OFFBEAT OFF YEAR BY DOTTY LYNCH, SENIOR POLITICAL EDITOR, CBS NEWS Aunt Gertrude, my 97-year-old aunt in Marlboro, Massachusetts who usually doesn’t skip a beat, looked surprised when I said I was really busy this year on the election. “Oh no, that’s not coming up already, is it,” she asked. At first I thought she was starting to slip. Then I realized that I felt the same way. It seems like we were just counting chads in Florida yesterday. And then September 11 happened and our gyroscopes went out of whack. Campaign 2002 is being fought under the old rules in a world that is very different from the one where those rules made some sense. Democratic campaign consultants say, for the most part, that September 11 hasn’t affected their strategies - and they point to their victories in the 2001 gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey as shining examples of why September 11 shouldn’t matter this year when it didn’t affect races in November 2001. Republican consultants say much the same thing about their campaigns on a micro- level, but the White House has believed for the past year that the national unity which followed the terrorist attacks would work in their favor and give George Bush and the Republicans incredible political capital to spend on the mid-term elections, especially on recapturing the Senate. Karl Rove, the Bush White House political sage, got roundly criticized last winter for suggesting what every political operative knows to be true, that in the aftermath of September 11, the war on terrorism would be a great political asset for the GOP. “We can go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America,” he told the Republican National Committee in January of 2002. And go to the country they did. While Vice President Dick Cheney was shuttled from one secure undisclosed location to another, President Bush blew the lid off the moratorium on politics and, beginning with an event for his brother Jeb on January 10, 2002, made 67 fundraising trips to 34 states raising $145 million for Republican candidates. In addition, he has scheduled trips to 23 states to Get- out-the-Vote in the final two weeks of the campaign. His pitch at these events - often coupled with a paid-for-by-the-taxpayer Presidential speech in the same city - isn’t just foreign policy; mostly it’s about his tax cut, something beloved by Republicans who believe down to their toenails that Democrats want to tax and spend it away. From Art Linkletter to Saddam Hussein Meanwhile, the Democrats have careened from domestic issue to domestic issue trying to get some traction and believing that those golden oldies that won Al Gore the popular vote in 2000 - prescription drugs, preserving Medicare and Social Security and the keeping the economy strong - would work for them, if only they could engage the voters. They were outfoxed on prescription drugs by the Republicans, who put out their own plan and with the help of Art Linkletter, and a $9 to $13 million ad campaign paid for by pharmaceutical industry, mired the debate in confusing details. In the late spring and early summer, the Democrats thought their moment had come. First, the energy giant Enron declared bankruptcy and then WorldCom followed suit. The stock market took a dive and Democrats' hopes soared that their favorite populists themes might produce that momentum that would not only allow give them control of both the House and the Senate, but do so with convincing margins. But, by September, the focus was back on foreign policy - first Iraq and then North Korea – and as candidates still fought about privatizing Social Security, corporate responsibility and prescription drugs, the national focus was on almost everything but the midterm elections. Democrats caved on the Iraq resolution as a way the get it off the agenda so that their economic message might return. But, the Tyndell Report which counts the number of minutes broadcast networks spend on topics each week released numbers for the week of October 14-18 showing 86 minutes on foreign policy issues—Iraq, Bali, North Korea and the war on terrorism, 81 minutes on the suburban DC sniper shooting and gun policy, and 6 minutes each on the stock market and breast cancer. Campaign 2002 ranked 10th on the list of stories, rating 5 minutes of national coverage. Local stations were almost equally devoid of election coverage. A study done by the Lear Center found over half of the local stations in the top 50 markets did no political coverage in their major news shows in late September and early October. Those that did concentrated heavily on the Governors races and only 22 percent of the stories were on the races for the Senate or House. Of course, television was not completely without politics. Records on campaign advertising were again smashed with over $300 million spent by the end of September. This is the last election in the pre- McCain-Feingold era and campaign committees showed no evidence that the law, which deliberately was set to go into effect on November 6, has slowed down their old soft money addiction. Combined, the national parties raised $685 million cycle. Governors who won’t be impacted by McCain Feingold were even bigger spenders on ads, coming in at $200 million by the end of September. The 72 major party candidates for governor will have easily raised over a half a billion on their campaigns; the Democratic candidates in just two states, California and Texas, together will have spent well over $100 million, mainly on TV ads. New Trends—Back to the Roots and Early Voting Campaign 2002 did see a few “new” trends. One was a renewed emphasis on grassroots campaigning. The unions decided a few years ago to cut back their use of TV ads and put together a state of the art field operation. Steve Rosenthal, the outgoing head of the AFL-CIO’s COPE is spearheading a huge GOTV drive in the key Senate states. While they won’t say how much of their $32 million political budget going toward this effort, it is a very sophisticated plan where union members will receive up to 20 contacts by election day. The Republicans are trying to match this with hi-tech voter contact systems of their own and maestros Tony Feather and Blaise Hazelwood have an operation in high gear. A second “new” trend is the increase in early voting. About 15% of the vote this year will be cast prior to Election Day and in Oregon 100% will be cast by mail. While the western states are particularly oriented toward early voting, over 30 states have some type of absentee or “no excuses” voting prior to November 5. Campaigns have shifted their strategies to account for this and are building heavy absentee voter drives into their Get-Out The Vote plans. In Michigan, Rep. John Dingell was in a very tight primary campaign in which half the votes he needed - 23,000 of the 46,000 - his campaign deemed necessary before the polls opened. States from Florida to Maryland to South Dakota and Iowa report that there’s been a surge in requests for absentee ballots. Along with early voting there appears to be another trend - early dropping out. First Andrew Cuomo, then Bob Torricelli and then Montana’s Mike Taylor all threw in the towel when the polls showed they were in danger of losing. Democrats in New Jersey had enough time a couple of good court decisions and were able to recover. Republicans in Montana are left with a “suspended” campaign, although Taylor’s name is still on the ballot. Ever since Jim Jeffords the unassuming moderate Republican from Vermont stunned the political world—not to mention the White House—by leaving the Republican party and thus shifting the balance of power in the Senate to the Democrats, the focus of Campaign 2002 has been on the question of whether the GOP could get the Senate back. THE SENATE: The control of the Senate is the Big Enchilada. Jeffords' decision to become an Independent and caucus with the Democrats gave the Democrats a one-seat advantage, 50 Democrats 49 Republicans and one Independent. All the committee chairs changed and the Bush agenda was thwarted. A net change of one seat would give control back to the Republicans. But, the Republicans had their work cut out for them this cycle. They had 20 seats to defend compared to the Democrats 14. The retirements of four popular Republican Senators - Jesse Helms of North Carolina, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Phil Gramm of Texas and Fred Thompson of Tennessee - made the task even more formidable. At this point Tennessee and the Carolinas are good bets to stay Republican and the Democratic hopes of winning Texas are fading a bit. There are 13 Republican seats where the incumbent is in a “strong” or “likely” position to be reelected, and three that lean toward the GOP. The other four, Arkansas, Colorado, New Hampshire and Texas, are toss-ups. In order to win control of the Senate the Republicans would have to win all of these plus one of the states now held by the Democrats. We believe that seven of them are strong for the Democrats and three lean toward the Democratic incumbents. That leaves Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey and South Dakota, the toss-ups where the GOP has the best chance to pick up that crucial seat.