Updated Nov. 6 | 12:45 p.m. EST

Republicans keep House, retake Senate

By JON FRANDSEN and JOHN YAUKEY
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — Following an unprecedented midterm election that should mute partisan bickering, Mississippi Republican Sen. Trent Lott said President Bush gave him marching orders:

"Let's go get it done," Lott recalled of his late night conversation with Bush.

During a victory tour of TV news shows Wednesday morning, Lott, who will replace Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., as the Senate majority leader next year for the 108th session of Congress, said Tuesday's election would grease the way for GOP reform.

"Prescription drugs, the economy, tax cuts, homeland security and education," Lott said, hitting the highlights. "There is a lot left over from this year that the Democratic Senate did not get done."

Across the congressional aisle, a subdued Daschle blamed the news media and Iraq in part for a resounding defeat that gives Republicans control of the Senate and House - and all the momentum heading toward the 2004 presidential race.

"We felt we did have an economic plan, but we just weren't successful in getting you to cover it," he told CNN, saying the nuts and bolts of the Democratic strategy were "outshone by the issue of Iraq."

Early Wednesday, Republicans took control of the Senate and added to their thin House majority, shifting power that would give President Bush a GOP-led government as he struggles with a faltering economy and prepares for a possible war with Iraq.

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told reporters Wednesday that the victory did not guarantee a war with Iraq, "but I think we have strengthened the president's hand."

As a Republican defeated Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia and Sen. Jean Carnahan of Missouri conceded defeat to former GOP Rep. Jim Talent, the GOP is guaranteed 50 seats and a working majority because of Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote.

Senate races in South Dakota and Minnesota split between the parties. Democrat Tim Johnson was declared the winner in unofficial returns tallied in South Dakota at 10:30 a.m. EST Wednesday. The 527-vote margin will require a recount. Republican Norm Coleman was declared winner over Walter Mondale in Minnesota with 94 percent of the precincts reporting.

In the House, as of 9 a.m. EST, Republicans had won 225 seats and were leading in two others, according to the Associated Press. That would give the GOP a net gain of between five and seven seats.

Davis, who dined with a "buoyant" Bush on Election Night, sounded optimistic about gaining even more House seats. He said the GOP expects to eventually control as many as 229 or 230 seats in the House.

"And that's prior to party switches, and we expect to see some of that as well," he told CNN.

House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt said Wednesday that Democratic support of Bush's plans for regime change in Iraq may have hurt Democrats.

"But it is important for all of us to do what is right and be bipartisan if we can," he said. "You can't play politics with those kinds of issues."

As Democrats regroup and chart the party's future, Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., suggested in a radio interview Wednesday morning that some Democrats in the House may challenge Gephardt as leader.

Ford said on the "Imus in the Morning" program that while he did not want to "pile on," it was obvious Democrats needed fresh faces.

While Bush will enjoy majorities in both chambers, they will be slender ones that reflect how evenly divided the nation is along party lines. Governing in either chamber will be difficult and require compromise - especially in the Senate where the minority has a variety of parliamentary tactics at its disposal to ensnarl the majority.

How single-mindedly Republicans can try to pursue favored conservative priorities as Bush gears up for his 2004 re-election race may depend in large part on how events unfold in Iraq, and whether the economy begins to gain steam and corporate scandals continue to explode.

Lott, who had been the Senate majority leader before Daschle replaced him in 2001, watched the early results at the White House as he helped President Bush and Laura Bush celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.

"I'm getting a second opportunity, and a lot of times in life you don't get a second chance," he told CNN on Wednesday.

Of GOP control, he used sports metaphors:

"We'll be prepared to start fast next year. ... I prefer to be on offense. I don't prefer to be on defense arguing about (the) mundane, mechanical problems" that gummed up bills this year in the Senate.

Bob Weiner, a Democratic consultant, said: "Our overarching problem was that we failed to show that our ways to make America strong are as important as Bush's campaign against Iraq. We had every right to say that our issues are patriotic and I anticipate that we could've had a five-seat gain in the House, but we rolled over and caved on Iraq and tax cuts. We gave the issues away.''

In the nation's governor's races, Democrats surged in industrial states that are important ground in presidential elections, winning in vote-rich Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin. Republicans, meanwhile, held on to key states like Florida, New York and Massachusetts and picked up new territory in Maryland and Georgia.

Female candidates, who had hoped to hold a record number of governor's offices after this election, had won in two of the seven races that had been counted early Wednesday.

The number of close races and a snafu with exit polls, which made them unreliable for news organizations to rely upon for calling tight races, meant a long and anxious night for many candidates.

Bush also could glory in the re-election of his brother, Jeb, as governor in Florida. In the president's home state of Texas, Gov. Rick Perry easily held onto the seat Bush left behind in 2000 and GOP state Attorney General John Cornyn defeated former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk in the race for the Senate seat of retiring Republican Phil Gramm.

In other Senate contests, Republicans held onto seats in Colorado, North Carolina, South Carolina and New Hampshire.

Democrats faced a tough climb in taking back the House and early returns gave them little reason for joy - except in Maryland. Democrat Chris Van Hollen defeated eight-term GOP Rep. Connie Morella in one of the most expensive and hotly contested races in the country.

But elsewhere, House Republican incumbents were brushing back challenges. And the GOP picked up a Democratic seat in Indiana left open by the retirement of moderate Rep. Tim Roemer.

In other races:

- Maryland governor: Republican Rep. Bob Ehrlich defeated Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend to become the state's first GOP governor since Spiro Agnew in 1969. Townsend, eldest child of Robert F. Kennedy, had clear advantages in name recognition, money and poll numbers. But Ehrlich wiped out her lead, taking advantage of dissension among Democrats and Townsend's campaign gaffes.

- North Carolina Senate: Former Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole, wife of 1996 GOP presidential nominee and longtime senator Bob Dole, won elected office for the first time by defeating Democrat Erskine Bowles. She abandoned her own White House bid in 2000.

- In Minnesota's closely watched Senate race, former vice president and Democratic senator Walter Mondale, was locked in a close race with Republican Norm Coleman, former mayor of St. Paul. Mondale had stepped into the race at the eleventh hour after Sen. Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash Oct. 25.

- An unusual Democratic gamble in New Jersey paid off. Former Sen. Frank Lautenberg rescued the state for Democrats after incumbent Robert Torricelli bailed out at the end of September because an ethics scandal was dragging down his campaign.

- Maryland's 8th District: Morella, a 16-year veteran, conceded to Van Hollen, a state senator who won a tough Democratic primary. The loss cost the GOP one of its few veteran moderates who supported abortion rights, gun control and federal spending on social programs.

- Arkansas Senate: Republican incumbent Tim Hutchinson lost his seat to state Attorney General Mark Pryor, a Democrat and son of popular former Sen. David Pryor. Hutchinson's divorce and remarriage to a younger aide were issues in the campaign.

The race for control of Congress was one of the tightest ever, but perhaps the most remarkable feature was how competitive many contests were even though the majority of incumbents faced no or little opposition.

Pre-election polls indicated considerable angst among voters over terrorism, the prospect of war and the economy, but no single issue dominated the fall campaigns. The clearly escalating worry about the direction of the country did not appear to translate into political momentum for either party.

Democrats by late summer were hoping corporate scandals and the stock market collapse would give them an edge, but talk of war with Iraq dominated the final days of Congress and played to Republicans' traditional strength on defense issues.

Republicans sought to keep Democrats off balance all year by repeatedly charging the Daschle-led Senate with obstructing the Bush agenda. In turn, Democrats blamed the GOP for stalling on key legislation but gladly took credit for blocking some conservative judicial nominees and a controversial Bush plan to drill for oil in an Alaskan wildlife refuge.

(Contributing: GNS reporters Larry Wheeler in Florida, and Chuck Raasch, Greg Barrett, Carl Weiser, Ana Radelat, Susan Roth and Derrick DePledge in Washington.)