Some final thoughts on the 1994 elections.
- In the national sense, Utahns gained considerable influence after the elections. Sen. Orrin Hatch gets the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee. He's been lobbying to get local attorney Dan Berman nominated to the opening on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. We'll see if President Clinton is more willing to listen to Hatch now.Sen. Bob Bennett gets a subcommittee chairmanship and, depending on where more senior GOP senators go, may get some better committee assignments, also.
Rep. Jim Hansen will get at least a subcommittee chairmanship. Hansen says an internal Republican rule about how long GOP House members can be "ranking" members on a committee leads him to believe he will get the chairmanship of the House Natural Resources Committee. But don't expect power-hungry senior Republicans to give up chairmanships just because, as the 40-year minority, they adopted some rule.
GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt may even benefit. Leavitt is set to be elected the new chairman of the National Republican Governors Association. He has a lot more company after the election, where Republicans won the governorships of a number of states, including New York and Texas.
While the NRGA will have more influence in a Republican-controlled U.S. House and Senate, it's not sure it will have much more influence with Clinton - who you may recall was a Democratic governor before winning the White House.
And, it should be pointed out, over the years big-state governors haven't had a whole lot to do with the National Governors Association, the Western Governors Assocition or the Democrat and Republican governor groups.
For example, when GOP Gov. Norm Bangerter was chairman of the NRGA, the then-Republican governor of California didn't come to the annual meeting in Salt Lake. And this summer, when Leavitt was voted in as chairman of the Western Governors Association in a Lake Tahoe, Nev., meeting, California Gov. Pete Wilson didn't bother to show up.
But with a Republican Congress, many talking about reducing federal mandates, regulation and spending, Leavitt's agenda on states' rights will find some friendly ears.
- Utahns may have voted for Republicans in greater numbers than in recent elections, but don't think there's been a major shift to the right by the electorate.
If that had happened, Utah House and Senate Democrats would have lost many more seats than they did.
And don't think there was a mood of "throw the rascals out" in the Legislature. Not at all. For all the polls that show Utahns think lawmakers take bribes or put self-interest first, that is not the result of Tuesday's voting.
Every state senator who sought re-election in Tuesday's election won. Think about that - Democrat and Republican alike won. Democrats dropped a seat because in an open Ogden race held by a retiring Democrat, the Republican can-didate squeaked out a 147-vote victory.
In the Utah House, six incumbent Democrats did lose. But every - I mean every - Republican House incumbent won. That's an amazing statistic.
There are probably six reasons for the six Democratic losses. For example, Rep. Haynes Fuller, D-Eden, has struggled for some years in his re-election bids. Fuller, a nice guy, was the chief opponent to the 1991 Utah abortion law, trying to repeal it several times. He comes from a conservative district, and the numbers finally caught up with him.
Even Karen Shepherd's loss in the 2nd Congressional District shouldn't be seen as a big conservative swing. She was a freshman, and the first re-election is the place to defeat someone because they still aren't well known. She voted for a tax increase, and many believed that a break in faith.
She was outspent by Enid Greene Waldholtz. And, in the end, as Enid passed her in tracking polls, Shepherd starting running some negative ads.
While it may not seem fair, it appears that GOP candidates can run some negative ads and get away with it. But when Democrats do it, it doesn't seem to work. Shepherd did and lost ground. Wayne Owens did it at the end of the 1992 U.S. Senate race and lost ground.
Utah is a conservative state. Republicans outnumber Democrats 2-to-1. It only makes sense that with those facts Republicans control the governorship, Legislature, most county commissions and hold the congressional delegation 4-to-1. Democrats are the minority here and will be for a long time.