As Election Nears, Fight for Congress Is Fierce
By BRIAN KNOWLTON International Herald Tribune
Published: November 5, 2006
WASHINGTON, Nov. 5. — With just two days before the midterm elections, Democrats and Republicans fought fiercely today for control of Congress, with Republican leaders fearing that they could lose control of the House of Representatives, an outcome predicted by most major polls.
The Washington Post/ABC News Poll showed Democrats with a continued strong edge of public support, probably sufficient to win the House. The war in Iraq remained the primary issue for many voters.
But there were some signs that Republicans were closing a nationwide gap in voter preference — not an unusual trend in the final days of a campaign. The Republicans appeared to hold an edge in the Tennessee Senate race, and the Senate races in Montana and Missouri were rated dead heats. A number of key House races were also toss-ups.
Republicans, after weeks of discouraging news, seized on these signs.
“What I’ve seen in the last two weeks is a surge by Republicans,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Republicans were “beginning to come home,” he said, while independents were increasingly worried about how Democrats would handle taxes and national security.
“We’re going to do better than I thought two weeks ago,” he said on CNN.
At stake on Tuesday in the elections is not just control of Congress, but potentially the course of the Bush presidency in its last two years and the debate over how to proceed in the Iraq war.
Most officials of both parties said the fight for the Senate remained fluid, with polls showing several key races within a percentage point or two. Democrats predicted that they would gain four or five seats, but they need six to take control.
“We are right on the edge of taking back the Senate,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who heads the Democrats’ senatorial election campaign. Reflecting the Democrats’ caution against a Republican Party that has demonstrated its ability to close strongly under Mr. Bush, he added, “I wouldn’t open up the Champagne.”
Still, Mr. Schumer said on “Meet the Press” on NBC, “I think in blue states in particular, the wind is strongly at our back.”
Many Republicans were willing to concede the likelihood of losing at least 10 or 12 of the 15 House seats the Democrats need, and some saw an even more dire picture.
“It’s no question it’s a very tough cycle,” said Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, who leads the Republicans’ Senate election effort. Midterm elections are historically hard on the party of a second-term president, she noted.
Last week was a tough one politically for Democrats, with heavy coverage of an Iraq-linked gaffe by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Republicans taking credit for a new low in unemployment, and Mr. Bush and other top Republican campaigners pounding Democrats as weak on terror.
But the more important dynamic, polls seemed to indicate, was the strong emergence in recent months of the Iraq war as a key issue in races across the country.
It was unclear precisely how the death sentence for Saddam Hussein, announced today in Baghdad, would play among American voters.
Republicans hoped it would remind voters that the war had deposed an Iraqi leader blamed for atrocities that killed thousands; Democrat said it should call to mind the patchy record of American accomplishments since Mr. Hussein’s capture.
“What this shows is the Iraqis are putting their past behind them,” Ms. Dole said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
But Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who heads the House Democratic election campaign, disagreed. Little had been accomplished in Iraq since Mr. Hussein was tracked down to an underground hiding place, he said. “The needle at the Pentagon points toward chaos.”
Ms. Dole set off a hot argument among the guests on “Meet the Press” when she said the Republican Party would prevail on Tuesday because “Democrats appear to be content with losing” in Iraq.
It took the NBC moderator, Tim Russert, nearly a minute to calm down a furious Mr. Emanuel, who insisted that Democrats had no intention of cutting off money for the war. Instead, he said, they would press for regional cooperation, reconciliation within Iraq, economic reconstruction, responsibility and accountability for results, and redeployment of troops, first within Iraq, then within the region.
But Vice President Dick Cheney insisted in remarks broadcast today that Americans would be gambling with their security if they voted in Democrats. “The primary opposition to the war is coming from the Democratic Party,” he said in taped comments on “This Week” on ABC. “We need to succeed here; it has a direct bearing on how we do in war on terrorism around the world.”
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