For Republicans, the House is not a home
Superficially, the new House of Representatives elected last Tuesday is primarily the old House. Of the 382 Democrats and Republicans running for reelection, only29—26Republicans and three Democrats—lost. But the results also disclose important shifts, some obvious, some subtle.
The most immediately apparent switch, of course, is the net Democratic gain of 26 seats. Assuming that the Democrats score expected victories in two Georgia seats that, because of late redistricting, will not be filled until special elections on Nov. 30, the House will consist of 269 Democrats and 166 Republicans. The margin is less overpowering than it looks. It includes at least 39 "Boll Weevils"—conservative Democratic supporters of President Ronald Reagan's policies—who were reelected, and four to six more Southern Democrats who might turn Boll Weevil once they get to Washington. No matter: even given their maximum possible strength, the combination of Republicans and Boll Weevils will no longer control the House.
The more subtle shifts involve regionalism, ideology and experience. A continental population shift disclosed by the 1980 census created 17 new seats in the South and West, mostly taken away from the Northeast and Midwest. That was once expected to help Republicans, but Democrats proved more adept at the fine art of gerrymandering, and so they won nine of the new Sunbelt districts. Regardless of party, however, the shift in the regional balance of power will inevitably affect the way the new House squints at the nation.
It was a bad election for ideologues. Far-right Republicans lost some of their most notable House seats; liberal Democrats scored something of a comeback, but mostly by stressing that their liberalism was not the free-spending variety of old. Of the 52 freshman Republicans who were swept into Congress by the Reagan victory in 1980, 14 were swept right back out. Moreover, many had been newcomers not just to Congress but to politics, and they were replaced mostly by Democrats who have acquired solid experience in state or local government.
These general patterns, however, were as always distorted by a thousand issues of personality and local concern. Among the more significant results:
WEST. California picked up two new seats as a result of redistricting, increasing its congressional delegation to 45, the largest in the nation. The Democratic state machine, led by San Francisco Congressman Phillip Burton, shaped the new district lines so deftly and redrew old ones so adroitly that the Republicans conceded the Democrats were likely to add perhaps five seats to the 22 they already held. In 'act, the Democrats gained six, unexpectedly taking the Northern California seat that had been held for ten terms by Don Clausen, 59. Clausen lost to 36-year-old State Assemblyman Douglas Bosco, who was a congressional page when Clausen arrived in Washington in 1963. Bosco hammered away at unemployment in the district's dominant lumber industry, while a group opposed to atomic weapons heavily publicized Clausen's vote against a nuclear-freeze resolution that lost in the House by exactly two ballots.