Heartened Democrats look to 2006 elections

WASHINGTON -- Buoyed by election victories from California to New Jersey on Tuesday, Democrats yesterday turned their sights to the 2006 congressional elections, saying that the results show that President Bush's sagging popularity will drag down Republican candidates and give the Democrats a golden opportunity to gain ground in the GOP-controlled Congress.

Party leaders said the wins will embolden Democratic candidates to run for Congress, boost fund-raising efforts, and bring more voters on board for a new national campaign aimed at changing party control in Washington. The national party is crafting a broad agenda titled ''Together, We Can Do Better," a campaign that they hope will be their answer to the ''Contract With America" that helped Republicans seize control of Congress in 1994.

The new agenda, to be unveiled in January, is expected to emphasize energy independence, expanded access to healthcare and higher education, and retirement security, according to Democratic officials. The idea is to rebut Republican charges that Democrats define themselves only by opposing GOP policies.

Senator Jon Corzine won a nasty gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey, but Democrats were particularly energized by the governor's race in Virginia, a state Bush carried comfortably in 2000 and 2004. Though polls showed the governor's race in a dead heat the night before election day, Democrat Timothy Kaine beat Republican Jerry Kilgore by 6 points -- even after the president put his clout on the line, flew to Richmond on Monday, and endorsed Kilgore in person.

''As they say down in Texas, these folks are running away from President Bush like a scalded dog," said Representative Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat who is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Republicans noted that the ''off-year" races like Tuesday's are imperfect predictors of the political future, and reminded observers that there's a full year until the polls open again for congressional elections. In 2001, when Bush's popularity was at its peak, Democrats won governorships in New Jersey and Virginia -- just as they did on Tuesday -- but Republicans still picked up seats in Congress a year later.

Representative Thomas Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, noted that Democrats held on to two states that they already had, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the incumbent Republican, beat Democrat challenger Fernando Ferrer in a landslide.

While Virginia was a ''disappointment," the losses will not change the electoral map for 2006, where only about three dozen House seats are considered in play, Reynolds said.

''The election results were really the status quo," said Reynolds, a New York Republican.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan rejected suggestions that Bush has become a Republican liability.

''I don't think any thorough analysis of the election results will show that the elections were decided on anything other than local and state issues and the candidates and their agendas," McClellan said.

Nevertheless, Tuesday brought a near-sweep for Democrats and delivered another blow to Bush's political standing. Along with the two governorships, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- a fellow Republican whose political star power has dimmed -- saw all four ballot initiatives he championed fail, thwarted by an energized coalition of labor unions and the state's Democratic establishment.

In St. Paul, Minn., voters cast aside a Democratic mayor who endorsed Bush last year for a more traditional Democrat. The Republican mayor of Great Falls, Mont., fell to a Democrat.

And in Dover, Pa., eight members of the city's school board who supported teaching the GOP-endorsed ''intelligent design" theory as an alternative to evolution were swept from office.

The elections across the country were ''a clear repudiation of George Bush and the GOP agenda," said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

''The election was a shot across the bow to George Bush," Schumer said. ''The people smell it in the air: The Republican agenda is way over."

The way Kaine's campaign overcame the GOP's vaunted get-out-the-vote efforts in Virginia could be a model for future campaigns, Democratic party leaders said.

Kilgore, who ran on bedrock GOP issues as tax cuts, the death penalty, and immigration was trumped by Kaine's emphasis on fiscal discipline and more investments in schools, healthcare, and jobs, Emanuel said.

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean included another positive for Democrats: Kaine, a Catholic, talked easily about his faith and values.

''If you want to win in the South, you've got to be comfortable talking about your faith," said Dean, a former governor of Vermont who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination last year.