Election Homestretch Yields Surprises
New Calculus Sees Tight Virginia,
New Jersey Races as Washington,
Michigan Tension Eases
By JACKIE CALMES
September 26, 2006; Page A4
BELLEVUE, Wash. -- Not long ago, Democrats in Washington state were threatening to abandon Sen. Maria Cantwell to protest her 2002 vote authorizing the war against Iraq. Now, the first-term senator says, "People here never wanted to lose this seat."
The senator spoke after an enthusiastic campaign rally underscored her suggestion that disgruntled Democrats have fallen in behind her, after concluding that their protest would only throw the seat to Republicans. Now, her bridge-building and the mistakes of her Republican rival, Mike McGavick, have Democratic leaders in the East resting easier about a seat that topped their endangered list for much of the year.
Mr. McGavick, a former chief executive of insurance company Safeco, says he is making up ground. In any case, the Washington state race illustrates the fluidity of the fall finale for Senate control as voters tune in. Republicans are struggling in a hostile climate to protect a 55-45 majority on Election Day. Democrats have to seize nearly every Republican target while losing none of their own.
The picture in the final stretch isn't what either side expected when the election cycle began. Republicans have given up on early targets among Democrats from states that backed President Bush's re-election, and are now struggling to keep some of their own red-state seats. Democrats, safe in red states, are campaigning hardest in blue ones, especially New Jersey.
Five Republican incumbents trail in polls. In Tennessee's open-seat contest to succeed retiring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Democratic Rep. Harold Ford yesterday released a poll showing he had overtaken Republican Bob Corker. Two other Republican incumbents -- Virginia's George Allen and Arizona's John Kyl -- have seen their once-formidable leads erode to single digits.
Mr. Allen is perhaps the year's biggest surprise. He began on no one's watch list, but since summer he has been on the defensive -- first for using what some consider a racial slur against an Indian-American aide to Democratic rival Jim Webb and next for reacting angrily to revelations of his Jewish heritage. Even Republicans say he has stoked the controversies by his responses. Yesterday, Mr. Allen was denying new allegations from a college football teammate that he often used a slur to refer to black people and once stuffed a deer's head into a black family's mailbox.
[Democrats on Defense]
The Senate Democrats' campaign committee is for the first time considering spending significant funds against Mr. Allen. Meanwhile, Democrats have grown less worried about three of their seats. Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Amy Klobuchar, seeking Minnesota's open spot, showed wide leads in polls released last week. Yesterday in Maryland, a Baltimore Sun poll showed Rep. Ben Cardin up by 11 points over Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. That leaves New Jersey as Democrats' biggest worry. Sen. Robert Menendez, seeking the seat he got last year by appointment, slightly trails Republican Tom Kean Jr., son of the former governor, after allegations of ethical breaches that the Democrat denies.
Nonpartisan analyst Stuart Rothenberg, in revised ratings yesterday, downgraded Republican Allen's prospects, and upgraded those for Democrats Klobuchar and Cantwell.
Last week's Washington primary results confirmed that Ms. Cantwell -- like Sen. Hillary Clinton in New York's Democratic primary the week before -- paid little price among party liberals for her war vote. That was a blow to Republican hopes that Connecticut Democrats' mutiny last month against three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman would prove contagious. (Mr. McGavick sent Mr. Lieberman, now running as an independent, a $1,000 contribution.)
When Washington's mostly mail-in vote was finally tallied late last week, Ms. Cantwell had 91% of the Democratic vote. An unfunded antiwar challenger, Hong Tran, won 5%. The ease of her renomination, and Mrs. Clinton's, suggests that the circumstances behind Mr. Lieberman's defeat were unique. Ms. Cantwell's record has been moderate, not maverick like Mr. Lieberman's; she has been critical of the president when he hasn't, and, perhaps most important, she didn't draw a deep-pocketed antiwar challenger.
In past election years, Washington's combined Republican and Democratic primary vote has been a clue to what is ahead in November. Democrats' participation was significantly greater than Republicans', and Ms. Cantwell drew 53% of the combined vote to 36% for Mr. McGavick.
Ms. Cantwell has more money than Mr. McGavick, and while Republican leaders had hopes the wealthy businessman would spend more of his own money, he says he has no plans to go beyond the $2 million he has lent his campaign. Mr. McGavick was in Washington, D.C., last week for fund raising, but the first priority of Senate Republicans' campaign committee is helping beleagured incumbents.
Meanwhile, the McGavick campaign cites a poll by the independent Rasmussen Reports last week that has Ms. Cantwell's lead back to six points, as in mid-August -- down from a 17-point edge in a Rasmussen poll earlier this month. But Senate Democrats say their poll gave her a 12-point edge. The 48-year-old Mr. McGavick, a onetime top aide to former Washington Sen. Slade Gorton, says he "is coming back rather nicely" after a self-inflicted wound. In late August, he disclosed on his Web site a 1993 driving-under-the-influence incident, but his account differed significantly from the police report a state newspaper subsequently unearthed.
Ms. Cantwell, who turns 48 next month, ousted Sen. Gorton six years ago by just more than 2,000 votes. That close call, and her businesslike aloofness since, made her seem all the more vulnerable this year. After she refused in January to call her war vote a mistake, liberals' rebelliousness built. Two potentially worrisome candidates surfaced. Meanwhile, state and national pundits were praising Mr. McGavick. By late June, a Seattle paper headlined its poll story, "Cantwell's Lead Nearly Gone."
The senator explains her recovery simply: "We had a lot of meetings with people." She met with groups to let them vent. Supporters promoted Ms. Cantwell's work on other issues important to liberals -- for abortion rights and against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in particular. In July, the two rival Democrats had joined her campaign, leaving just Ms. Tran. And Ms. Cantwell issued a statement that if she had known the U.S. wouldn't find weapons of mass destruction, she wouldn't have voted for force against Iraq. |
