoral tide two years ago. Regardless of the outcome of the races still in question, it is impossible for Democrats to attain a majority.

The result is a narrowing of the current GOP majority--already the slimmest of either party's majority since the 1950s--that will make legislating in the 105th Congress a balancing act that will require the sort of bipartisanship rarely seen in the Republican House over the past two years, lawmakers said.

In the 435 House races, Republicans had won 225 seats, Democrats 205 and an independent who generally votes with Democrats was reelected. Two races remained too close to call and two Texas races in which seats could change hands were headed for Dec. 10 runoffs. In the current House makeup, there are 235 Republicans, 197 Democrats, an independent who regularly votes with Democrats and two vacancies.

Republican leaders, who had predicted they would add to their majority, instead hailed the fact they did not lose it. Noting the size of President Clinton's win and the $35 million campaign organized labor mounted to win a Democratic House, House Republican Conference Chairman John A. Boehner (Ohio) said, "We feel very happy to be where we are."

House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) tried to put the best face possible on the agonizingly close defeat for control of the House. "This election was a clear repudiation of what the Republicans tried to do the last two years," he said in St. Louis yesterday. "President Clinton was reelected, the Republican budget was repudiated, and they lost seats."

This was a status quo election. Fully 94 percent of the lawmakers who sought reelection won, up slightly from 90 percent in 1992.

While Democrats did well in defending seats their veteran lawmakers were relinquishing, especially in the South where they were helped by Clinton's relatively strong showing, and the weakest GOP incumbents lost as expected, other targeted Republicans whom Democrats had hoped to beat hung on.

The focus on questionable Democratic fund-raising practices in the closing weeks hurt the party's candidates, some analysts said. "The closing weeks of the Democratic campaign were something of a big downer," said Brookings Institution scholar Thomas E. Mann.

Democrats had said the key to their chances of taking back the House was defeating enough GOP freshmen to offset the anticipated losses in open seats in the South, where Republicans have been making gains in recent years. Democrats considered this class of freshmen, already vulnerable in their first races for reelection, particularly good targets because of their close association with House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and some of the unpopular policies of the 104th Congress.

As it turned out, Democrats did well defending their open seats--losing only 6 of the 19 open seats in the South--but could defeat only 13 of the 70 freshmen seeking reelection.

Many of the defeated freshmen had been narrowly elected in highly competitive districts, including Reps. Michael Patrick Flanagan (Ill.), Bill Martini (N.J.), Andrea Seastrand (Calif.) and Randy J. Tate (Wash.). Some, such as North Carolina Reps. David Funderburk and Frederick K. Heineman and New York Rep. Daniel Frisa, made themselves vulnerable by making missteps while in office, and in the cases of Heineman and Frisa, also faced especially attractive challengers.

Others, such as Reps. Dick Chrysler (Mich.) and James B. Longley Jr. (Maine), were targets of relentless efforts by Democrats and their labor and environmental allies to unseat them.

"Some of them had self-inflicted wounds from the beginning and others some fatal errors along the way," a top GOP official said yesterday. "Then there were some others like Randy Tate who did everything right and just got swept away in the tide."

The other freshmen who lost Tuesday were Reps. Frank A. Cremeans (Ohio), the only of four Ohio GOP freshmen to lose, Jim Bunn (Ore.), Jack Metcalf (Wash.) and Linda A. Smith (Wash.), who took on Gingrich over the issue of campaign finance reform.

Freshman Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.), controversial for his associations with the militia movement, was headed to a Dec. 10 runoff as a result of court-ordered redistricting. And a recount is likely in the suburban Philadelphia district where freshman Rep. Jon Fox (R) claimed a 10-vote victory.

Democratic challengers also toppled five veteran Republicans, including four members elected in 1992 in races that presaged the party's 1994 sweep. Rep. Bill Baker (Calif.) fell to a late-developing challenge in his district on the eastern edge of San Francisco Bay and Rep. Martin R. Hoke (Ohio) succumbed to his first scandal-free opponent in his Cleveland area district. In Massachusetts, Reps. Peter I. Blute and Peter G. Torkildsen were swept up in the Democratic tide that gave the party the Bay State's entire congressional delegation. Torkildsen, who lost by 600 votes out of more than 275,000 cast, had called for a recall.

In addition, three-term Rep. Gary A. Franks (Conn.), one of two black House Republicans, was defeated in a rematch of a relatively close 1994 race against Democrat James H. Maloney, a former state legislator.

In California, flamboyant Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R) was locked in a tight contest with Democrat Loretta Sanchez, who appealed to the district's increasing Hispanic population, that will likely be decided by absentee ballots.

Moderate Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.), chairman of the House ethics committee, was declared the narrow winner yesterday against an opponent who criticized Johnson's handling of the ethics panel's prolonged investigation of Gingrich.

The Democrats also won four open GOP seats--two in Wisconsin and one each in Iowa and Louisiana.

Republicans offset some of their losses by taking 13 seats from Democrats. Ten of them were open seats, six of them in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. They also defeated three incumbents:

Rep. Bill Orton, who represents a largely Republican district in Utah where Clinton upset many voters by protecting 1.7 million acres of coal-rich land from development by declaring it a national monument.

Ten-term Rep. Harold L. Volkmer (Mo.), who said late in the campaign not only that he did not believe Americans paid too much in taxes but that he would like to pay more in taxes than he currently does.

Kentucky freshman Rep. Mike Ward, whom Democratic officials said was inattentive and allowed his GOP opponent, state Rep. Anne Northup, to gain an advantage.

In California, 16-term Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D), who has never won more than 60 percent of the vote since 1978, clung to a narrow lead over Linda M. Wilde (R), a local judge.

The narrower majority will present a challenge to Gingrich and his leadership team. In the last Congress, House GOP leaders insisted that legislation pass with a preponderance of Republican votes so they could claim partisan achievement.

"The new conditions will require a very different approach to governing," said Brookings scholar Mann. "Neither side will set the agenda. This will be a much more shared responsibility."

Indeed, Boehner predicted that there would be "much more bipartisanship" in the new Congress.

"We don't have to live in a world of confrontation," Gingrich told CBS News in an interview. "We can find common ground to work on things."

House GOP leaders said they had learned the lessons of both 1995 and 1996--that prolonged confrontations with Clinton only benefit the president and that cooperation that produces legislation that can be signed into law benefits Congress.

House Republicans' popularity ratings plummeted after their insistence on balancing the budget in seven years led to two partial government shutdowns, as well as attacks from Clinton that the freshmen were "extremists" who wanted to cut Medicare and other social programs. Their standing rebounded only after House GOP leaders turned from confrontation to cooperation and worked with Clinton and the Senate to produce legislation--signed into law--raising the minimum wage, making health insurance easier to keep when workers change jobs and overhauling welfare.

Next year's theme will be to finish the work begun last year, notably balancing the budget and cutting taxes. But gone will be grand, dramatic steps. "You go slower, you prepare the ground, you make sure people understand," Gingrich said shortly before the election.

"We need to take a little bit smaller steps," another House GOP leader said, "smaller bites that we can chew and swallow."

Staff writer Tom Kenworthy in St. Louis contributed to this report.