In Final Weeks, G.O.P. Focuses on Best Bets

[The_Professor]

October 16, 2006
In Final Weeks, G.O.P. Focuses on Best Bets
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 — Senior Republican leaders have concluded that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, a pivotal state in this year’s fierce midterm election battles, is likely to be heading for defeat and are moving to reduce financial support for his race and divert party money to other embattled Republican senators, party officials said.

The decision to effectively write off Mr. DeWine’s seat, after a series of internal Republican polls showed him falling behind his Democratic challenger, is part of a fluid series of choices by top leaders in both parties as they set the strategic framework of the campaign’s final three weeks, signaling, by where they are spending television money and other resources, the Senate and House races where they believe they have the best chances of success.

Republicans are now pinning their hopes of holding the Senate on three states — Missouri, Tennessee and, with Ohio off the table, probably Virginia — while trying to hold on to the House by pouring money into districts where Republicans have a strong historical or registration advantage, party officials said Sunday. Republicans also said they would run advertisements in New Jersey this week to test the vulnerability of Senator Robert Menendez, one of the few Democrats who appear endangered.

Senior national Republican strategists who had been briefed on decisions made during the party’s internal deliberations discussed the overall strategic thrusts but declined to provide specific dollar figures, saying that would give too much information to the Democrats.

The decision involving Mr. DeWine offers the most compelling evidence so far that Republicans are circling their wagons around a smaller group of races, effectively conceding some Senate and House seats with the goal of retaining at least a thin margin of control when the 110th Congress is seated next January. Democrats need to win 6 seats to capture the Senate and 15 seats to win the House on Nov. 7.

Mr. DeWine has proved to be a successful fund-raiser on his own, and, with $4.5 million on hand, already enjoys a large financial advantage over his Democratic opponent, Representative Sherrod Brown; he is not dependent on financial support to keep campaigning. The Republican National Committee and the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee have already spent $4.6 million on his race; party officials said they concluded that there were now simply more opportune races to focus on.

Asked about the decision, a spokesman for Mr. DeWine, Brian Seitchik, said, “We’ve been pleased with the support we’ve received from the R.N.C. thus far.” Mr. Seitchik declined to comment further.

Republicans noted that Mr. DeWine, in addition to having a sizable financial advantage, was a well-liked figure in Ohio who handily won his first two terms in the Senate and still had enough time to recover, even though recent internal party polls showed him lagging badly.

Brian Nick, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said, “The committee doesn’t discuss internal strategy in terms of where financial resources are allocated.”

Democratic strategists said Sunday that they were polling in search of other races with vulnerable Republicans, pointing to Representative Richard W. Pombo of California as one incumbent they might take aim at.

Republicans said they remained confident that the party’s considerable financial advantage would allow them to hold back a Democratic onslaught over the next three weeks, and they said they were preparing to spend significantly to bulk up any Republican who their polling over the next few days suggested might be faltering.

A critical question in the days ahead is the size of the Republican financial advantage for the final three weeks; the next filing reports are due on Friday.

Still, in interviews, Republican strategists said that the flow of bad news out of Iraq and the resignation of Representative Mark Foley after admitting he had sent sexually suggestive messages to teenage Congressional pages had soured the environment for incumbents and blunted the impact of a long-planned crush of negative advertisements Republicans had prepared to undercut Democratic challengers this month.

In one sign of the shifting political environment, as of this weekend, national Republicans were running advertisements in 29 districts; of those, 26 are held by Republicans and 3 by Democrats, though Republicans plan to begin running advertisements this week against an Illinois Democrat, Representative Melissa Bean. National Democrats are on the air in 30 districts, and defending Democrats in just 3 races.

“For a midterm election in the sixth year, based on historically the number of seats lost, you’ve got to play defense,” said Carl Forti, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “We have the luxury of being in the majority, so all we have to do is hold our own.”

National Republicans are no longer running advertisements in three districts where they once thought they had a chance to take over Democratic-held seats — in South Carolina, West Virginia and Ohio — as well as a district in Arizona now held by a Republican. The party has not broadcast any advertising in four days on behalf of Representative Chris Chocola, one of three Indiana Republicans who polls suggest are headed for defeat, though Republican officials said that does not mean they have written off Mr. Chocola’s seat.

Even before this development, Republicans had been bracing for the defeat of three sitting Republican senators: Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Conrad Burns of Montana and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, based on polling.

At the start of the fall campaign, national Republican leaders developed a strategy to pour most of the national money into three states — Ohio, Tennessee and Missouri — to create a firewall against a Democratic takeover. One Republican Party official said Mr. DeWine’s continued problems in Ohio had persuaded them to in effect rebuild a firewall that has now partly collapsed, and to find a state to replace it.

The decision about Mr. DeWine’s seat came after recent internal polls showed Mr. DeWine’s Democratic challenger, Representative Brown, jumping to a large lead. Mr. Brown’s surge came despite a barrage of Republican advertisements intended to portray him as weak on national security — the very line of attack that had given party officials confidence earlier this year that Mr. DeWine would be re-elected.

Normally, a party would be averse to scaling back its help for a senator in a state with as many as five competitive Congressional races also on the ballot. But in this case, Ohio Republicans said, Mr. DeWine and Republican Congressional candidates face the added problem of being dragged down this November by the party’s candidate for governor, J. Kenneth Blackwell, who polls show is facing a double-digit loss to the Democrat, Representative Ted Strickland.

The next important decision for Republicans is whether to compete in New Jersey; they plan to spend about $500,000 on advertising this week, followed by polling to see how vulnerable Mr. Menendez is to his Republican challenger, Thomas H. Kean Jr. Going into New Jersey is a costly gamble, because it requires advertising in both the New York City and Philadelphia markets, which party strategists said could easily eat up $2.5 million a week.

An alternative being strongly considered by some Republican strategists is Virginia, where Senator George Allen, a Republican once viewed as breezing toward re-election, is now struggling. A poll published in The Washington Post on Sunday showed Mr. Allen in a tie with his Democratic challenger, Jim Webb. Virginia is a much more Republican state than New Jersey, not to mention less expensive, and thus might prove an easier place to make a stand.

Some Republican strategists have been pushing the party to go after Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, but other party officials said that based on the most recent polling data, Ms. Stabenow seemed assured of re-election. On the other side of the scale, Democrats said they were increasingly skeptical that they would be able to knock out Senator Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican who had been on an early target list.

In the House, the Republican committee has spent $61 million so far, compared with $50 million by Democrats, aides to both parties said Sunday.

For Republicans, the vast majority of that money has gone to protecting incumbents. The party is on the offensive in races for three seats: two held by Democrats, Representatives Leonard L. Boswell of Iowa and Jim Marshall of Georgia, and one being vacated by Representative Bernard Sanders, an independent from Vermont who typically voted with the Democrats.

Mr. Forti said Republicans had now placed $1 million into protecting the Florida district that was represented by Mr. Foley, the Republican who resigned in the page scandal. Party officials had at first written off that seat, because it was too late to replace Mr. Foley’s name on the ballot with the name of the Republican who replaced him, State Representative Joe Negron. Party officials said their polling showed that the district was so overwhelmingly Republican — Mr. Foley won 68 percent of the vote in 2004 — that they believed they could succeed again. In any event, they said they were not prepared to write off any seats in this environment.

“When you look at the polling numbers, they don’t want to vote for the Democrat,” Mr. Forti said. “Believe me, we are not going to waste two million bucks if we don’t think we have a shot.”

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