From Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Suzanne Terrell for U.S. Senate Campaign
The results of last week's elections are still reverberating around Your Nation's Capital like Quasimodo ringing Big Marie in the bell tower of Notre Dame.
As predicted in Mullings the week before the election ("Who Will They Blame?" Nov. 1, 2002), House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt is gone and Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe would do well to order a truck-load of packing boxes.
Everyone knows that the GOP increased its margin in the U.S. House by four seats. Everyone knows the GOP regained control of the U.S. Senate with 51 seats (with the race in Louisiana to be decided on December 7).
The Republican leaders in each chamber - Speaker Dennis Hastert in the House and Majority Leader Trent Lott in the Senate have gotten their shares of back-slaps.
However, there are five other people who chaired Republican political committees who have not received appropriate notice - at least not in the popular press.
On the U.S. House side, Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) did what no one since New York's Bill Paxon had been able to do: Lead the Republicans to a net-seat gain in the House. Since the GOP took control following the elections of 1994, Republicans lost two seats in 1996, five seats in 1998, and two seats in 2000.
On the Senate side no one - notwithstanding a considerable amount of post-election revisionism - predicted with any confidence that Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) and his staff would be able to pull off, not just a return to control, but control without needing the tie-breaking vote of the Vice President.
The chairman of the Republican Governor's Association, John Rowland (R-CT) prevented what was likely to be the Democrats' ONLY gloating opportunity in preventing them from gaining a majority of governorships. When the counting is all finished the GOP will still control 26 states to the Democrats' 24 - a net loss of only one. Democrats were predicting a pick-up of up to seven.
Sitting atop the Republican political pyramid, leading the Republican National Committee, is chairman Mark Racicot. If you don't think the national committee chairman makes any difference when his party owns the White House, just ask former RNC chairman Jim Gilmore.
Racicot got the RNC's wheels back on the tracks, raised the money, and - perhaps most importantly - got the staff morale rebuilt to the point where the "72-hour project" - the enormously successful get out the vote effort - led to about 4 million more votes for Republicans than Democrats nationwide.
"But wait!," as the guy who sells OxyClean on TV might say, "There's more!"
While all eyes have been glued to the results in the Congressional and Governors' races, there were about 7,000 seats in State legislatures up for grabs.
Prior to the mid-term elections the Democrats fully controlled 18 state legislatures (both the House and the Senate). The GOP controlled 17, and 14 were divided.
Today, Republicans control both houses in 21 states - a gain of four. The Democrats control 17, and only 11 states have split control.
The chairman of the National Republican Legislators' Association is State Senator Florence Shapiro (R-TX). Shapiro's success shows the Republican party has enormous - and largely unreported - strength at the grass roots.
And it provides the clearest sign of the depth of the problems the Democratic party now faces, and indicates how long and arduous the road back to electoral success is likely to be.
Racicot, Frist, Davis, Rowland, Shapiro. A pretty good cast of supporting players.
And, when thinking about the future, compare those five with the Democrats' pre-election up-and-comers: Frank Lautenberg and Walter Mondale.
For all of those reporters, talking heads, e-mail pen pals, and political hacks who bet me on some aspect of the elections or another, I fully expect you - as the NY Times' Adam Clymer did on Friday - to call me to pay up. According to my calculations, I should not have to pay for lunch until about mid-March, 2003.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A brief Victor Hugo excerpt, a link to the very amusing Election Night Travelogues, a link to an election night analysis by UPI's Peter Roff, a pretty funny Mullfoto of the day, and a GREAT Catchy Caption of the Day.
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