Democrats Win in Montana, Tying Senate

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrats won a cliffhanger race in Montana on Wednesday that took them to the brink of control of the Senate, after Americans sick of scandal and weary of war brought down the Republican House majority.

“It was a thumpin,'” President Bush told reporters at a White House news conference.

With Democrats now assured of 50 Senate seats, the battle for outright control came down to Virginia, where the party’s candidate, Jim Webb, held a small lead.

For Republicans, it was an election that started out grim and got only grimmer with the new day. Mr. First, voters brought down the Republican House majority after 12 years in power, and gave Democrats a majority of governorships for the first time in just as long.

Then Senate control began slipping away, the narrow GOP majority ground down to nothing, protected only by Vice President Cheney’s tie-breaking vote if the contest ended at 50-50.

Democrats hoped to shape a 51-49 majority with a Virginia victory for Webb, a former Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan. Mr. Webb led by fewer than 9,000 votes out of more than 2.3 million cast, and with the margin so small and so much on the line, Senator Allen was not conceding. If a recount is held, it could take weeks to be conducted by a panel of judges.

Electoral officials were canvassing the unofficial results Wednesday, and both parties had teams ready to monitor and intervene in the event of a recount, anticipating the process could stretch into next month.

In Montana, Democrat Jon Tester, a organic grain farmer who lost three fingers in a meat grinder, prevailed in a protracted contest with three-term Senator Burns, who was weakened politically by his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Mr. Tester held a 3,128-vote lead over Burns with only one county left to count its votes. That county had fewer than 1,000 votes to report. An AP canvass of Montana counties estimated there were not enough provisional ballots still to be counted for Mr. Burns to overcome his deficit.

That meant the election of 48 Democratic senators as well as two Democratic-voting independents – Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

A succession of tainted Republicans lost seats as their leaders lost power, a stinging referendum on the ways of Washington. A large majority of voters surveyed across the country said their disgust with corruption influenced their choice.

Setting a standard her party will be judged on in elections two years from now, speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi promised: “Democrats intend to lead the most honest, the most open and the most ethical Congress in history.”

The California Democrat was on the cusp of making history herself, as the first female speaker. Mr. Bush called her Wednesday morning to congratulate her.

Democrats took 20 of 36 governorship races to give themselves a majority of top state jobs – 28 – for the first time in a dozen years. New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maryland and Arkansas went into the Democratic column.

Republicans hung on to Florida’s governorship, with Charlie Crist prevailing in a race to succeed Mr. Bush’s brother Jeb, and Bob Corker won a closely watched Senate contest in Tennessee, denying Democrat Harold Ford Jr.’s bid to become the first black senator from the South in more than a century.

But the night was one Republicans wished they could forget. For a two-term president who has led with Senate and House control for most of his time in office, easing the way for his tax cuts and war policy, it was an unaccustomed dose of defeat.

Democrats won 228 House seats and led in four, putting them on track for a 30-seat gain if trends held in remaining unsettled races. Party standings in that event would be 232-203.

Control of the Senate came down to two races once considered safely Republican until gaffes by the two GOP candidates.

Mr. Burns, 71, first elected in 1988 as a folksy, backslapping outsider, came under siege as a top recipient of campaign contributions from Abramoff. He did himself no favors, either, when he confronted members of a wildfire-fighting team and accused them of doing a bad job.

Mr. Allen, a former Virginia governor, struggled for months to get his campaign back on stride after he used the obscure racial slur “macaca” to introduce a man of Indian descent to an all-white rally.

Across the country, voters expressed exasperation with the criminal convictions, the investigations and the recent sexual e-mail scandal that befell Congress over the past two years.

In surveys conducted at polling places, three out of four voters said corruption and scandalous behavior in Congress made them more likely to vote Democratic.

Also in the surveys, about six in 10 voters disapproved of the Iraq war and only a third believed it had improved long-term security in the United States.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., echoing Ms. Pelosi, said the election shows “we must change course in Iraq.”

More broadly, he said, Americans “have come to the conclusion, as we did some time ago, that a one-party town simply doesn’t work.”

Without losing any seats of their own, Democrats captured 27 GOP-held seats and were leading for two more, assuring them of control 12 years after a Republican rout brought a new generation of conservatives into office.

“Unprepared members were swallowed up by the sour national environment,” New York Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the House GOP’s election effort, said on CNN. He was re-elected.

Democrats also defeated four Republican incumbents in the Senate – Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, Mike DeWine in Ohio, Jim Talent in Missouri and Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island – who covered the spectrum from conservative to moderate.

Indiana was particularly cruel to House Republicans. Reps. John Hostettler, Chris Chocola and Mike Sodrel all lost in a state where Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels’ unpopularity compounded the dissatisfaction with Bush.

One of the biggest surprises of the night was Republican Rep. Jim Leach’s defeat in Iowa after a career that spanned 30 years, losing to Dave Loebsack, a college professor making his first run for elective office. The two parties spent lavishly on television commercials in dozens of districts deemed competitive – but not that one.

Scandal took an undeniable toll on the Republicans. Democrat Zack Space won the race to succeed Bob Ney, who pleaded guilty to corruption this fall in the Abramoff scandal. Republican Rep. John Sweeney lost his seat in New York several days after reports that he had roughed up his wife – an allegation she denied.

Republicans also lost the seat that Rep. Mark Foley had held. He resigned on Sept. 29 after being confronted with sexually explicit computer messages he had written to teenage pages.

Rep. Don Sherwood lost despite apologizing to the voters for a long-term affair with a much younger woman; and Rep. Curt Weldon, also from Pennsylvania, was denied a new term after he became embroiled in a corruption investigation.

The GOP also lost the Texas seat once held by former Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Surveys of voters suggested Democrats were winning the support of independents with almost 60 percent support, and middle-class voters were leaving Republicans behind.

About six in 10 voters said the nation is on the wrong track and disapproved of the way Bush is handling his job. Voters in all groups were more inclined to vote for Democratic candidates than for Republicans.

Over half of the voters registered dissatisfaction with the way Republican leaders in Congress dealt with Foley. They voted overwhelming Democratic in House races, by a margin of 3-to-1.

The surveys were taken by The Associated Press and the networks.

History worked against the GOP, too. Since World War II, the party in control of the White House has lost an average 31 House seats and six Senate seats in the second midterm election of a president’s tenure in office.

More than the party-run battle for control of Congress and the statehouses was at stake.

South Dakota voters rejected the toughest abortion law in the land – a measure that would have outlawed the procedure under almost any circumstances.

In a comeback unlike any other, Mr. Lieberman won a new term in Connecticut – dispatching Democrat Ned Lamont. Mr. Lieberman, a supporter of Bush’s war policy, ran as an independent but will side with the Democrats in organizing the new Senate when he returns to Washington.

Senator Clinton coasted to a second Democratic term in New York, winning roughly 70 percent of the vote in a warm-up to a possible run for the White House in 2008.

In Ohio, Mr. DeWine lost to Rep. Sherrod Brown, a liberal seven-term lawmaker. Mr. Chafee, the most liberal Republican in the Senate and an opponent of the war, fell to Sheldon Whitehouse, former state attorney general.

Among the GOP losers, Messrs. Hostettler, Santorum and DeWine all won their seats in the Republican landslide of 1994 – the year the GOP grabbed control of the House and Senate from the Democrats and launched the Republican revolution.

“It’s very hard to watch,” lamented Dick Armey, who was House majority leader in those heady GOP days.

Democrats piled up gains in the nation’s statehouses.

In Ohio, Rep. Ted Strickland defeated Republican Ken Blackwell with ease to become the state’s first Democratic governor in 16 years. Deval Patrick triumphed over Republican Kerry Healey in Massachusetts, and will become the state’s first black chief executive. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer won the New York governor’s race in a landslide.

Voters in Vermont made Mr. Sanders, an independent, the winner in a Senate race, succeeding retiring Senator Jeffords. Brooklyn-born with an accent to match, Mr. Sanders is a socialist who will side with Democrats, as he did reliably in the House.

In Maryland, Democratic Rep. Ben Cardin captured an open Senate seat, defeating Lt. Gov. Michael Steele.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use