Republicans approach renewed control of House

ALAN FRAM,Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Repub­li­cans drove toward renewed con­trol of the House on Tues­day as Democ­rats failed to make any sig­nif­i­cant inroads into the GOP’s del­e­ga­tions from the East, South and Midwest.

With more than half of the 435 House races called by The Asso­ci­ated Press, Repub­li­cans had won 151 seats and were lead­ing in 53 more. Democ­rats had taken 89 dis­tricts and led in 56 others.

There were another 20 seats in West­ern states where Repub­li­can incum­bents were not fac­ing seri­ous chal­lenges, but those polls remained open. A party needs 218 seats to con­trol the House.

Democ­rats grabbed their first GOP seat of the night, defeat­ing 10-term GOP vet­eran Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Mary­land in a race that was pre­or­dained after Democ­rats con­trol­ling the state leg­is­la­ture added more Demo­c­ra­tic sub­urbs near Wash­ing­ton to his west­ern Mary­land district.

But in an Elec­tion Day that was pro­duc­ing lit­tle net change in the par­ties’ num­bers over­all, Repub­li­cans responded by oust­ing one Demo­c­rat from Ken­tucky and another from North Car­olina. They also picked up an open Demo­c­ra­tic seat in both North Car­olina and Oklahoma.

Even before renewed GOP con­trol was clinched, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio — re-elected to his seat with­out oppo­si­tion — claimed vic­tory and laid down a marker for upcom­ing bat­tles in Congress.

“The Amer­i­can peo­ple want solu­tions, and tonight they responded by renew­ing our House Repub­li­can major­ity,” he said at a gath­er­ing of Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton. “The Amer­i­can peo­ple also made clear there’s no man­date for rais­ing tax rates.”

One of the top fights when Con­gress returns for a post­elec­tion ses­sion this month will be over the loom­ing expi­ra­tion of income tax cuts first enacted a decade ago under Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. Repub­li­cans want to renew them all, while Pres­i­dent Barack Obama wants the cuts to expire for the highest-earning Americans.

House Minor­ity Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., refused to con­cede. She told Democ­rats ral­ly­ing a few blocks away from the GOP rally where Boehner spoke that by evening’s end, Democ­rats would end up “exceed­ing everyone’s expec­ta­tions and per­haps achiev­ing 25,” the num­ber of added seats Democ­rats would need to gain House control.

A glim­mer of hope remained for some Demo­c­ra­tic gains as 11 mem­bers of the tea-party backed House GOP fresh­man class of 2010 were trail­ing in incom­plete returns.

GOP attor­ney Andy Barr defeated Demo­c­rat Ben Chan­dler after los­ing to him by just 647 votes in 2010. Chan­dler, among a dwin­dling num­ber of mod­er­ate Blue Dog Democ­rats, has rep­re­sented the dis­trict in Ken­tucky horse coun­try sur­round­ing Lex­ing­ton, since 2004 but faced vot­ers who heav­ily favored Repub­li­can chal­lenger Mitt Rom­ney, who eas­ily car­ried the state over Obama.

Repub­li­cans also ousted Rep. Larry Kissell of North Car­olina, a two-term vet­eran who was among sev­eral Democ­rats in the state who faced far tougher dis­tricts due to GOP-controlled redis­trict­ing. By mid-evening, Repub­li­cans had also picked up two open seats in the state, includ­ing one aban­doned by Demo­c­ra­tic Rep. Heath Shuler, who announced his retire­ment after it became clear that his dis­trict would have been harder for him to win.

Oth­ers re-elected eas­ily included House Major­ity Leader Eric Can­tor, R-Va.; No. 2 House Demo­c­rat Steny Hoyer of Mary­land; and Rep. James Clyburn of South Car­olina, another top Democrat.

Also win­ning was Rep. Jesse Jack­son Jr., D-Ill., the Chicago law­maker who took med­ical leave from Con­gress in June and has been at the Mayo Clinic in Min­nesota for treat­ment of bipo­lar dis­or­der. His only cam­paign­ing has been by auto­mated phone calls to voters.

Democ­rats had been hop­ing to add the 25 seats on Elec­tion Day that they would need to take con­trol of the cham­ber from Repub­li­cans, or at least gain a healthy num­ber of dis­tricts. But after both sides’ House can­di­dates and their allies spent a record $1.1 bil­lion cam­paign­ing, it appeared Democ­rats might pick up just a hand­ful of seats.

Though all 435 House seats were in play, only around 60 fea­tured truly com­pet­i­tive races.

Democ­rats tar­geted many of the 87 mem­bers of the GOP’s tea party-backed fresh­man class of 2010 that swept the party to House con­trol. Only about two dozen faced threat­en­ing challenges.

As Obama’s lead over GOP chal­lenger Mitt Rom­ney shriv­eled to a near draw as Elec­tion Day approached, Democ­rats’ expec­ta­tions for coat­tails that would boost their House can­di­dates shrunk as well. Repub­li­cans, build­ing off their enhanced con­trol of state­houses, also did a robust job of pro­tect­ing their incum­bents and weak­en­ing Democ­rats when con­gres­sional dis­trict lines were redrawn after the 2010 cen­sus, espe­cially in states like Penn­syl­va­nia and North Carolina.

The econ­omy and jobs dom­i­nated the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, but there was lit­tle evi­dence either party had har­nessed those issues in a deci­sive way at the House level. Both sides agreed that this year’s elec­tion lacked a nation­wide wave that would give either side sweep­ing strength — as occurred when Democ­rats seized con­trol in 2006 and expanded their major­ity in 2008, and Repub­li­cans snatched the cham­ber back in 2010.

Democ­rats had pre­dicted that wan­ing pub­lic sup­port for the tea party move­ment and dis­gust with grid­lock between Con­gress and Obama would cost Repub­li­cans seats. They also said the House GOP bud­get and its reshap­ing of the pop­u­lar Medicare health care pro­gram would wound House Repub­li­can can­di­dates — espe­cially after the fis­cal blueprint’s author, GOP Rep. Paul Ryan of Wis­con­sin, became his party’s vice pres­i­den­tial nominee.

From coast to coast, Democ­rats flooded the air­waves with TV spots link­ing GOP can­di­dates to the tea party and to cru­sades to abol­ish Medicare and slash taxes for the rich. Repub­li­cans responded by tying Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­dates to Obama and his eco­nomic stim­u­lus and health care over­haul laws, espe­cially in areas where he is less popular.

Going into Tuesday’s vot­ing, Repub­li­cans con­trolled the House 242–193, includ­ing vacan­cies in two for­merly GOP-held and three Demo­c­ra­tic seats.

Turnover was inevitable, and a large num­ber of new­com­ers will be sworn into the House in Jan­u­ary no mat­ter what.

There were 62 dis­tricts where no incum­bents were run­ning at all, either because they had retired or lost ear­lier party pri­maries or because the seats were newly cre­ated to reflect the census.

When com­bined with likely losses by incum­bents, the num­ber of new House mem­bers in the next Con­gress could match the 91 fresh­men who started serv­ing in 2011 — a num­ber unmatched since 1993.

Polls under­scored the pub­lic sen­ti­ment that Democ­rats had hoped they could use to their advantage.

A CBS News-New York Times poll late last month showed just 15 per­cent of Amer­i­cans approved of how Con­gress was han­dling its job, near its his­toric lows. And an Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll in August showed that 39 per­cent approved of con­gres­sional Democ­rats while just 31 per­cent were sat­is­fied with con­gres­sional Republicans.

Repub­li­cans, how­ever, enjoyed a sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial edge.

Repub­li­can House can­di­dates, the GOP and allies like Karl Rove’s Amer­i­can Cross­roads polit­i­cal com­mit­tee and the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce spent a com­bined $664 mil­lion on House races through Octo­ber, accord­ing to the non­par­ti­san Cen­ter for Respon­sive Politics.

Democ­rats and their back­ers like labor and envi­ron­men­tal groups spent a total of $506 million.

Posted by AP News on Nov 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.