Revenge of The Angry Voter

INCUMBENCY USED TO PROVIDE A COMFORTABLE cushion for elected officials, especially members of the U.S. Congress. In the past four elections, House members had a re-election rate of over 95%. But the cushion has got rather lumpy in 1992, leaving a lot of sitting solons squirming in — and sometimes out of — their seats. Primaries in seven states around the country last Tuesday dumped a few more tenants of the House. The numbers were not sensational: two Congressmen lost their seats. But that brings the total of incumbents rejected in primaries so far to 19, one more than the previous record, set in 1946. The pattern is unrelenting and the message clear: If you’ve been in Washington lately, you’ve got a problem.

Circumstances varied. Nine-term Democratic Representative Stephen Solarz of New York, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lost to Nydia Velazquez, former secretary of the Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs in the U.S. Solarz was partly the victim of a post-Census reapportionment that intentionally redrew his district to encourage Latino representation, which it did. But Solarz was surely hurt by his 743 overdrafts at the House bank. In Massachusetts, 127 bad checks helped do in Democrat Chester Atkins, who lost to a former county prosecutor.

Though 1992 was supposed to be the Year of the Woman, it was not to be for former vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro or for city comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman in New York. Repelled by a vicious campaign in which Holtzman accused Ferraro’s husband of ties to organized crime and questionable business dealings, voters put up a man, state attorney general Robert Abrams, instead.

But more often than not this year, women have been outsiders. And outsiders have fared well. In Washington State, 41-year-old Patty Murray, whose previous political experience amounts to one term in the state senate, cast herself as “just a mom in tennis shoes” and beat former seven-term Congressman Don Bonker for the opportunity to run against another Beltway insider, five-term Republican Congressman Rod Chandler, for the Senate seat vacated by retiring Democrat Brock Adams. Murray becomes the 11th woman this year to make it onto a major party ticket for the Senate — another record.

Last week’s winnowing brings the total number of Representatives who will not be returning next January to 86. Many more who managed to survive primary fights are still in jeopardy as they go into the general elections. In all, the House could have as many as 126 freshmen in January. How well these newcomers handle the complex problems bequeathed them by their departing predecessors is a question even more serious than the outcome of the vote in November.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: NO CREDIT

CAPTION: Going, Going Gone