WASHINGTON — On a final, furious day of campaigning, Republicans strained to capture control of the Senate while Democrats struggled to limit their congressional losses in elections midway through an unpopular President Barack Obama’s second term.
“The spending, the borrowing, the taxing, the overregulation, the slow growth. … These people need to be stopped,” Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Monday of Democrats, urging voters to support him and GOP candidates everywhere. He would be in line to control the Senate’s agenda as majority leader if Republicans win Tuesday.
Democrats weighed down by Obama’s unpopularity kept their distance and looked to a costly turn-out-the-vote operation in the most competitive Senate races to save their seats and their majority.
The cost of the campaign climbed toward $4 billion, and there seemed no end to the attack ads on television — or to the requests for donations to keep them on the air.
“Soon your inbox won’t be crowded with campaign e-mails — that’s a relief!” said a message from the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Then: a request for “just $25, $50, $100 or anything you’re able to give.”
The campaign pace was punishing, especially in the larger states. In Georgia, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jason Carter e-mailed supporters that he had traveled 1,350 miles during the weekend.
All 435 House seats are on Tuesday’s ballot, and not even Democrats predicted they would be able to take control away from the Republicans. Instead, they concentrated on protecting their incumbents, a strategy that meant tacitly conceding races in Utah, New York and North Carolina where retirements created opportunities for Republicans to pad their majority.
“Not one of our incumbents is down or out,” said New York Rep. Steve Israel, who heads the Democrats’ campaign organization.
The lack of suspense about the House made control of the Senate the election’s main prize.
Republicans need a gain of six seats to capture the majority. They were all but assured of winning Democratic-held seats in West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota, and Democrats held out little hope that Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas could win re-election.
Polls suggested that races in Iowa, Colorado and Alaska tilted the Republicans’ way, too — although Democrats said their get-out-the-vote operation made any predictions unreliable.
Uncertainties mean there is a strong possibility that neither party would be able to claim a Senate majority by the morning after Election Day.
Early voting topped 18 million ballots in 32 states, and both parties seized on the number as evidence of their own strength.
Largely missing from this election cycle, however, are ideas on how best to govern the nation.
Even with control of the Senate at stake, serious discussions about deficit spending, climate change, immigration, Social Security’s long-term future and other knotty issues rarely emerged.
Republicans overwhelmingly devoted their campaigns to criticizing Obama’s leadership and governing style. And Democrats, while sometimes forced to wanly defend “Obamacare,” often caricatured their opponents as throwbacks eager to limit women’s reproductive rights.
To be sure, superficial debates and 30-second attack ads have fueled U.S. political campaigns for years. But even by that measure, political veterans say, this fall’s elections were remarkably light on policy and ideas.
“I’m struck by how not any of the significant issues that Congress has to deal with — immigration, infrastructure, a grand bargain on taxes and spending — are playing out in this election,” said Steve Elmendorf, a former top Democratic congressional aide.
Some Democratic lawmakers weren’t excited by a “Families First” agenda that party leaders wrote for the 1996 elections, Elmendorf said. “But we felt we had to have a policy umbrella to give to members. I don’t think either side has done that this time.”
Campaign strategists say it’s no surprise. From the start, Republicans centered their campaigns on tying their opponents to Obama’s sinking popularity. As months passed, nothing reversed Obama’s fortunes, and most Republicans saw no point in stirring things up with new proposals.
“When your opponents are destroying themselves, let them,” said Texas-based Republican consultant Matt Mackowiak.
He said Republican leaders suppressed a request from some candidates for a party-wide platform or “contract” to highlight various ideas.
“When you do that, you give your opponents something to bash,” Mackowiak said. “The strongest card we had to play was to run against the president.”
Iowa’s close Senate race was one where personal attacks and clever TV ads greatly overshadowed any discussion of how to tackle the nation’s most pressing needs.
For Republicans, the breakthrough moment was a TV ad in which state Sen. Joni Ernst cheerily said she castrated hogs as a farm girl. The wink-wink reference to knowing how to “cut pork” propelled her to the GOP nomination and national attention.
For Democrat Bruce Braley, the biggest moment was a leaked video from a Texas fundraiser in which he warned lawyers that a farmer would chair the Senate Judiciary Committee if Republicans control the Senate. The apparent snub of six-term Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa played badly in the farm-heavy state.
Congressional scholar Norm Ornstein said America’s voters are so divided, and so motivated by fear and anger, he said, “that whatever you say about issues isn’t going to matter.”
John J. Pitney Jr., a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College, says neither party is likely to produce policy proposals as long as they think the presidency or the House or Senate majority is within reach.
“Power is the enemy of new ideas,” he said.
