Democrats to control House
Senate control still unclear; Virginia and Montana races have no definite winner
By David Espo
The Associated Press
Resurgent Democrats swept toward control of the House and gained ground in the Senate midway through President Bush’s second term on Tuesday, riding a powerful wave of public anger over the war in Iraq and scandal at home.
“Mr. President, we need a new direction in Iraq,” said California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, celebrating her party’s return to power and her own ascension as first female speaker in history.
Aided by public dissatisfaction with President Bush, Democrats won gubernatorial races in New York, Ohio and Massachusetts for the first time in more than a decade, then put Colorado, Maryland and Arkansas in their column as well.
Bush monitored the returns from the White House as the voters picked a new Congress certain to complicate his final two years in office. He arranged to call Pelosi on Wednesday morning, then hold an afternoon news conference.
“They have not gone the way he would have liked,” press secretary Tony Snow said of the election returns.
Charlie Crist was a rare bright spot for Republicans, winning the Florida governorship now held by the president’s brother Jeb. GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won a new term in California, the nation’s most populous state.
But that was cold comfort for the Republicans, who have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for most of the time since Bush took office and used their majority to pass large tax cuts and back the war in Iraq.
With the handover of power to the Democrats, political analysts said it is unlikely that any major laws would be passed for the next two years of divided government — particularly if the Republicans hold onto a small majority in the Senate.
“Democrats have no reason to do anything President Bush wants,” Fresno State political science professor Thomas Holyoke said. “And the Republicans have no reason to do what House Democrats want.”
Instead, he said, House Democrats were likely to aggressively investigate the Bush administration, particularly by using the subpoena powers of the legislative body.
By midnight in the East, Democrats had picked up more than 20 House seats now in Republican hands, in all regions of the country. That was well above the 15 they needed to end a long turn in the minority, although the final outcome depended on dozens of races yet uncalled.
If the battle for House control was settled, not so the Senate struggle.
Democrats won Republican Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Ohio, defeating Sens. Rick Santorum, Mike DeWine and Lincoln Chafee.
But they came up short in Tennessee as Republican Bob Corker won a hotly contested race, defeating Rep. Harold Ford. Jr., in a vote count that went past midnight.
Late in the evening, the Missouri Senate race was called in favor of Democrat Claire McCaskill, putting the party at a total of 49 seats.
That left two races Virginia and Montana unsettled, and Democrats needed to win both of them to complete their sweep of Congress.
In Virginia, Republican Sen. George Allen and Democratic challenger Jim Webb were locked in a seesaw race with only a small number of precincts to report.
Montana Sen. Conrad Burns, seeking a fourth term, trailed Democrat Jon Tester.
Indiana was particularly cruel to House Republicans. Reps. John Hostettler, Chris Chocola and Mike Sodrel all lost in a state where Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' unpopularity compounded the dissatisfaction with Bush.
Scandal took its undeniable toll on the Republicans. Democrat Zack Space won the race to succeed Bob Ney, who pleaded guilty to corruption this fall in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Republican Rep. John Sweeney lost his seat in New York several days after reports that he had roughed up his wife an allegation she denied. Republicans also lost the seat that Rep. Mark Foley had held. He resigned on Sept. 29 after being confronted with sexually explicit computer messages he had written to teenage pages.
Rep. Don Sherwood lost despite apologizing to the voters for a long-term affair with a much younger woman; and Rep. Curt Weldon, also from Pennsylvania, was denied a new term after he became embroiled in a corruption investigation.
Surveys of voters suggested Democrats were winning the support of independents with almost 60 percent support, and middle-class voters were leaving Republicans behind.
About six in 10 voters said they disapproved of the way Bush is handling his job, that the nation is on the wrong track and that they oppose the war in Iraq. Voters in all groups were more inclined to vote for Democratic candidates than for Republicans.
Over half of the voters registered dissatisfaction with the way Republican leaders in Congress dealt with Foley. They voted overwhelming Democratic in House races, by a margin of 3-to-1.
The surveys were taken by The Associated Press and the networks.
In a comeback unlike any other, Sen. Joe Lieberman won a new term in Connecticut dispatching Democrat Ned Lamont and thus winning when it counted most against the man who had prevailed in a summertime primary. Lieberman, a supporter of Bush's war policy, ran as an independent, but will side with the Democrats when he returns to Washington.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton coasted to a second Democratic term in New York, winning roughly 70 percent of the vote in a warm-up to a possible run for the White House in 2008.
Among the GOP losers, Hostettler, Santorum and DeWine all won their seats in the Republican landslide of 1994 the year the GOP grabbed control of the House and Senate from the Democrats and launched a Republican revolution.
"It's very hard to watch," lamented Dick Armey, who was House majority leader in those heady GOP days.
All 435 House seats were on the ballot along with 33 Senate races, elections that Democrats sought to make a referendum on the president's handling of the war, the economy and more.
Democrats piled up early gains among the 36 statehouse races on the ballot.
Bradley Hart contributed to this report.
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