Of portends and special elections

What might Bill Foster’s victory in Denny Hastert’s old seat portend?  A trip down memory lane might be instructive.

First stop Watergate.  After Richard Nixon chose House Republican leader Gerald Ford to replace Spiro Agnew as vice president, there was a by-election in February 1974 for the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based seat that Ford had vacated.  Not only had Ford held the seat without serious challenge since the late 1940s, but no Democrat had been elected there since 1912.  The Republican candidate, Robert VanderLaan, the Republican leader of the State Senate, had never lost an election.  The Democrat, Richard VanderVeen, was a member of  a suburban school board.  By making the race a referendum on President Nixon and the Republican Party, VanderVeen was victorious.  That November, Democrats gained 49 seats in the House, raising their percentage to more than two-thirds of the membership of the House.

Next stop, the Democrats’ 1994 debacle.  In the 1994 election, Democrats lost 54 seats in the House and became the minority party for the first time in forty years.  That result also was portended by two special elections held earlier that year.  In January, Glenn English, who had been elected ten times from Oklahoma (OK-03) retired to become the CEO of the lobbying group for Rural Electric Coops.  In March, William Natcher, who never had to raise  any money for a campaign in his life, died after representing the Second District of Kentucky for four decades.  Republicans won both of those races, and Frank Lucas (OK) and Ron Lewis (KY) are still around.

Discontent over the war, fears of a deepening recession and disgust over corruption and abuse of power have the potential to make 2008 an election of similar magnitude.  We must not squander this opportunity.