[Mb-civic] For GOP, 2006 Now Looms Much Larger - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

For GOP, 2006 Now Looms Much Larger

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 10, 2005; Page A01

In a season of discontent for the White House, Tuesday's election 
results intensified Republican anxiety that next year's midterm contests 
could bring serious losses unless George W. Bush finds a way to turn 
around his presidency and shore up support among disaffected, moderate 
swing voters.

Off-year gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey have proved 
to be unreliable predictors of elections, as Republican officials were 
quick to point out yesterday. But as short-term indicators, Tuesday's 
results confirmed that nothing happened to alter a political climate 
that now tilts against the GOP and that the president remains in the 
midst of a slump.

But Democrats may also have to learn some of the lessons from Tuesday if 
they hope to capitalize on Bush's weakness and make themselves 
competitive in red states as well as blue states. In Virginia, 
victorious candidate Timothy M. Kaine ran a campaign at odds with the 
strategy of many traditional Democrats, one that focused on religion and 
values and that appealed as much to swing voters as to the party's base.

Democrats captured the two governorships at stake Tuesday, in Virginia 
and New Jersey, where Sen. Jon S. Corzine ran away with the race after a 
nasty campaign. Democrats also buried four ballot initiatives in 
California championed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and ousted the 
mayor of St. Paul, Minn., Democrat Randy Kelly, who had betrayed his 
party by endorsing Bush in last year's presidential election. Democrats 
failed in their effort to pass a package of political retooling measures 
in Ohio.

Republican hopes for a quick morale boost had centered on conservative 
Virginia. Instead, the gubernatorial results there raised concerns among 
some Republicans that Bush's favored political strategy of mobilizing 
conservative voters by dividing the electorate on cultural and social 
issues may have prompted a backlash among voters in inner and outer 
suburbs who were vital to Bush's reelection in 2004.

"It's not just that they lost these elections," said Democratic pollster 
Geoffrey Garin, "but that none of their old tricks worked that they've 
relied on to give them the edge in close contests."

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) said the GOP's reliance on cultural 
issues, popular with rural voters, "are just blowing up" in suburban and 
exurban communities. "You play to your rural base, you pay a price," he 
said.

Kaine's campaign highlighted tensions within the Democratic Party over 
whether to pursue a strategy designed largely to energize its 
left-leaning, antiwar, grass-roots base or move to the center, emphasize 
cultural issues to neutralize the GOP's advantage there, and talk 
bread-and-butter issues such as education and economic growth.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said that Kaine 
adopted a strategy sharply at odds with the approach of leading national 
Democrats, including the one that was enunciated by Democratic National 
Committee Chairman Howard Dean during his unsuccessful campaign for the 
party's 2004 presidential nomination.

Kaine "did not say, 'I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic 
Party,' " Mehlman said, referring to language Dean used in his own 
campaign. "He said, 'I represent the Mark Warner wing of the Democratic 
Party.' Quite the opposite. . . . The Potomac River divides a Democratic 
Party catering to the MoveOn wing versus a Democratic Party centered in 
the Mark Warner wing." Indeed, Kaine's success owed less to 
dissatisfaction with Bush and more to satisfaction with Warner's tenure 
as governor.

Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) said there is an important lesson for 
Democrats in the Virginia results, arguing that Kaine turned the 
campaign in his direction by persuasively linking his opposition to the 
death penalty to his religious faith.

"If you have the luxury of running in New York or California, you might 
run a different campaign," he said. "But if you run in most of the swing 
states, for every progressive voter there are probably two swing voters. 
You've got to appeal to the moderate voters. Swing voters do not respond 
well to partisanship and to negative campaigning. What they're really 
looking for are people with integrity and people trying to solve their 
problems."

(continued)...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/09/AR2005110902276.html?nav=hcmodule
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