A hard hit for Democrats?

ANALYSTS PREDICT THAT DEMOCRATS WILL SIT OUT THIS ELECTION IN DROVES, GIVING THE EDGE TO REPUBLICAN LEGISLATORS.

In this year's rematch of Democrats vs. Republicans some 6,000 legislative seats in 47 states are up for grabs. And quite a contest it will be. In 15 legislative chambers, partisan control is either tied or so tight that a handful of seats will determine the majority. The candidates, the issues, the turnout have seldom been so critical to an election outcome.

But the public has seldom been so disaffected, so cynical about government, either. One symptom of this malaise is the substantially lower voter turnout in many primary elections. Only 33 percent of California voters bothered to go to the polls this summer--an historic low--despite races for governor and U.S. Senate and millions of advertising dollars. Four years ago 41 percent voted in the primary.

Although neither New Jersey nor Virginia are conducting state legislative elections this year, turnout in both states' spring primaries for U.S. Senate and House seats was down from four years ago. The number of people voting in Virginia's Democratic U.S. Senate primary in June was the second lowest this century, with only 9.2 percent of registered voters going to the polls. A potentially low voter turnout is a wild card in this election.

But "primary turnout does not track with November turnout," according to Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. Nevertheless, the number of people who in Gans' poll describe themselves as "very interested" in the election is dramatically lower than it was four TABULAR DATA OMITTED years ago--30 percent as opposed to 40 percent in the last mid-term face-off.

The 1994 election could see the lowest turnout in more than a century, if Gans's summer indicators hold through the election. "In the last two mid-term general elections, we had 36.4 percent of the eligible voters casting ballots. We could go as low as 33 percent this time around." The last time so few people bothered to go to the polls was in the early 1800s.

Voters Are Apathetic 

Partisanship. Social issues. Taxes. That's the stuff of elections. And the 1994 election promises hope or upheaval depending on one's perspective on how the incumbents have dealt with these and other issues.

But there are other factors that will contribute to November's ultimate outcome.

President Clinton, for instance.

"At this point, the biggest factor in the upcoming election is the lack of enthusiasm in basic Democratic constituencies for the Clinton administration," says Gans. "Not opposition, but lack of enthusiasm. Which means those people are most likely not to turn out. So a low turnout in this election, and I stress this election, is likely to hurt the Democrats."

Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution agrees. "It sure has the smell of an election in which the president's party loyalists are going to sit home disproportionately."

Democrats clearly dominate state legislatures going into the election, as they have for the past 30 years. But since the 1990 election, when they won control of 30 legislatures and appeared to be closing in once again on their decade high of 34 in 1983, their hold has slipped somewhat. Today they control both chambers in 24 states, Republicans in eight. Seventeen have split control (the Nebraska Unicameral Legislature is nonpartisan).

In 1990, the number of seats that changed hands was a scant net of 43. But those 43 seats gave Democrats control of the Arizona Senate, the Indiana House, the Kansas House and the Montana and Nevada senates, and tied the Idaho Senate. Democrats wrested four states from Republican control and added to their own partisan numbers in several dozen more states.

In the presidential election year of 1992, Republicans picked up 155 seats in 38 chambers for a net gain of about 32 seats. Those seats gave them control of both chambers in eight states, up from six before that election. They won back the Arizona Senate, took control of the Kansas House, won the Illinois Senate for the first time in 18 years, and won the Vermont Senate and Iowa House.

Going into this election, the margin of control is razor thin in a number of states. If Gans and Mann are correct that Democrats will sit out this election, the swing of a handful of seats could change the complexion of a number of chambers. For instance, Republicans need three seats to control the Iowa Senate (they won the House in 1992); they would control the Maine Senate with three more seats; the GOP needs one seat for a majority in the North Dakota Senate; four more victories in the Ohio House would give Republicans control; two seats are all that separate the GOP from control of the Oregon Senate; three seats would give Republicans the majority in the South Dakota Senate.

The most hotly contested races in 1992 resulted in split control in the Michigan House, the Florida Senate and the Pennsylvania Senate (which Republicans reorganized in the spring after winning a special election). All three are highly partisan by nature, and the election will no doubt end the tie in Michigan and Florida. Michigan Co-Speaker Paul Hillegonds is predicting a one- to three-seat gain.

If he's right, and Republicans hold on to the governorship and the Senate where they presently control 22 of 38 seats, the GOP will have complete control of the statehouse for the first time since 1968.

In Florida, where 23 of 40 Senate seats are up for re-election, Republicans are confident that they will win one to three seats, according to Jim Magill, director of state Senate campaigns for the Florida Republican Party. That would put Republicans in control of the Senate for the first time since Reconstruction.

Pennsylvania is another tight state. The Senate was split 25-25 after the last election, but Democrats organized the Senate with the tie-breaking vote of the lieutenant governor and took control for the first time in 12 years. A resignation, the deaths of two senators, three special elections and charges of voter fraud marked a year of bitter partisanship. Republicans are now in control 26-24.

Politics Are Local

State elections repeatedly prove that politics are local and legislatures are often elected independently of national politics. Take California, a term-limit state that is experiencing an exodus of experienced members. Twenty-two of the Assembly members are retiring and one incumbent lost in the primary; in the 40-member Senate, five are not running for re-election. A shift of five seats in the Senate would mean GOP control. But the economy continues to be depressed, the state has been beset by a series of natural disasters and a staggering influx of illegal immigrants, and Republican Governor Pete Wilson's approval rating is only about 30 percent.

When Connecticut lawmakers, mostly Democrats, enacted the state's first income tax in 1991, Republicans were smacking their lips in anticipation of taking control of both chambers. But it didn't happen. Three more Assembly seats in November would give the GOP control this year.

Term Limits Are Changing Things

Term limits may also be an election factor in the 16 states that have them.

In Ohio, for example, their impact will be significant this November. Vern Riffe, one of the longest serving and arguably one of the most powerful speakers in the country, is stepping down to take up private life. Six senior lawmakers with a combined total of 209 years of legislative experience and institutional memory are also leaving despite the fact that the state's term limits don't kick in for another six years. In Arkansas, where term limits will go into effect in 1997, nearly a quarter of the 100 House members are not returning.

"My hunch is the way things will go in the 16 term-limit states is you'll have a game of musical chairs with everything revolving and rotating," says political scientist Alan Rosenthal. California Assemblyman Jim Costa, former Democratic caucus chair, bears out Rosenthal's theory. He is running for the Senate.

Reapportionment and seats vacated early because of term limits have the potential of making just enough changes to swing a legislative chamber from one party to the other. But even in states without term limits, open seats can have an unpredictable effect on the election. In Iowa, for instance, a quarter of the House members are opting not to run, including minority leader Bob Arnould, and members in 10 of the 25 Senate seats up for election are retiring.

Family Values Are In

The concern over values and the re-emergence of the religious right are factors, too.

Polling data indicate that Americans are concerned about society's values. An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll in June found that 75 percent of Americans agree that "traditional values have grown weaker and need to be strengthened."

A survey of 1,234 Tennesseans found that 78 percent were very or somewhat worried that moral standards are not as high as they should be. Eighty-five percent said a candidate's position on school prayer was very or somewhat important in their decision to vote for that person.

"Many devout people believe abortion is murder, homosexuality is immoral and this country's downfall is closely linked to the prohibition of teacher-led school prayer," says Representative Roy Herron, an ordained Methodist minister who now practices law and has taught a course on politics and religion at Vanderbilt University.

A Los Angeles Times poll found that Californians overwhelmingly are concerned about crime, with huge margins supporting "three strikes you're out" bills and other tough anti-crime measures. And Democratic political consultant William Carrick says that support for the death penalty has been building since the 1950s when about half of Americans supported it to today when a decisive majority do. "It's the most dramatic movement in public opinion in the latter half of the 20th century," says Carrick.

Massachusetts is one of 13 states without the death penalty, and it is a factor in a number of state legislative races. "At this point you can only get hurt by coming out against the death penalty," says Lou DiNatale, a senior fellow at the McCormack Institute for Public Affairs at the University of Massachusetts.

A poll conducted by the Cincinnati Post and the University of Cincinnati found that Ohio-ans rank crime as the state's No. 1 problem.

A "breakdown of the family" is most responsible for crime, according to 35 percent of the people polled recently by The Boston Globe.

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 58 percent of whites and 53 percent of blacks agree that a major reason people are on welfare is a decline in moral values.

A Florida poll conducted by the St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald found citizens there believe the state is on the wrong track. A majority said the state needs to elect a governor who will promote traditional values, and 83 percent said they support voluntary school prayer.

"Family values," according to Republican pollster Bill McInturff, are defined by people's attitudes toward drugs, violence, crime and lackluster schools. These issues rank higher even among Christian activists than do abortion, gay rights and welfare reform.

The Republican Party staked out family values as its own during the 1992 presidential election, but Democrats claim values as a theme this year, too. "Values are just as important to us as they are to them," says Ed Lazarus, communications director of the Democratic National Committee.

Voters are talking a lot about what they see as the crisis in values, but few state political candidates have joined the discussion. In a two-hour focus group conducted by The Boston Globe, participants said that the breakdown of the social contract has diminished the emphasis on work, family, church and respect for others, and the result is a social free-for-all in which crime is ascendent.

The rise of religious conservatives has complicated the broad appeal of values for both parties. The Christian conservative movement fizzled in the 1980s when Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority folded and Pat Robertson lost big in the 1988 presidential race.

"What brought them back to life?" asks William Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute. "The answer is simple: Bill Clinton. Christian conservatives don't like Clinton's policies. They don't like Clinton's values. And they don't like Clinton's lifestyle."

In an election where Democrats are unenthusiastic about the president, and the religious right is adamantly against him, low turnout could signal serious problems for Democrats.

But not necessarily. According to Curtis Gans, those most likely to vote in any given election are the educated, to some extent the affluent, older people and people who are the most "residentially stable."

PARTY CONTROL OF STATE LEGISLATURES

(number of states)

               Party Control

Year      Dem      Rep      Split

1960       27       15         6
1962       25       17         6
1964       32        6        10
1966       23       16         9
1968       20       20         8
1970       23       16         9
1972       26       16         7
1974       37        4         8
1976       35        4        10
1978       31       11         7
1980       29       15         5
1982       34       11         4
1984       26       11        12
1986       28        9        12
1988       29        8        12
1990       30        6        13
1992       25        8        16

"The religious right does not vote at the same level that, for instance, the average 65-year-old votes. They vote lower," says Gans. "But they are an organized faction that is being highly mobilized so that they stand a chance in a low turnout election of having a disproportionately high influence.

"But they are not the biggest factor around."

Neither, according to economist Steven Gold of the Center for the Study of the States, is the economy.

Taxes Are Not a Factor

Economic issues clearly dominated the 1992 presidential election and they are a huge issue in California this year, but most states have turned the corner on the recession.

"President Clinton deserves a lot of credit for the fact the economy is doing much better now, but he's not getting it," says Gold.

Taxes and spending have not been big issues on the campaign trail this summer and fall because few states increased taxes, and spending is, at present, under control. Gold predicts that states will actually cut taxes in 1995, following New Jersey's example, which cut the personal income tax by 15 percent this year.

But economics in the country have changed, too. High paying jobs are being replaced by jobs in the lower paying service industry and increasing international competition has resulted in less job security today than a decade ago. There's not much the government can do about that, except keep close tabs on spending.

"We're in a period of Republican ascendency--an anti-tax feeling that is best characterized by Republican governors Christine Whitman of New Jersey, William Weld of Massachusetts and John Engler of Michigan," says Gold.

"The important point is that people are not doing that well economically, and they don't want higher taxes unless they are convinced the money is being well spent."

Governing is more difficult, too.

Problems are not solved easily. It often takes a whole series of actions to confront a problem. States need to simultaneously consider education and higher education, corrections and social services and their tax system. "If you deal with only one or two of those areas that may not be enough," Gold says.

His point holds true in Florida where 72 percent of voters are concerned about government waste, and overwhelming majorities are concerned about crime prevention, education and too many immigrants. They see these issues as complex and interrelated. Seventy percent said they would support raising taxes, especially for education or child care.

Politicians Are Out

But Floridians also express deep doubts about the ability of elected officials to govern well. A staggering 75 percent agreed that "there are fewer and fewer people I can trust who are running for public office," and "most of our elected officials think more about themselves than the people they are elected to represent."

The glimmer of hope in this negative assessment is that 60 percent would not dissuade their children from entering politics.

This is likely to be a tough, tight election where President Clinton, family values and the religious right will all be factors. But since politics, when all is said, are local, predictions can only be borne out by the election itself. Nov. 8 will tell.

LEGISLATORS SEEK HIGHER OFFICE

The lure of developing public policy on a broad scale has drawn a number of state legislators into November races for higher office. Among the candidates are several who have been active in NCSL.

Running for the U.S. Senate are Arizona Senate Minority Leader Cindy Resnick and New Jersey Speaker Chuck Haytaian.

Candidates for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives include Arkansas Senator Jay Bradford, Missouri Representative Karen McCarthy, Ohio Senator Robert Ney and former Washington Senator Jack Metcalf.

Making gubernatorial bids are former Oregon Senator John Kitzhaber and Wyoming Senator Jim Geringer.

Karen Hansen is editor of State Legislatures magazine.