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Subject: Braun of Illinois to Become First Black Female Senator; Glenn on Way to 4th
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 92 04:54:43 EST
Message-ID: <27.1992Nov4.045444@AmeriCast.com>

Braun of Illinois to Become First Black Female Senator; Glenn on
Way to 4th Term; Yeakel Running Strong<By Helen Dewar and Kenneth
J. Cooper=Washington Post Staff Writers=

Democrat Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois yesterday became the
first black woman ever elected to the Senate as early returns
from House and Senate races indicated that Congress will be
reshaped with a major infusion of women, minorities and self-
proclaimed Washington "outsiders." According to network projec-
tions, Braun, the Cook County recorder of deeds, handily defeated
Richard Williamson, a wealthy Chicago lawyer who served as an
aide to former president Ronald Reagan, despite a recent contro-
versy over Medicaid support for her mother's nursing home care.

She will be the first black senator since Sen. Edward W. Brooke
(R-Mass.) lost his seat in 1979 and the first black Senate Demo-
crat - as well as its first black woman - in the country's histo-
ry.

Network projections also showed Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) winning
a fourth term despite earlier Democratic fears that he was one of
their most endangered incumbents.  John Rauh (D) took an early
lead over Gov.  Judd Gregg (R) for a previously GOP-held Senate
seat in New Hampshire. In Pennsylvania, Lynn Yeakel (D) was run-
ning with unexpected strength in her bid to unseat two-term Sen.
Arlen Specter (R).

But in North Carolina, Sen. Terry Sanford (D), who underwent re-
cent heart surgery, was narrowly trailing challenger Lauch Fair-
cloth (R). In South Carolina, Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D), anoth-
er endangered incumbent, held a slim lead.

Voters filled all 435 House seats and one-third of the Senate's
100 seats after often vitriolic campaigns in which scores of
veteran lawmakers faced the fights of their political lives
against challengers who exploited the anti-Washington, anti-
politician mood of many voters.

Democrats went into the election with a 266-to-166 edge in the
House and a margin of 57 to 43 in the Senate, with key strateg-
ists in both parties predicting Republicans would gain some seats
in the House because of redistricting while facing the possibili-
ty of losses in the Senate.

Senate Democrats were guardedly optimistic that they might make a
net gain of three seats and reach the 60 votes necessary to cut
off Republican filibusters, probably the GOP's most potent weapon
in stalling Democratic initiatives. House Democrats were hoping
to hold their losses to fewer than two dozen.

Even before the first vote was cast, the House set a post-World
War II record for retirements and defeats in primary elections,
assuring a freshman class of at least 91 members - the largest in
two decades.  The change in the Senate, while less sweeping, was
marked. Nine incumbents were sidelined by retirements and, in one
case, by a primary defeat before the general election, the most
in 12 years. At least a dozen Senate seats were in serious con-
tention as the election approached.

A record number of women were nominated by the two major parties
for both the House and Senate, and more blacks and Hispanics were
in line for election to the House than ever before.<The Senate<

Thirty-four Senate seats were contested in yesterday's election,
about one-third of the body. One other seat was already decided
when Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.) won a majority of votes in the
state's unusual all-party, winner-take-all primary a month ago. A
36th seat will be filled Dec. 4 in a special election to replace
the late Sen. Quentin Burdick (D-N.D.). Sen. Kent Conrad (D-
N.D.), who decided not to run again for his own seat but later
reversed course, is heavily favored to win Burdick's seat.  Among
the incumbents who easily won early re-election was the No. 2
ranking Democratic leader, Wendell H. Ford of Kentucky. Sens.
Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Bob Graham (D-Fla.), Richard C.
Shelby (D-Ala.), and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) also bested GOP
challengers. And a Democratic House member, Byron Dorgan of North
Dakota, won election to the Senate.

The top Senate Republican, Robert J. Dole of Kansas, was reelect-
ed into a seat that will make him the leading GOP spokesman in
Washington.

Another Republican, Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana, who was appointed
to the Senate in 1988 and won a special election two years ago,
easily won a full six-year term. Coats's major theme throughout
his career has been keeping out-of-state garbage from being
dumped in Indiana landfills.<

Buoyed by popular support for the Persian Gulf War and for
President Bush during the war, Republicans started the year with
high hopes of recapturing control of the Senate, where Democrats
now have a majority of 57 out of 100 seats.

Democrats had more to lose because they controlled more of the
seats that were up for grabs this year: 21 as opposed to 15 for
the Republicans. As members of the party in power on Capitol Hill
for as long as many voters can remember, Democrats also drew a
disproportionate share of citizens' mounting wrath against
Congress as an unresponsive citadel of power, privilege and per-
quisites. In addition, twice as many Democrats as Republicans re-
tired this year, reducing the advantage that incumbents normally
enjoy.

But as euphoria over the gulf war victory faded and voters' at-
tention turned to economic difficulties and other concerns at
home, the GOP's hopes of gains turned to fears of losses.

As the elections approached, the main question was whether the
Democrats would increase their majority in the Senate - and, if
so, by how much.

The Democrats had their vulnerable incumbents, but so did the
Republicans, as both parties suffered from anti-incumbent anger
among voters. On the other hand, incumbents, especially Democrats
who anticipated trouble early in the campaign, redoubled their
campaign preparations, stressing both the bring-home-the-bacon
advantages of incumbency and any qualities that might differen-
tiate them from the stereotypical Washington insider.

At the center of the struggle for the Senate were nine open seats
for which incumbents are not running for reelection, along with
several seats that were pivotal when the Republicans took control
of the Senate in 1980 and the Democrats seized it back in 1986.

In all, there were a dozen or more closely contested races in-
volving seats held in roughly equal numbers by the two parties.
The number of races regarded as competitive by both parties -
more than one-third of the total at stake in yesterday's voting -
was more than normal for recent elections.

Five Democrats and three Republicans did not seek reelection, and
Sen. Alan J. Dixon (D-Ill.) was defeated in a primary contest.
The total of nine voluntary and involuntary retirements before
Election Day matched the most recent record for open seats set in
1980, when five senators retired and four were defeated in pri-
maries.

This created more volatility than usual in Senate races, which
was heightened by the presidential contest. Republican incumbents
as well as challengers - in states from Oregon to New York - hus-
tled to distance themselves from Bush as he trailed by seemingly
large margins in their states.

By contrast, Democrats, who have normally been the ones to run
away from their party's national ticket, especially in the South,
were grasping for presidential coattails with an eagerness nor-
mally exhibited by Republicans toward the top of their ticket.

Even before the polls opened, women set a record for winning ma-
jor party nominations for Senate seats - energized in large part
by the nearly all-male Senate's handling of Anita F.  Hill's sex-
ual harassment charges against Clarence Thomas during his confir-
mation hearings for the Supreme Court.

A total of 11 women were nominated for the Senate by the two par-
ties: 10 by the Democrats, one by the Republicans. This broke the
previous record of 10 set in 1984, when only Sen.  Nancy Landon
Kassebaum (R-Kan.), who was running for a second term, was elect-
ed. This time, however, at least five women - two in California
and one each in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Washington - were in
the running to the end.

There are currently three female senators, two of whom were
elected to their jobs. A third, Jocelyn Birch Burdick (D-N.D.),
was appointed to succeed her late husband but is not seeking
election to the seat.

Competitive races by an African American and an American Indian
also raised the possibility of expanded minority representation
in the Senate, which is now limited to a Japanese American and a
native Hawaiian, both from Hawaii.

Issues in the Senate races tended to parallel those in the
presidential race, centering on jobs, taxes, health care, educa-
tion and other domestic concerns, although they varied according
to local and regional priorities - from timber in the Pacific
Northwest to defense spending in the South and New England. In
several races, House members seeking Senate seats were saddled
with House Bank overdrafts, blunting their fresh-face message in
challenging a Senate incumbent.<

The House<

A combination of a general anti-incumbent mood, the House Bank
scandal and the decennial reapportionment kept more House races
in doubt than usual, causing lists of endangered incumbents to
include leaders from both parties.

In Kentucky last night, early returns showed Rep. Romano L. Maz-
zoli (D) holding off a challenge from Susan B. Stokes (R), a
legislator who took issue with his opposition to abortion.

Stokes ran a financially competitive campaign against a 22-year
incumbent who accepted no contributions from special-interest
groups while she received heavy support from women's and abortion
rights groups. She was also rated one of a few GOP challengers
given a chance of winning a House seat.<

Any challengers who win will join a freshman class that will
number at least 91 because of postwar records of 65 retirements
and 19 primary defeats, five incumbent-versus-incumbent matchups
and two deaths. The record for House turnover since World War II,
118 in 1948, could fall.

Early in the year, the Republican minority hoped to capture
enough seats to challenge Democratic control of the House, which
has continued since 1955 without interruption. But the latest
projections are for slim GOP inroads of 10 to 15 seats into the
Democrats' 100-seat edge, 266 to 166. The decline in GOP fortunes
was associated with the strength of the Democratic national tick-
et in the South and West, the larger number of Democratic women
nominated and the creation of mostly minority districts under the
Voting Rights Act.

In this "Year of the Woman," Democrats nominated almost twice as
many women for the House as did Republicans. The major parties
nominated a record 106 women. Women's prospects looked brightest
in California and Florida, where they numbered 19 and 10, respec-
tively.

The Democrats' biggest worry was whether voters would express
their anti-incumbent feelings across the board, threatening the
larger number of Democrats seeking reelection. More Democrats re-
tired or lost primaries, but the party's incumbents on the ballot
outnumbered Republican ones, 209 to 137. The anti-incumbent scare
contributed to a boost in House campaign spending.

A more specific problem for incumbents, enduring public dismay
over members' overdrafts at their private bank, also cut against
the more numerous House Democrats. Challengers across the nation
made the furor about the now-closed bank, which preoccupied the
House for seven months, the focus of anti-incumbent advertising.
Among top abusers of the overdraft privileges, six were defeated
in primaries and about half of the eight survivors were con-
sidered in danger of losing yesterday.

A special counsel working for the Justice Department, retired
federal judge Malcolm R. Wilkey, is continuing a preliminary in-
quiry into possible wrongdoing at the bank. Wilkey has sent
letters exonerating most members who had overdrafts, but a number
engaged in tight races have not received them.  Challengers found
more ammunition for anti-incumbent attacks at the House Post Of-
fice, where a separate criminal investigation is underway. That
inquiry has already resulted in guilty pleas from a half-dozen
employees indicted on various charges and seeks to determine
whether expense vouchers for official postage stamps were con-
verted to cash for a few members' offices.

Pay raises the House authorized in 1989, the level of House
staffing and congressional blame for "gridlock" were other anti-
incumbent tunes played in the fall campaign.

Redistricting, prompted every decade by  the census, also played
a role in weakening incumbents and creating opportunity for chal-
lengers, including elected officials looking to move up.

Many retirees from states in the Northeast and Midwest that lost
seats said they quit rather than run in districts where they were
largely unfamiliar to voters. Incumbents who did campaign in dis-
tricts with large chunks of new territory risked being branded
just another "congressman," a mild insult this year.

In several states, Democrats in the best position to make a run
for open House seats were state legislators who played a role in
redrawing districts. The nomination of such legislators and oth-
ers experienced in state or local government raised questions
about what it meant to be a political outsider.

Reapportionment generally moved seats into the Sun Belt and
suburbs, where Republicans have an edge. But the GOP advantage
appeared to diminish, if not disappear, in states that also
created voting rights districts likely to elect minority
Democrats.Staff writers Guy Gugliotta, Eric Pianin, Don Phillips,
Thomas W.  Lippman, John Lancaster, Kathy Sawyer, William
Claiborne, Al Kamen, Dana Priest and Barbara Vobejda, and staff
researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.<02:25
11-04C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor-
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