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BY SEAN REILLY
c.2004 Newhouse News Service
WASHINGTON -- For Democrats nationally, Tuesday's election returns were a bitter pill. For Southern Democrats, they were pure poison.
Five previously Democratic Senate seats were up for grabs. Republicans swept them all. In the House of Representatives, thanks to a carefully plotted redistricting scheme, Republicans knocked out four Democratic incumbents in Texas. In Georgia, Democrats lost control of the state House of Representatives.
"I think (Tuesday) was an unmitigated disaster for Democrats in the South," said Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., one of the party's few rising stars in the region. "We had strong candidates running who couldn't win."
Superficially, the results simply continued a long-standing shift toward the GOP. But among Democrats, they pose questions with no simple answers. And in a fractured nation, the repercussions could be felt for years to come.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans have fattened their Senate majority to 55 with a batch of relatively young conservatives who will likely carry a strong allegiance to President Bush and his agenda. Partly because of objections from moderate GOP senators concerned about the impact on the federal deficit, for example, Bush has so far been unable to make his 2001 round of tax cuts permanent.
"With this big pick-up in votes we may be able to change the dynamics on that," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
From North Carolina to Louisiana, Tuesday's returns may have also dealt a lasting blow to Democrats' efforts to stay competitive. Of the 22 Senate seats located in the states of the Old Confederacy, Republicans will now hold a historically unprecedented 18, said Earl Black, an expert on Southern politics at Rice University in Houston.
"This is a huge net gain," Black said, "because the signal that it sends to a lot of ambitious young Southern politicians is that it's very hard to run statewide as a Democrat."
In Alabama, the party has already struggled at times to find credible candidates for state and federal offices. To challenge three-term Sen. Richard Shelby this year, the best that Democrats could come up with was Wayne Sowell, a perennial candidate whose signature issue was legalization of agricultural hemp and medical marijuana.
In Georgia, Democrats were unable to come up with a strong contender in the race to fill the seat held by retiring Sen. Zell Miller, a Democrat. Part of the problem was that the two strongest prospects were more interested in running for governor, said Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political scientist. But beyond those two, he said, "it's a pretty thin Democratic bench." Miller's seat went to Republican Rep. Johnny Isakson.
The GOP also racked up Senate victories in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, where Rep. David Vitter will become the state's first Republican senator since Reconstruction. Although few handicappers expected Democrats to keep all five seats, they generally weren't predicting a shutout.
For close to a century, the region below the Mason-Dixon Line was so dependably Democratic that it was nicknamed the "Solid South." That began to change in the mid-1960s as Republicans gained a foothold amid the white backlash against civil rights legislation. They have since enlarged it by targeting Southerners' conservative mores on such issues as gun control, school prayer and -- most recently -- gay marriage.
Like other observers, Davis singled out the difficulties of running on the same ticket as presidential nominee John Kerry of Massachusetts, where the state supreme court last year legalized same-sex unions.
"Nominating Northern liberal Democrats is not a prescription for victory in the South and it's not a prescription for victory in the Electoral College," he said. In the final weeks of the race, the Kerry campaign essentially wrote off the South; he did not carry a single state in the region.
Not that Democratic Senate candidates were inviting his help. If anything, they did their best to distance themselves from both Kerry and the national Democratic Party. In South Carolina, Inez Tenenbaum, the state's popular school superintendent, positioned herself as "an independent Democrat" who supported the death penalty and the war in Iraq. Republicans portrayed her as someone who would vote with "liberal Democrats" in Washington if elected to the Senate.
Those pitches were "definitely" effective, said Bill Moore, a political scientist at the College of Charleston. Tenenbaum's GOP opponent, Rep. Jim DeMint, won with about 54 percent of the vote.
As Moore noted, DeMint also had the advantage of representing the state's most populous county.
For Democrats, there were some flickers of hope. They picked up a U.S. House seat in Georgia, held on to the governorship in North Carolina and also recaptured control of that state's House of Representatives.
Southern Democrats need to figure out what they stand for, rather than hurling attacks and running on "Republican lite" themes, Davis said. Noting the re-election of North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, Davis said that Democrats ought to focus on winning governorships because they better understand the "constructive role" that government can play in people's lives.
"Ultimately, I think this will turn on given candidates," he said. "Somewhere out there, candidates are going to have to emerge who are able to turn around the party."
Nov. 5, 2004
Can't you believe all counties in Oklahoma voted for Bush?
c.2004 Newhouse News Service
WASHINGTON -- For Democrats nationally, Tuesday's election returns were a bitter pill. For Southern Democrats, they were pure poison.
Five previously Democratic Senate seats were up for grabs. Republicans swept them all. In the House of Representatives, thanks to a carefully plotted redistricting scheme, Republicans knocked out four Democratic incumbents in Texas. In Georgia, Democrats lost control of the state House of Representatives.
"I think (Tuesday) was an unmitigated disaster for Democrats in the South," said Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., one of the party's few rising stars in the region. "We had strong candidates running who couldn't win."
Superficially, the results simply continued a long-standing shift toward the GOP. But among Democrats, they pose questions with no simple answers. And in a fractured nation, the repercussions could be felt for years to come.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans have fattened their Senate majority to 55 with a batch of relatively young conservatives who will likely carry a strong allegiance to President Bush and his agenda. Partly because of objections from moderate GOP senators concerned about the impact on the federal deficit, for example, Bush has so far been unable to make his 2001 round of tax cuts permanent.
"With this big pick-up in votes we may be able to change the dynamics on that," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
From North Carolina to Louisiana, Tuesday's returns may have also dealt a lasting blow to Democrats' efforts to stay competitive. Of the 22 Senate seats located in the states of the Old Confederacy, Republicans will now hold a historically unprecedented 18, said Earl Black, an expert on Southern politics at Rice University in Houston.
"This is a huge net gain," Black said, "because the signal that it sends to a lot of ambitious young Southern politicians is that it's very hard to run statewide as a Democrat."
In Alabama, the party has already struggled at times to find credible candidates for state and federal offices. To challenge three-term Sen. Richard Shelby this year, the best that Democrats could come up with was Wayne Sowell, a perennial candidate whose signature issue was legalization of agricultural hemp and medical marijuana.
In Georgia, Democrats were unable to come up with a strong contender in the race to fill the seat held by retiring Sen. Zell Miller, a Democrat. Part of the problem was that the two strongest prospects were more interested in running for governor, said Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political scientist. But beyond those two, he said, "it's a pretty thin Democratic bench." Miller's seat went to Republican Rep. Johnny Isakson.
The GOP also racked up Senate victories in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, where Rep. David Vitter will become the state's first Republican senator since Reconstruction. Although few handicappers expected Democrats to keep all five seats, they generally weren't predicting a shutout.
For close to a century, the region below the Mason-Dixon Line was so dependably Democratic that it was nicknamed the "Solid South." That began to change in the mid-1960s as Republicans gained a foothold amid the white backlash against civil rights legislation. They have since enlarged it by targeting Southerners' conservative mores on such issues as gun control, school prayer and -- most recently -- gay marriage.
Like other observers, Davis singled out the difficulties of running on the same ticket as presidential nominee John Kerry of Massachusetts, where the state supreme court last year legalized same-sex unions.
"Nominating Northern liberal Democrats is not a prescription for victory in the South and it's not a prescription for victory in the Electoral College," he said. In the final weeks of the race, the Kerry campaign essentially wrote off the South; he did not carry a single state in the region.
Not that Democratic Senate candidates were inviting his help. If anything, they did their best to distance themselves from both Kerry and the national Democratic Party. In South Carolina, Inez Tenenbaum, the state's popular school superintendent, positioned herself as "an independent Democrat" who supported the death penalty and the war in Iraq. Republicans portrayed her as someone who would vote with "liberal Democrats" in Washington if elected to the Senate.
Those pitches were "definitely" effective, said Bill Moore, a political scientist at the College of Charleston. Tenenbaum's GOP opponent, Rep. Jim DeMint, won with about 54 percent of the vote.
As Moore noted, DeMint also had the advantage of representing the state's most populous county.
For Democrats, there were some flickers of hope. They picked up a U.S. House seat in Georgia, held on to the governorship in North Carolina and also recaptured control of that state's House of Representatives.
Southern Democrats need to figure out what they stand for, rather than hurling attacks and running on "Republican lite" themes, Davis said. Noting the re-election of North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, Davis said that Democrats ought to focus on winning governorships because they better understand the "constructive role" that government can play in people's lives.
"Ultimately, I think this will turn on given candidates," he said. "Somewhere out there, candidates are going to have to emerge who are able to turn around the party."
Nov. 5, 2004
Can't you believe all counties in Oklahoma voted for Bush?