SPOKANE, Wash. -- The House speaker, Rep. Thomas S. Foley, a 30-year incumbent, has always said that the best way to ensure term limits was at the ballot box. On Tuesday, voters in eastern Washington followed his advice.
Mr. Foley conceded yesterday at midday, even though he trailed the Republican challenger, George Nethercutt, by only 2,200 votes with 14,000 absentee ballots still to be counted. The odds appeared too long to make up, Mr. Foley said.
If the numbers hold up, he will be the first speaker ousted by the voters since 1860, when William Pennington of New Jersey was defeated.
But coming at the end of a Republican national sweep in the House and Senate, that distinction did not seem to matter much. In the end, he was just another casualty among House Democrats.
The storm that hit Mr. Foley also produced the biggest numerical change, by party, of any state's House delegation. Washington, considered a Democratic stronghold, went from an 8-to-1 Democratic alignment to 7 to 2 in favor of the Republicans.
In defeat as throughout his speakership, Mr. Foley, 65, defended Congress as an institution that had been unfairly disparaged by the news media and voters.
"Despite what people say, the overwhelming majority of members, both Democrat and Republican, are wonderful, upstanding and talented people," he said yesterday.
In a year when all politics was national, Mr. Foley could not save himself by emphasizing his ability to bring federal dollars and prestige to this district, a long stretch of farm and forest land from the Canadian border to Oregon.
Exit polls showed that the overwhelming reason people voted against Mr. Foley was that they felt he had been in Congress too long. He has represented this district since 1964.
Throughout the campaign, he was criticized for being too much of a creature of Congress, for his opposition to term limits and for being a career politician, removed from local concerns.
His opponent, Mr. Nethercutt, a 50-year-old Spokane lawyer who is a political neophyte, could not have represented more of a contrast. He played up his inexperience in government, saying he wanted to return to something closer to the part-time Congress of old.
"This vote is a voice of the people to change the system in Washington," said Mr. Nethercutt, who has promised to serve no more than three terms. "That's what we are really about."