Democrats keep Senate majority
WASHINGTON – Resurgent Republicans won control of the House and cut deeply into the Democrats’ majority in the Senate in momentous midterm elections shadowed by recession, ushering in a new era of divided government certain to complicate the final two years of President Barack Obama’s term.
House speaker-in-waiting John Boehner, his voice breaking with emotion, declared shortly before midnight Tuesday that the results were “a repudiation of Washington, a repudiation of big government and a repudiation of politicians who refuse to listen to the people.”
Obama monitored returns at the White House, then telephoned Boehner with congratulations in a call that underscored the power shift.
On a night of triumph, Republicans fell short in their effort to gain control of the Senate and take full command of Congress, although they picked up at least six seats. They failed in an attempt to defeat Majority Harry Reid in Nevada, winner in an especially costly and brutal race in a year filled with them.
Boehner and his Republicans needed to gain 40 seats for a House majority, and they got them. They led for 11 more.
The victories came in bunches – five Democratic-held seats each in Pennsylvania and Ohio and three in Florida and Virginia.
Among the House Democrats who tasted defeat was Rep. Tom Perriello, a first-termer for whom Obama campaigned just before the election.
In Senate races, tea party favorites Rand Paul in Kentucky and Marco Rubio in Florida coasted to easy Senate victories, overcoming months of withering Democratic attacks on their conservative views. But Christine O’Donnell lost badly in Delaware, for a seat that Republican strategists once calculated would be theirs with ease.
Democrats conceded nothing while they still had a chance. “Let’s go out there and continue to fight,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi exhorted supporters in remarks before television cameras while the polls were still open in much of the country.
But not long after she spoke, Democratic incumbents in both houses began falling, and her own four-year tenure as the first female speaker in history seemed near an end.
With unemployment at 9.6 percent nationally, interviews with voters revealed an extraordinarily sour electorate, stressed financially and poorly disposed toward the president, the political parties and the federal government.
About four in 10 voters said they were worse off financially than two years ago, according to preliminary exit poll results and pre-election surveys. More than one in three said their votes were an expression of opposition to Obama. More than half expressed negative views about both political parties. Roughly 40 percent of voters considered themselves supporters of the conservative tea party movement. Less than half said they wanted the government to do more to solve problems.
The preliminary findings were based on Election Day and pre-election interviews with more than 9,000 voters.
All 435 seats in the House were on the ballot, plus 37 in the Senate. An additional 37 governors’ races gave Republicans ample opportunity for further gains halfway through Obama’s term, although Andrew Cuomo was elected in New York for the office his father once held.
Republicans were certain of at least six Senate pickups, including the seat in Illinois that Obama resigned to become president. Rep. Mark Kirk won there, defeating Alexi Giannoulias.
Democratic Sens. Russell Feingold in Wisconsin and Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas were turned out of office. In addition, Republicans scored big in races for Democratic seats without incumbents on the ballot. Former Rep. Pat Toomey won a close race in Pennsylvania, North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven won easily there, and former Sen. Dan Coats breezed in a comeback attempt for the Indiana seat he voluntarily gave up a dozen years ago.
“Republicans will continue to stand up for the American people and for the priorities they voted for today, and we are hopeful that the administration and Democrat leaders will change course,” Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said in a written statement.
Democrats averted deeper losses when Gov. Joe Manchin won in West Virginia – after pointedly distancing himself from Obama – for the unexpired portion of the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s term, and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was victorious in Connecticut, dispatching Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. Sen. Barbara Boxer was elected to a fourth term in California, overcoming a challenge from Carly Fiorina.
The GOP gubernatorial gains came after a campaign in which their party organization spent more than $100 million, nearly double what Democrats had.
Among the incumbents who fell were Ted Strickland in Ohio, defeated by former Rep. John Kasich, and Chet Culver in Iowa, loser to former Gov. Terry Branstad.
In a footnote to the brutal politics of the campaign, Republican-turned- independent Lincoln Chafee was elected governor of Rhode Island. Obama campaigned in the state in the campaign’s final week. But he declined to endorse the Democratic candidate, Frank Caprio, out of what the White House said was respect for Chafee, who had endorsed the president in his own presidential race two years ago.
A Republican takeover of the House will usher in a new era of divided government after two years in which Obama and fellow Democrats pushed through an economic stimulus bill, a landmark health care measure and legislation to rein in Wall Street after the near collapse of the economy in 2008.
Republicans opposed all three of the measures, accusing the president of supporting an ever-expanding role for the government with ever-rising spending.
Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont was re-elected to his seventh term and Barbara Mikulski her fifth. New York Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand also won, as did Sen. Ron Wyden in Oregon. In Hawaii, Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye was elected for a ninth time to the seat he has held since 1962.
Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who won a second term in South Carolina, has been working to establish a nationwide standing among conservatives.
He was instrumental in supporting tea party challengers in several primaries this spring and summer at a time the GOP establishment was backing other candidates.
In Alabama, Sen. Richard Shelby was re-elected easily, as were Republican Sens. Tom Coburn in Oklahoma, Richard Burr in North Carolina, John Thune in South Dakota, Johnny Isakson in Georgia and Mike Crapo in Idaho.
The president gave a series of radio interviews pleading with Democratic supporters not to sit on the sidelines. “I know things are still tough out there, but we finally have job growth again,” he said in one. “It is all at risk if people don’t turn out and vote today.”
While Obama’s name was not on the ballot, his record and policies were. After nearly two years in power, he and congressional Democrats were saddled politically with the residue of the worst recession since the 1930s.
“I will honestly say that I voted for him two years ago,” said Sally McCabe, 56, of Plymouth, Minn., stopping to cast her ballot on her way to work. “And I want my vote back.”