A ‘yes’ on bailout doesn’t mean a ‘no’

A vote for a bailout wasn’t political suicide, even if there is evidence that it hurt.

Contrary
to pre-election worries that a yes vote might equate to the end of a
career, the vote didn’t appear to be a pivotal one. Few voted for it
and lost, and those who did were already in serious jeopardy.

{mosads}As
lawmakers confront whether or not to bail out the ailing auto industry,
a review of the election two weeks ago shows that, despite the
thousands upon thousands of letters and phone calls devoted to
protesting the $700 billion bailout package in October, their electoral
impact was negligible.

The members who survived will soon be
faced with another bailout, as the Senate could, by the end of the
week, vote on cloture for devoting $25 billion of the original $700
billion to saving the auto industry.

The Big Three automakers testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday, but they are not expected to have enough support for cloture.

Of
the 17 House incumbents who lost reelection, only five voted for the
bailout. And of those five, one — Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.) — was
undone by a sex scandal, while another — Rep. Christopher Shays
(R-Conn.) — didn’t differ with his opponent on the issue.

Meanwhile,
endangered members like Reps. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Jean Schmidt
(R-Ohio), Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) and John Murtha (D-Pa.) all voted
for the bill and survived with relative ease.

Two of three
Senate incumbents to lose reelection so far — Sens. John Sununu
(R-N.H.) and Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) — voted for it, but their races
already favored Democrats when the bailout vote was held in early
October.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), meanwhile, survived a
tight race in spite of his vote, and he could soon be joined by Sens.
Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who voted yes and
are favored in races that remain undecided.

The majority of
the most endangered House members voted against the original bailout,
but a fair amount rolled the dice by voting yes.

Rep. Paul
Kanjorski (D-Pa.) was thought to be in a toss-up race heading into
Election Day. And as the second-ranking member on the Financial
Services Committee — who also voted for both House iterations of the
bailout — he was particularly susceptible to a bailout-related downfall.

In
the final weeks of the campaign, independent polling consistently
showed his opponent, Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta (R), with a slight
lead in the race, but Kanjorski won 52-48 — this despite Barletta
running ads on the issue and hitting Kanjorski on it at debates.

{mospagebreak}Barletta
spokesman Shawn Kelly said President-elect Barack Obama trumped any
traction his boss’s campaign had on the issue.

“If you look
at the number of people who went in and voted for a straight-party
ticket on the Democrat side, I think you’ll see that that had more of
an impact than the bailout did,” Kelly said.

GOP pollster Chris Wilson, though, said the bailout did move numbers in many races he surveyed.

He
noted a Midwestern Republican incumbent who voted against the bailout
and ran ads explaining the vote. As the ads ran, Wilson said, the
incumbent’s numbers among strong Republicans began to drop from around
95 percent to 80 percent.

Wilson had a hunch, so he polled whether voters thought the incumbent voted for the bailout. It turned out that many did.

“The fact that we were even just talking about it — even though we voted right on it — ended up hurting us,” Wilson said.
Wilson said the campaign’s numbers rallied once it stopped talking about the bailout. The incumbent won reelection.

He said the situation was unique because of the ads, but that many GOP candidates experienced similar problems with their base.

“It took us from being Reagan Republicans to Rockefeller Republicans overnight,” Wilson said.

Even if there was some initial movement, the votes didn’t appear to push many candidates over the edge.

About
the only three House losses that could be attributed to the bailout
votes were those of Reps. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.), Randy Kuhl
(R-N.Y.) and Jon Porter (R-Nev.) — and Knollenberg’s opponent didn’t
use the issue much.

Shays also voted for the bailout and lost
reelection, but the bailout wasn’t really an issue in his race against
Rep.-elect Jim Himes (D), either.

Instead, Himes berated
Shays for saying that the fundamentals of the American economy were
strong and for supporting deregulation.

Their district
includes many Wall Street commuters who are depending on the bailout to
revitalize the stock market. Himes’s campaign manager said the bill was
“less unpopular” there than around the country.

“[The
bailout] wasn’t an area in which there was much difference between the
two,” said the campaign manager, Dana Houle. Houle added: “There were
people concerned about their own jobs, not just the abstraction of the
bailout.”

Election Day exit polls showed 56 percent of voters
opposed the bailout. A USA Today/Gallup poll after the election found
that 47 percent of Americans think assisting American auto companies is
“not that important.”

Though not all incumbents suffered by
voting yes on the original bailout, yes votes did appear to hurt a
number of candidates who nonetheless won reelection.

Reps.
Michael Arcuri (D-N.Y.), Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), Chet Edwards
(D-Texas), Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.) and Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) were among
those voting yes with unexpectedly close reelection races, and many of
those who had unexpectedly close margins of victory voted for the bill.