Dem House Victories Stun GOP

Democrats surprised their Republican rivals and political analysts Tuesday by picking up at least five seats in the House of Representatives. The GOP had been expected to make modest gains in the House.

Democrats grabbed 11 seats previously held by Republicans and the GOP in turn won six Democratic seats, making a net gain of five for the Democrats. Only one race in Oregon is yet to be decided.

"The black vote was huge in some places, and it appears that impeachment has backfired on the Republicans," said CBS News Consultant Mark Gersh, an expert on congressional elections.

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A Democratic gain would mark the first time the party holding the White House will have gained House seats in a midterm election since 1934.

The Democrats would have needed to win 11 seats to regain control of the House, which they lost in the last midterm election in 1994.

Strong evidence of voters' distaste for Monicagate smear campaigns surfaced in New Jersey, where freshman Republican Rep. Mike Pappas of New Jersey lost his seat in an upset to Democratic challenger Rush Holt. Four months ago, Pappas came to the House floor to defend Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Holt aired ads deriding Pappas' performance and calling him "out of tune (and) out of touch."

Claiming that "issues do matter and issues do make a difference," Randy Tate, executive director of the Christian Coalition, said Wednesday that Republicans would have fared better if they had adopted his organization's conservative pro-family agenda.

House Minority Leader Rep. Dick Gephardt, interviewed on CBS This Morning said, "I'm really proud of the way
Americans went out and voted last night. Union members, African-American, Hispanics - Americans all - who came out and said, 'Get on to our agenda, let's talk about our problems.'"

Individual House races included these highlights:

• Liberal Democratic State Rep. Tammy Baldwin became Wisconsin's first woman in Congress by winning an open seat vacated by retiring Republican Rep. Scott Klug. Baldwin, a lesbian who played down her sexual orientation in the campaign, defeated Republican Josephine Musser.
• Rep. Bernard Sanders of Vermont, the chamber's lone independent, was easily re-elected. He has voted with Democrats in the past on organizational issues, and his vote is considered crucial to the party.
• Among the easy winners was incumbent and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., who will oversee impeachment hearings.
• In North Carolina, Republican Robin Hayes defeated Democrat Mike Taylor for the open seat oretiring Democratic Rep. Bill Hefner.
• Republican House freshman Vince Snowbarger of Kansas lost his district in a Kansas City suburb to a Democrat - former district attorney Dennis Moore. He'll be the first Democrat to win the House district in 49 years.

Six House lawmakers (four of them freshmen and five of them Republicans) on Tuesday joined the very exclusive group of incumbents who failed to get re-elected.

Traditionally, more than 90 percent of incumbents succeed in defending their seats. And this year, with the economy strong and voters content, the re-election trend was even stronger than usual.

Dick Gephardt (AP)

Election Day interviews with voters nationally showed that roughly one in five selected education and another fifth chose "moral and ethical standards" as the issues that mattered most to them in voting for House candidates. Trailing these were the economy, jobs, taxes, and Social Security.

Despite a last-minute national GOP advertising blitz alluding to President Clinton's innappropriate relationship with Lewinsky, only about one in 20 said the matter was the most important issue in deciding their vote. When asked if they approved of the way Republicans in Congress had handled that issue, roughly six in 10 said they disapproved.