THE BALANCE OF POWER

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The fight for Congress had almost everything the presidential contest lacked. Not necessarily public excitement: the low turnout in the presidential race also held down the numbers of voters who pulled levers for House and Senate candidates. But certainly closeness, unpredictability, even down-to-the-wire, nail-biting suspense. So many races looked so even so late in the campaign that as the voting began, pundits were hedging even more blatantly than usual. Either party, they proclaimed, could wind up king of Capitol Hill--and by either a tiny or a huge margin.

Yet in the end not much changed. Republicans kept control of both the Senate and the House. In one way, that might be called a historic outcome: it was the first time in 68 years that the G.O.P. maintained control of both chambers through two straight elections. But though the margins remained in doubt late into the count, they appeared likely to be narrow enough to make "control" a bit of a misnomer. Probably the only sweeping conclusion the vote justified is that Americans by and large do not trust either party enough to give it full control of the government, or of Congress as a whole, or even of one chamber. Far from being disgusted by the prospect of divided government as a breeder of legislative deadlock, not a few Americans rather like the idea--even consider it a logical extension of the constitutional system of checks and balances.

It was that sentiment that did the most to save the G.O.P. from what otherwise might have been a congressional loss as humiliating as Dole's trouncing by Clinton. To an extraordinary extent, both parties fought the campaigns for House seats as a referendum on national policy; former House Speaker Tip O'Neill's maxim that "all politics is local" has rarely been so widely flouted. Democrats pleaded with voters to repudiate the so-called revolution of O'Neill's successor twice removed, Newt Gingrich, whom they pictured as avid to gut all programs of government help to the poor and middle class and use the savings for tax cuts that would make the rich still more wealthy. Gingrich himself estimates that 75,000 Democratic ads around the country attacked him by name, a figure that seems reasonable to reporters who traveled with him. If Democratic campaigners spent much time at all assailing their local Republican opponents, it was often to call them clones of Gingrich or to picture their faces in ads alongside Newt's hated visage.

This tack clearly did help many Democratic candidates. In Massachusetts, Republican Peter Blute tried to protect himself against the assault with a TV ad that showed the Congressman with his arms draped over pictures of Clinton and Gingrich. "When he wanted to fight crime, I voted with him," said Blute, pointing to Clinton's picture, which moved closer and closer to the candidate. Then "when he wanted to balance the budget, I voted with him"; Newt's picture moved toward Blute. "But when he wanted to increase taxes, I voted against him"; Clinton's picture faded into the distance. "And when he wanted to cut education, I voted against him"; Gingrich's picture suffered the same fate. Clever, but not enough. Blute lost to Jim McGovern, who incessantly pointed out that Blute had voted with Gingrich 85% of the time, and whose ads took advantage of a fortuitous rhyme: "You wouldn't vote for Newt; why would you ever vote for Blute?"

In New Jersey, Paterson Mayor William Pascrell defeated Republican freshman Bill Martini, largely by picking away at what is still a sore point with many voters. "People wanted change when they voted Republican in 1994," he said, but "they didn't ask us to shut government down." Gingrich has admitted the two shutdowns forced by his troops last winter were a mistake. In fact, they were a disaster for the G.O.P.

But a retrievable disaster for a number of Republican House members. For one thing, before the legislative session ended, they modified their earlier stand enough to get some popular legislation on the books. As a result, polls showed Congress adjourning with its highest public-esteem rating in a decade. On the stump, many Republican incumbents were able to boast that while generally following a strongly conservative line, they had helped enact welfare reform, boost the minimum wage and guarantee portability of health insurance, among other popular steps.

More and more as the campaign wore on, though, Republicans turned to a different theme: in effect, a plea for divided government. Incipiently writing off the hapless Dole campaign, they stressed that "if" (ha!) Clinton were to be re-elected, the nation would more than ever need a Republican Congress to keep him on a centrist path. In a speech to G.O.P. contributors in Denver, one of a dozen he gave for Republican congressional candidates, Senate majority leader Trent Lott enumerated the liberal horrors of a Clinton second term with a Democratic-controlled Congress: "Bill Clinton in the White House, never facing re-election again. Hillary Clinton in charge of welfare reform." Ted Kennedy and other "far-left" lawmakers chairing important committees--"the list will scare you to death."

The theme, though not the partisan rhetoric, resonated with a surprising number of citizens coast to coast and across generation and gender gaps. "Yes, yes, yes, yes," said Larry Linn, a real estate broker in Santa Barbara, California. "It would be better politically if one party controlled Congress and one the White House. Citizens get a better shake that way." In a retirement home in Sun City West, Arizona, outside Phoenix, Opal Cox, still spry at 95, opined that Clinton needs a Republican Congress "as a check." In Boston, Randy Yarlas, a 28-year-old banker, declared, "I would rather see a Republican Congress, even though I'm voting for Clinton. You need checks and balances in there."

And in Portsmouth, Ohio, Fred Bennett, who runs a plastics company, expounded on this argument: "When you get one party in [control of both White House and Congress], there're really no checks and balances, the way our Constitution intended there should be." Bennett's Congressman, Republican Frank Cremeans, fought off a tough challenge from Democrat Ted Strickland--and survived a big Clinton win in Ohio--by appealing to this sentiment. He argued that a G.O.P. Congress had pushed Clinton toward the center and would keep him there. "The President signed 60% of our legislation into law," said Cremeans. "I'm confident he will work with us in completing the Contract [with America] issues that we set out to accomplish"--hardly the way Clinton would put it.

Overall, the Republican don't-give-Clinton-a-blank-check argument proved so effective that on Election Night some White House media advisers expressed annoyance that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had never developed and promoted an explicit counterargument. The committee had discussed doing so but concluded its money would be better spent funneled into specific targeted races. That decision appears to have been a mistake, prompted largely by a belief that the G.O.P. strategy would be ineffective.

Strategically, the House election was billed largely as a contest to see whether the Republicans could pick up enough of the 19 Southern districts thrown open by the retirement of Democratic Representatives to offset expected heavy losses among the 70 freshmen elected in 1994. That was not quite the way it worked out. In both groups, the number of seats shifting from one party to another was smaller than expected.

Results were mixed among the Republican freshmen who upset longtime Democratic powers in 1994. Michael Flanagan two years ago stunned everyone by dethroning Dan Rostenkowski, overlord of the House Ways and Means Committee. On Tuesday, though, Flanagan fell to Rod Blagojevich and a Chicago Democratic machine no longer burdened with defending a Representative under a 17-count federal corruption indictment, as Rostenkowski had been. On the other hand, the biggest giant killer of them all, George Nethercutt, held on to the Washington State seat he had snatched from Tom Foley, House Speaker until 1994.

Two major powers outside the formal party organizations seem more or less to have fought each other to a draw. The newly militant AFL-CIO poured some $35 million into radio and TV ads denouncing Republicans for a variety of sins, above all attempting to reduce projected Medicare spending $270 billion. The union federation's efforts were instrumental in defeating sophomore Blute in Massachusetts and several G.O.P. freshmen, including David Funderburk, a disciple of Senator Jesse Helms (who held his own seat) in North Carolina. In other districts, however, AFL-CIO spending backfired by becoming a major issue. The union federation's No. 1 target in the whole country was Arizona's John David Hayworth Jr., who is outsize in other ways also (he is 6 ft. 5 in. and 285 lb., with a voice and swagger to match). J.D., as he loves to be called, fired back by denouncing the "union bosses" for trying to buy the election for Phoenix lawyer Steve Owens, whom Hayworth called a "carpetbagger." Though Clinton has become the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry Arizona since 1948, Hayworth held on to his district.

The Christian Coalition played somewhat the same role on the right that the AFL-CIO did on the left, but in very different fashion. While the union federation began its televised attacks on Republicans early, the coalition held its fire until the very end, apparently trying--successfully--to fly below the radar of suspicious Democrats. Two days before the election, however, coalition volunteers distributed what they said were 45 million "voter guides" at 125,000 churches around the country. Though the guides, like the AFL-CIO ads, did not directly oppose or support any candidate, they gave Democrats a consistent hammering on such issues as abortion. The lateness of the Coalition's effort made the effect hard to judge, but it might have helped some hard-pressed Republican candidates.

Oddly, though, for all the stridency of the opposing ads, the anger so evident in the 1994 congressional results seemed to be muted this time. Certainly there was no absence of mudslinging; some of the races could rank with the dirtiest ever. But in a time of peace and prosperity there was little throw-the-bums-out spirit evident in the electorate. Quite the opposite: there appeared to be a disposition to let incumbents stay, which helped Republican Senators and Representatives almost as much as it benefited Bill Clinton.

On both sides of the party divide too there was talk of a newly chastened spirit. Former Gingrich revolutionaries at times confessed that, well, maybe they had tried to go too fast. Even the intensely partisan and conservative Funderburk caught this spirit. The past two years, he said, had had "a sobering effect" on the Republican class of '94. "You're slapped in the face by the reality that you can't make things happen overnight," he said. "We're going to have to project a more conciliatory image." Funderburk himself could not manage to do so, at least to the satisfaction of his constituents, but other Republicans had more success with the same kind of talk.

Frequently, where Democrats won, they succeeded by presenting themselves as politicians who had learned a lesson and were less ambitious to extend government than before 1994. In a North Carolina district adjoining Funderburk's, Democrat David Price won back the House seat he had lost in 1994 largely by making that pitch. Noting that so-called control of the House is a matter of a few votes, Price said, "both parties have now been burned by overreacting. People are hungry for more practical and less ideological leadership. What that should mean is that whatever party is in control will have to pursue a moderate agenda and cooperate with the President." Amen.

--Reported by Viveca Novak/Boston, Ann M. Simmons/Portsmouth and Karen Tumulty/Cobb County, with other bureaus

With reporting by VIVECA NOVAK/BOSTON, ANN M. SIMMONS/PORTSMOUTH AND KAREN TUMULTY/COBB COUNTY, WITH OTHER BUREAUS