In truth, the results were so mixed that both parties had reason to worry. Despite predictions of an insurgency at the polls voters returned 96 percent of congressional incumbents seeking re-election. But they gave a number of key figures unexpectedly slim margins: popular two-term Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey nearly lost to an unknown challenger, and Minority Whip Newt Gingrich almost found himself on a midnight train to Georgia–without a job. The Democrats cemented their hold over Congress with a probable gain of eight House seats–not enough to override a presidential veto but more than enough to make the White House squirm–and solidified their place in the sun, taking the Florida and Texas statehouses. But the GOP won the big one–California–and made serious inroads throughout the rust belt. Overall, the Democrats will be well situated to expand their congressional majorities when state legislatures begin redistricting next year.
No one felt greater pressure to draw lessons from the results than Bush, since the vote was clearly a referendum on him, too. Two days after the elections, he invited several of his closest outside advisers to an East Wing lunch. His first question: “Where can I improve?” (Anyone who thought the answer was to fire John Sununu held his tongue since the chief of staff was also present.) Bush also announced a new no-tax pledge, saying that next time Democrats would have to raise income tax rates “over my dead veto.” Congressmen too, will probably take last week’s close calls as a mandate for cowardice: running scared, they are less likely than ever to step out in front of difficult issues, or to reform a process that protects their seats. But there are risks in playing safe. “Americans are very angry and cynical about the system,” says GOP pollster Richard Wirthlin. “They think government is simply not governing.”
So what do voters want? The key matters turned out to be pocketbook and personality. Politicians who want to survive the next round might consider listening to the following messages from the folks back home.
Read Our Lips: The voters “certainly were out to punish people who participated in tax increases,” says GOP analyst Jeffrey Bell. Several governors lost after raising taxes–an occupational hazard. Govs. Kay Orr of Nebraska and Mike Hayden of Kansas vowed not to raise them, did anyway and paid with their jobs. Voters furious at New Jersey Gov. James Florio, who put in place a soak-the-rich tax plan, took it out on his fellow Democrat Bill Bradley. “I had people come up to me many, many times and say, ‘I like you, but I’m voting against you to send a message’,” Bradley told NEWSWEEK last week. At the same time, voters in Massachusetts and several other states rejected tax-rollback measures which they perceived as too radical and too likely to cut into basic services.
Shut Up, Already: Until a few weeks before the election, Boston University president John Silber seemed headed for the statehouse. Voters who were angry over the Massachusetts miracle turned mess were attracted at first by his white-hot rhetoric. But he lost his temper a few too many times and zinged a final “Silber shocker”–the suggestion that working mothers were responsible for child neglect. He lost to the affable Republican William Weld, a former U.S. assistant attorney general. In Texas, there was enough verbal mud on both sides to fill the Astrodome, but the “CC Factor,” or “Cumulative Claytie Factor,” ultimately accounted for Democrat Ann Richards’s victory over Clayton Williams. He had survived a series of gaffes, including a rape joke and questions about the sobriety of his rival, a recovering alcoholic. But Williams’s refusal to shake Richards’s hand in Dallas last month was a fatal miscalculation of Texas mores. Says Republican pollster Bryan Eppstein of Ft. Worth: It was “not gentlemanly.”
Phone Home: Like nagging moms, voters in several states nudged their wayward sons to visit more often and stop being such big shots. New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who won a less than convincing victory against a field of nobodies, may have some fence mending ahead of him. “We didn’t get that exultant shout that we wanted to hear from the people,” he admitted afterward. Bradley, who ran celebrity like ads and wouldn’t deign to discuss taxes, fervently promised the people to serve out his hard won third term. And conservative GOP firebrand Newt Gingrich, who obviously forgot Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill’s axiom that “all politics are local,” also found the natives restless. “People here want a nice Georgia congressman who will care about their sewer,” says Kate Head, campaign manager for challenger David Worley, who has demanded a recount. By contrast, Democrats Lawton Chiles, who won Florida’s gubernatorial race, and Paul Wellstone, Minnesota’s new senator, ran highly effective grass-roots campaigns.
Race Still Matters: North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms’s defeat of Democratic challenger Harvey Gantt conveyed a disturbing message: if a candidate wants to play the race card, there are plenty of people who will want a seat at the table. Two weeks before the election, the three-term incumbent was nearly 8 points down in the polls. Then he aired emotionally charged TV ads that accused Gantt of supporting racial quotas. The ads helped draw some 61 percent of North Carolina voters to the polls, enough to give Helms a commanding lead. Though Bush helped Helms, GOP spin doctors focused instead on the congressional victory of Republican Gary Franks-a black millionaire from Connecticut who backed the president’s veto of the 1990 civil-rights bill.
Flipping Will Flop: Abortion wasn’t the litmus test politicians were expecting. Although both sides could rightly claim gains, it was slightly more advantageous to be pro-choice. The worst thing for a candidate, however, was flip-flopping on the issue. In Ohio, state Attorney General Anthony Celebrezze destroyed his chances of becoming governor with a conversion to pro-choice. “[He] should have resigned the next day because the [George] Voinovich people just ate that all,” says one Democratic activist. Republican Voinovich won with 55 percent of the women’s vote.
Seeing Red Over Green: All across the land environmental proposals came a cropper. Voters apparently support such measures only if they don’t cost money or jobs. Dianne Feinstein lost the California Statehouse to Republican Sen. Pete Wilson partly on account of her support of the omnibus “Big Green” initiative. Cuomo interpreted the defeat of his pet environmental bond issue as a sign of voter disgust with spending rather than as a “’no’ to making the place cleaner and greener.”
Mostly, though, voters were feeling meaner. In California and Colorado, they showed what they thought of the status quo bypassing initiatives to limit terms of elected officials; with Oklahoma, that makes three states. GOP consultant Eddie Mahe believes similar measures will be on the ballots of 12 to 15 more in 1992. In California, legislators spent $4 million trying to convince voters that the term-limitation measure was nothing but a cheap political ploy. Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown complained, “They’re trying to short-circuit my career. " As more and more legislators are likely to learn, that’s precisely the point.
