WASHINGTON -- In a surprise ending to the century's last election, Democrats picked up as many as five seats in the House of Representatives yesterday. It was only the second time since the Civil War that the party holding the White House gained House seats in a midterm election.
Stunned Republicans maintained control of Congress, but their lackluster showing is likely to slow the push for the impeachment of President Clinton. Instead, congressional leaders are likely to feel increased pressure to accelerate the impeachment inquiry and craft a deal for some punishment short of forcing Clinton from office.
The Democratic pickup in the House could total five seats, cutting the Republican majority in the House nearly in half.
Republicans fared much worse than GOP officials had predicted, failing to gain seats in the Senate and losing the governorship of California and three other states.
Clinton, buffeted by scandal and facing an impeachment inquiry, nevertheless enjoyed the best midterm election since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934, the last time a president's party gained seats.
The president had no immediate comment on the results.
In election-night interviews, Republican leaders downplayed the impeachment question. House Speaker Newt Gingrich called it a "secondary" matter for the next Congress but added it would be "a dereliction of duty" for the House to drop its inquiry.
Voters were not dissatisfied enough to shift the balance of power in Congress significantly. About 98 percent of incumbents seeking re-election were victorious.
"This was sort of a status quo election," said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, whose party had been hoping for gains of up to five Senate seats.
Two conservative Republican senators, Alfonse M. D'Amato of New York and Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina, were unseated. Democratic Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, the first black woman elected to the Senate, went down to defeat in Illinois.
At least four House members were defeated, out of 402 seeking re-election.
"People are saying, 'Let's get back to the kitchen-table issues,' " said House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri. "Let's get the impeachment over with, fairly and expeditiously, but let's get back to our issues."
The loss of Republican House seats could force changes in the Republican leadership in the next Congress. But the lack of a clear majority could make it harder for the government to get things done over the next two years.
Democrat-friendly issues such as Social Security and education, and voter dissatisfaction with the Republican-majority Congress were among the factors behind the ballots cast yesterday, according to exit polling of more than 6,000 voters as they left about 1,150 polling places around the country.
But Democratic strategists cautioned privately that the 1998 election did not signal a major turnaround for their party. Outside the Northeast, exit polls showed that voters identified more closely with the GOP than with the Democratic Party.
Republicans continue to hold the majority of the governorships, despite a net loss of two, including California, the most important prize at stake.
Yesterday was a particularly good day for GOP gubernatorial candidates named Bush, however. George W. and Jeb, the elder sons of the former president, won elections for governor in Texas and Florida, respectively.
Democrats also picked up governorships in Iowa, Alabama and South Carolina. In Minnesota, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, a former pro wrestler running as the Reform Party candidate, scored an upset victory in the race for governor.
Turnout nationwide was estimated at 38 percent of the voting-age population, slightly higher than in 1994 and the best for a midterm election since 1970.
Clinton, who watched the returns with aides at the White House, could only be delighted at the results. Among the Republican casualties was the pugnacious D'Amato, who once chaired Senate hearings on the Whitewater matter. D'Amato fell to moderate Democratic Rep. Charles E. Schumer of Brooklyn after the most expensive -- and nastiest -- Senate race in the country.
Another Republican who fell had been linked to the selection of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr. North Carolina's Faircloth is close to the federal judge who led a three-judge panel that selected Starr for the job.
Republicans consoled themselves with the fact that they had retained their House majority for the third time in a row, a feat Republicans had not achieved since the 1920s.
As is often the case in nonpresidential elections, local issues and personalities had as much influence over the outcome as any national trends.
While Democrats saw evidence of an anti-impeachment backlash, exit polls showed that three out of five voters said they did not consider the election a referendum on the Clinton sex scandal and impeachment.
As expected, Democrats ran well in their East Coast and West Coast strongholds. This year's biggest electoral prize, the governorship of California, went to a Democrat, Lt. Gov. Gray Davis.
Davis, an aide to Gov. Jerry Brown in the 1970s, became the first Democrat to win the California governorship since Brown 20 years ago. The next governor will play a major role in redistricting for the 2002 election, when California will add seats to its current total of 52 congressional districts, the most in the nation.
In Texas, George W. Bush, the front-runner for his party's presidential nomination, won re-election in a landslide. His younger brother Jeb, who moderated his image after a 1994 election defeat, won the governorship of Florida, easily defeating Democratic Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay.
But elsewhere in the South, Democrats posted their best showing in the region in more than a decade.
Democrats won the races for governor in South Carolina and Alabama, two of the most Republican states, for the first time in FTC 16 years. In Georgia, where no Republican has been elected governor in 130 years, Democrat Roy Barnes held off Republican millionaire Guy Millner.
In South Carolina, a sizable black vote helped Democratic lawyer Jim Hodges topple Republican Gov. David Beasley, who had alienated some conservatives by trying to outlaw video poker and remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse.
The state's 76-year-old junior senator, Ernest F. Hollings, the last of the Deep South Democrats in the Senate, also won re-election.
Alabama elected a Democratic governor for the first time since George C. Wallace left office a dozen years ago, as Lt. Gov. Don Siegelman unseated Republican Gov. Fob James.
The results in the South were a setback for social and religious conservatives, who had mobilized their voters in support of the Republican candidates.
In Florida, however, religious conservatives may have given Jeb Bush his victory margin in the race for governor. Bush carried their votes by a margin of 82 percent to 17 percent, while losing among those who did not call themselves religious conservatives, exit polls showed.
In Texas, older brother George successfully reached out to Hispanics. Exit polls showed him getting 45 percent of the Latino vote, better than any Republican candidate in history.
Historically, the party in power in the White House -- in this case the Democrats -- loses votes in midterm elections. Since World War II, those losses have averaged 27 House seats and four Senate seats.
But since Democrats have already lost heavily in the House and Senate since Clinton's election in 1992, there were relatively few chances for Republican pickups in this year's voting. Fully 98 percent of House incumbents were re-elected yesterday -- many of whom ran unopposed.
The election results seem destined to be interpreted in terms of the president's future, even though the issue of impeachment ranked low with the vast majority of voters, exit polls showed.
About one in five voters listed moral and ethical values as their chief concern in deciding whom to support in House races. Those voters favored Republican candidates by a 6-to-1 margin.
Education, the major concern of Democratic voters, was the only other issue to rate as highly.
"One thing is pretty clear," said Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster. "This is an issue agenda that works for Democrats. Education and Social Security tended to help Democrats a lot."
Pub Date: 11/05/98