In House Races, More G.O.P. Seats Seen at Risk
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
nytimes.com
WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 — At least five more Republican Congressional seats are now in serious contention, analysts said Friday, an unwelcome development for Republicans as they begin to confront a political environment further darkened for them by the Congressional page scandal.
The fury over sexually charged messages sent to male teenage pages by Representative Mark Foley of Florida is undercutting Republican support among elderly voters, suburbanites and women, analysts from both parties said.
More immediately — and more alarmingly for Republican strategists who have looked to the party’s powerful voter turnout operation to save the party this year — there are signs that the furor is sapping the enthusiasm of a group essential to Republican victories in 2002 and 2004: religious conservatives.
“The social conservatives are frustrated with what’s going on,” said Saulius Anuzis, the chairman of the Republican Party in Michigan, where, he said, one-third of his volunteers are social conservatives. “We have heard disappointment and disenchantment. The level of commitment isn’t as fierce as it ought to be.”
The political uproar is playing out in races across the country and comes with Republicans already struggling against the political weight of more bad news from Iraq. The page scandal has left leaders and candidates in both parties to come up with new strategies a month from Election Day.
Democrats placed advertisements linking embattled Republican incumbents to Mr. Foley, including spots in Ohio and Indiana that began broadcasting Friday. Democratic House and Senate candidates pressed Republican incumbents to say whether they thought Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, who along with other senior members of the Republican leadership has come under fire as failing to act on early signals that Mr. Foley was sexually harassing teenagers, should stay in power.
In New Jersey, Thomas H. Kean Jr., the Republican Senate candidate, called on Mr. Hastert to step down.
The Democratic response to President Bush’s radio address on Saturday features a Democratic House candidate, Patty Wetterling of Minnesota, attacking House Republican leaders as ignoring warnings about Mr. Foley’s behavior, according to excerpts released Friday.
“Foley sent obvious predatory signals, received loud and clear by members of Congressional leadership, who swept them under the rug to protect their political power,” says Ms. Wetterling, a Democrat whose 11-year-old son was kidnapped 17 years ago and has not been found.
Republicans and their allies, including conservative talk radio hosts, have responded by rallying around Mr. Hastert and blaming Democrats and the news media for the frenzy.
Talk radio hosts, working off a list of talking points distributed by Republican Party officials, recounted how two decades ago, House Democrats stood behind Representative Gerry E. Studds, Democrat of Massachusetts, after he engaged in sex with a male page.
In upstate New York, Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, who is trailing his Democratic challenger according to two new polls, planned to go on television to defend himself after a labor union began broadcasting a 30-second radio advertisement questioning whether he had done all he could after hearing a complaint that Mr. Foley was harassing teenagers.
“Nobody’s angrier and more disappointed than me that I didn’t catch his lies,” Mr. Reynolds said in advertisements scheduled to begin over the weekend. “I trusted that others had investigated. Looking back, more should have been done, and for that I am sorry.”
George Rasley, an aide to Representative Deborah Pryce, Republican of Ohio, who was linked to Mr. Foley in a Democratic advertisement that began running Friday, said the Foley investigation further soured an already tough environment for Republicans in Ohio, a state hammered by corruption investigations this year.
“This is one more thing that makes people wonder about politicians and politics,” Mr. Rasley said. “It reinforces this notion of Washington being a place that bears no resemblance to real America.”
The page scandal is part of a run of difficult tidings for Republicans, including a stream of bad news out of Iraq, disclosure of an intelligence report that found that the invasion might have worsened the threat of terrorism and Mr. Bush’s continued unpopularity.
In the White House, aides have watched with frustration as campaign appearances by Mr. Bush, in which he hammers Democrats on national security, receive little coverage, subsumed by the Foley case.
Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said he believed that Republicans turned a corner when Mr. Hastert accepted responsibility for the mishandling of the page scandal after days of being pressed to take action by restive Republicans.
“I’m looking at every single bit of public and private data,” Mr. Mehlman said. “So far, I have seen a minimal effect of this particular situation, which is not to say that I don’t take it seriously.”
Democrats need to capture 15 House seats to take control of Congress; until the last week or two, about 40 Republican seats had been judged in play, of which 20 had been considered highly competitive. But analysts said at least five more Republican seats, and as many as eight, that had once been considered relative long shots for Democrats had now swung firmly into play.
At least two of those seats are directly related to the Foley scandal. One is held by Mr. Reynolds, who as chairman of the House Republican campaign committee had entered this election cycle as a prohibitive favorite for re-election. Republicans in Florida do not plan to spend any money to defend the seat once held by Mr. Foley, effectively conceding it to the Democratic challenger, Tim Mahoney, who, not taking any chances, is running advertisements in which he pledges to return “moral values” to Congress.
In other races, the Foley case has created an unfavorable backdrop for Republicans. In Pennsylvania this week, Representative Don Sherwood, a suddenly endangered Republican, bought time on television to offer an apology in response to allegations that he had abused his mistress. Analysts for both parties said the sweep of outrage over Congressional misbehavior had weakened Mr. Sherwood and forced him to deal directly with the issue.
Beyond that, analysts said the page scandal had raised new concerns about ethics in Congress, an unwanted focus for Republicans in races where Democrats have sought to make an issue of what they have called a Republican culture of corruption.
Those include re-election races by Representatives Richard W. Pombo and John T. Doolittle, both of California, who have been touched by the fallout from the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, as well as the contests to fill two seats vacated by Republicans who have quit the race, Tom DeLay of Texas and Bob Ney of Ohio.
“I would think the Ney seat is more of a problem because of another round of ethics problems,” said Stu Rothenberg, an independent analyst who studies Congressional races.
Amy Walter, an analyst who follows Congressional races for The Cook Political Report, said the Foley inquiry was having an indirect effect on races in which corruption might be an issue. “When the spotlight is where the spotlight sits right now,” Ms. Walter said, “on scandal and dysfunction in Congress, then people like Pombo and Doolittle suffer.”
Mr. Pombo has also been the target of advertisements by the Sierra Club and the League of Women Voters criticizing his record on environmental issues.
Other races that have become increasingly competitive are the one to replace Representative Katherine Harris, a Florida Republican running for the Senate, and the challenge to Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr., also a Florida Republican. Party officials said polls showed the two races were tight.
Officials in both parties said it was not the Foley scandal alone as much as the accumulated weight of problems for Republicans these past two weeks that was giving them concern.
“We’re working to redirect the debate back to national security and lower taxes,” said Brian Jones, the communications director for the Republican National Committee. “But this week that’s proved to be a difficult task.”
Republican pollsters said their first concern was that the page scandal could discourage Republican voters from turning out.
“We’re not seeing it affecting voter behavior; we are seeing it affect voter intensity,” said Glenn Bolger, a Republican pollster. “It’s more of a deflation effect among Republicans than it is a motivator for Democrats. Does that change in the next 34 days? That’s part of our job.”
Meanwhile, Democrats were pushing hard to make sure the Republicans’ troubles stayed in the public consciousness. On Saturday, Democrats plan to run an advertisement against Mike Whalen, a Republican running for an open House seat in Iowa, picturing him alongside Mr. Hastert.
Democratic advertisements are linking Mr. Foley to both Ms. Pryce of Ohio and Representative Mike Sodrel of Indiana. Ms. Pryce once described Mr. Foley as a friend, one advertisement says, while Mr. Sodrel is criticized as taking a campaign contribution “from the House leadership, who knew about it but did nothing to stop sexual predator Congressman Foley.”
A fund-raiser for Mr. Sodrel headlined by Mr. Hastert was postponed this week. Mr. Sodrel’s campaign manager, Cam Savage, said that was only because of a scheduling conflict.
Mr. Savage described the Foley scandal as an issue in Mr. Sodrel’s district, but not an overwhelming one. “It’s not the No. 1 priority on people’s minds,” he said, “but it does have some resonance to it.”
Reporting was contributed by Dave Staba from Buffalo and Sarah Wheaton and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company |
