ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL: TRUE OR FALSE? Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, Jr. (D-MA, 1953-1987; Speaker, 1977-1987) is often quoted as having said, "All politics is local." You will find that phrase repeated often in virtually every text on American political parties and elections. Certainly you will find it in mine, twice in fact. Sometimes old adages deserve a new look. In 2002, because of the closeness of the battle for control of the Congress, we can at least question whether all politics remains local. First, the situation. The Republicans control the White House, but President George W. Bush often must temper his legislative wishes because the Democrats control the Senate, by a single vote, and President Bush's party's control over the House of Representatives is tenuous at best. Each party is desperate to win those few extra seats that will give them control of one house of the Congress or the other. Conventional wisdom holds that seats in the House particularly are won or lost on local concerns. Has the Representative effectively voiced the concerns of his or her constituents? Have the favors done for constituents over the years built up a reservoir of support and good feeling so that an incumbent is unassailable. Is there even a serious challenger or have would-be potential candidates been dissuaded from running by the cumulative effect of many factors collective called the incumbent advantage-name recognition; credit-claiming; fund-raising ability; etc.? National trends might affect margin seats, but incumbents of both parties win in significant numbers; for more than three decades more than 90% of the incumbents who have sought re-election have been re-elected, regardless of party trend, with only one very close exception. They win because their constituents know and like them, because they have the assets to run good campaigns, because they face weak opponents, but they win-regardless of national trends. Senators are thought to have more trouble winning, and in a number of recent elections a much higher percentage of senators seeking re-election have lost than has been true of House members. But still these elections-victories and defeats-are most often attributed to local, not to national trends. One must go back to 1980 to find even a partial exception to that conclusion. But some evidence is emerging that in 2002 we face a different situation, at least in the small number of closely fought faces on which control of the two houses might rest. Let me cite some of that evidence. In the New Hampshire race for the United States Senate, incumbent Republican Bob Smith was challenged for his party's nomination by one of New Hampshire's two congressmen, John E. Sununu, son of the former governor and President George H. W. Bush's chief of staff. Senator Smith is a controversial figure, an ultra-conservative Republican who sought his party's nomination for president in 2000 (after having narrowly been re-elected to the Senate in 1996) and then, when he was doing poorly in the GOP presidential nomination sweepstakes, bolted his party for a while to consider an independent or third party presidential race. That effort went no where, and Smith returned to the GOP, in part at least to keep his seniority in the Senate. Congressman Sununu has been a more mainstream Republican, one whom many thought would fare better against the Democratic candidate for the Senate, Governor Jeanne Shaheen. But primary politics is local. Right? Wrong! National Republicans sided with one candidate or the other in the GOP primary, far more with Sununu than with Smith. Sununu trounced Smith in the primary, setting up the race the Republican in Washington thought would give them the best chance to retain their seat in the Senate. Move to Hawaii. Democratic Congresswoman Patsy Mink, who served in the U.S. House from 1964 to 1976 and then returned to the House in 1990 after some time back in local Hawaiian politics, died recently, just shortly after having won her party's nomination for re-election. Hawaiian state law does not allow her name to be removed from the ballot this close to the election. So the Republicans will win a formerly Democratic seat. Right? Not so fast. The Democrats, spearheaded by an effort funded from Washington, are desperately trying to organize an effort to re-elect Congresswoman Mink "from her grave," not to put too fine a point on it. Why? Because if she is re-elected, the governor would then declare the seat vacant, and a special election would be held to fill it. The Democrats hope they can retain that seat. Note the importance of political parties, and national political parties at that, in this example. Not only is all politics not local, all campaigns are not personal; some are very much party. I hope some of you noted that I said that Hawaiian law did not permit Mink's name to be removed from the ballot-and that you asked, "What about New Jersey?" In New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob "the Torch" Torricelli, withdrew from the race to retain his United States Senate seat, essentially saying that he was going to lose and that he would not want to be part of his party's losing the control of the Senate he, as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, had worked so hard to achieve. (Torricelli has been under heavy scrutiny for ethical violations; he claims that un true charges against him have made it impossible for him to campaign on the issues. You can judge the accuracy of his claim by reading any of the hundreds of newspaper articles on his "troubles.") Torricelli's withdrawal should give the election to the Republicans and their candidate Douglas Forrester, right? Not so fast. New Jersey law is silent on whether a party can replace a candidate who withdraws as a candidate less than 51 days before an election. Torricelli withdrew 36 days before the election. The Democrats decided that they would replace him. After two days of scrambling to find the right nominee, they chose former Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg, who had given up his seat voluntarily in 2000, citing the rigors of the job on someone his age (then 76) among his reasons. Lautenberg was chosen when other possible candidates (former senator and presidential hopeful Bill Bradley; popular congressman Robert Mendoza, slightly less popular congressman, Frank Pallone) had all taken themselves out of consideration. Why Lautenberg, despite his age? Lots of money-his own and the ability to raise more quickly-and high name recognition, both thought essential in a short campaign. The Republicans went to court to try to keep Lautenberg off the ballot, sighting the fact that it would disenfranchise those who vote absentee to change the ballot this late. The Democrats won the preliminary court case in the New Jersey Supreme Court, by a unanimous vote. As of this writing, the Republicans must decide if they will challenge that ruling. Can anyone spell "Florida all over again." Probably not, but stay tuned. And remember, this whole scenario is not about New Jersey politics. It is about which party will control the New Jersey seat in the United States Senate, a seat that may determine which party is the majority in that body for the next two years. Finally, consider the spending on congressional campaigns by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). Both parties have stated clearly and convincingly that they intend to spend money where they think it can do them some good. Translation: in close seats where they think they can win. That means that they are helping co-partisans out of the party mainstream. The NRCC is helping Maryland's Connie Morella, thought to be one of the most vulnerable Republicans. They are supporting her even though she supports Republican legislative initiatives less often than most other Republicans. Why? Because she will vote with the GOP to organize the House. And that is all that counts. And they are supporting Iowa's Jim Leach. In fact, they are running ads for his re-election, despite the fact that he asked them not to do so. He wants to run a local campaign; they want to nationalize it. This is not just a Republican phenomenon. The Democrats are doing it as well. You might think that all politics is local. But the stakes are certainly national. And the money that has been raised is national. And therefore, much of the campaigning-and the politicking-once thought to be very local is most definitely national. One can only wonder what Tip O'Neill would have made of all of this. But by the end of Tip's career, "local" for him, once defined as the boys at the corner bar, had become the House of Representatives. Maybe he would have understood it all too well.