ELECTION '98

November 3, 1998
	Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot analyze the results of the day's election and the campaigns that led up to them.

Oct. 30, 1998: Shields and Gigot discuss the campaign ads of the upcoming election. Oct. 23, 1998: Shields and Gigot discuss the Middle East peace agreement. Oct. 16, 1998: Paul Gigot and Mark Shields discuss the winners and losers of $500 billion budget agreement. Oct. 9, 1998: Pundits Shields and Gigot on the impeachment vote and the budget battle Oct. 2, 1998: Shields and Gigot discuss the House's decision to release more documents on the Clinton-Lewinsky matter. Sept. 18, 1998: Shields and Gigot analyze the partisan struggle over the release of grand jury evidence. June 18, 1998: Five months from election day, the mid-term congressional races are beginning to take shape. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Election '98and Shields & Gigot	JIM LEHRER: Mark, what strikes you as the most important development so far? MARK SHIELDS: The most important development - my judgment, Jim - is the breaking up of the solid South for the Republicans. This is an area of the country that has been the greatest area of Republican growth over the past generation. Two thirds of Bob Dole's votes were from southern states. And tonight the election - the re-election of Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, governorships apparently won by Democrats in Alabama, in Georgia, and in South Carolina, it shows the Democratic invasion, or reinvasion of the South, which I think is startling to most of us. JIM LEHRER: How do you see it, Paul? PAUL GIGOT: I think it's a significant event. I think in all of those cases those races are state specific. Gambling interests came in big on behalf of the Democrats in South Carolina. Faub James, the Republican incumbent in Alabama, had alienated part of his base, barely won a Primary, and hard a hard fight on his hand, no matter what. Georgia, very popular Democratic incumbent, Zell Miller, passing on some of that legacy on to the Democrat against a Republican who's now running his third time statewide and may have a hard time convincing voters to vote for him. JIM LEHRER: Moving from the South, I've just been told that the Associated Press has declared Congressman Schumer the winner of the Senate race against the Democrat winner, against the Republican incumbent, Alfonse D'Amato. What do you think about? MARK SHIELDS: Well, it's a demolition derby. I mean, if you're talking about a state-specific race, that was New York, that was in-your-face, your mother wears army shoes kind of campaign, each attacking the other. It was - neither one could be accused of following the Marquis of Queensbury's rules. And Chuck Schumer's just carried the battle to Al D'Amato, who had been a very forceful campaigner and a guy who won, in large part, not by being a larger than life figure like Pat Moynihan, his colleague, or Robert Kennedy, or Robert Wagner, some of the great senators in New York history, but by being Senator Pothole, quite proudly, and apparently his stream ran out after 18 years. JIM LEHRER: How do you read that? PAUL GIGOT: It was all about Al D'Amato. I mean, Chuck - he'd always run in the past against old-time liberal Democrats, and Chuck Schumer had moved to the center on some key issues - crime - he was for the death penalty. He voted for welfare reform. He didn't give D'Amato those attack lines. And then D'Amato made some real mistakes in the campaign, calling Schumer a "putzhead," whatever that means, and that's not good, and making some other mistakes that hurt him. JIM LEHRER: Terry Smith did a piece on that race on the program a few days ago. And Schumer's ads stressed over and over again accusing D'Amato of lying about all this, and D'Amato was back at Schumer, I mean, with really high level nastiness. MARK SHIELDS: Too many, lies too long to Schumer, and then Al D'Amato's was wrong on crime, wrong on welfare, wrong on whatever else, Chuck Schumer. I mean, there wasn't a sense of - these are the three things I believe in, please vote for me. PAUL GIGOT: D'Amato's mistake wasn't just calling him a name, it was then saying he hadn't, and lying about it, and that played right into Schumer's theme.
	A breakup of the South?
	JIM LEHRER: Yes. Back to the South, Fritz Hollings was - I mean, that is -- you talk about a Republican state - South Carolina is a Republican state, and a lot of people believed that Fritz Hollings was in trouble, but it turned out otherwise. PAUL GIGOT: It sure did. He got help from the governor's race in the video gaming industries, which I think really helped boost turnout for the Democrats. The other problem the Republicans had was the problem they seemed to have had that was hurting him, I think, in a lot of other races, not just South Carolina, and that is they didn't really -- the challenger, Mr. Inglis, really didn't give voters a reason to throw out an incumbent. And they've done it in a lot of races, Jim. I think the Republicans are paying a price tonight for not having much to talk about, other than Bill Clinton. MARK SHIELDS: Fritz Hollings is a legend. I mean, at a time when politics appears to be homogenized and all these guys look like they come out of some vanilla factory somewhere, Fritz Hollings is an original. And this is man who was governor when they desegregated the state of South Carolina in 1959. He carried the state for Jack Kennedy in '60 -- came to the Senate in '66 -- and the guy was constantly in trouble with his temper, his quick wit, his acerbic remarks, but a remarkable figure. I think if there was a campaign in the country this year in 1998 that made a difference, it was the Hollings. There's no reason Fritz Hollings should have won. I mean, you're absolutely right. That state has trended strongly. It had an attractive, clean, young Republican, Bob Inglis, reform-minded, and all the rest of it, and Fritz Hollings, by determination, by guile, and by the resourcefulness of a very good campaign, managed to make that campaign about Fritz Hollings' definition of what a senator should be, and it prevailed today.
	Bushes victorious.
	JIM LEHRER: Now, the Bushes also prevailed today, both in - Jeb Bush in Florida and George W. Bush in Texas. Now will the talk immediately begin, Paul, about George W. Bush and the year 2000, running for president? PAUL GIGOT: I think so, Jim. If there's a success tonight for the Republicans, that's certainly going to be one of them, that they've done well in most of the governorships, and particularly in those two very big and important states, Texas and Florida. And one of the reasons they've been able to do it is that they - having - particularly George W. Bush - having the executive branch, controlling the governorship, he set the agenda. And he's talked about things in a way that the Republican Party and the Congress in Washington hasn't talked about. He was setting the agenda on education. He was running on a tax cut, $2.7 billion in that state, and he had the Democrats on the defensive the whole race. JIM LEHRER: But both of the Bush boys considered more moderate than the leadership of the Republican Congress? MARK SHIELDS: I think it's fair to say that the - that a governor has to deal with real issues. I mean, a governor has to deal with everything from prison revolts to roads and dealing with the legislature. You're not - you don't have the same luxury and latitude of kind of posturing and posing for direct mail purposes that legislators do, quite frankly, and -- because legislators don't have to worry about getting a program through, and I think especially in the stalemate of Washington politics, but there's no question that Jeb Bush had won in 1994, which he came within an eyelash of doing against Lawton Chiles, that you'd have a real sibling rivalry. I think he would be a natural - even more a natural national candidate than George W., who obviously, on the basis of primary - which is important to Republicans -- I think he takes precedence.