GOP Chair: 'I Certainly Haven't Seen a Free Fall'
After meeting with Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean last week, U.S. News sat down this week with Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman to discuss why he's not as pessimistic about November as the latest poll numbers might suggest, as well as his thoughts on North Korea, the Mark Foley scandal, and Sen. Hillary Clinton. Excerpts:
On new polls suggesting that the Republicans could be, in the words of some analysts, in free fall
Let me first say I do think that we are in a very challenging environment. I think that the situation with [Rep. Mark] Foley has made it even more challenging, but ... I have not seen a significant impact in most of the races around the country and I certainly haven't seen a free fall.
The three issues that I think we're dealing with [in the polls]: first of all is the partisanship of the electorate. In the last 25 years, the electorate has ranged from plus-4 Democrat to plus-2 Republican in '02. In the most recent poll's partisanship, USA/Gallup is plus-9 Democratic electorate, ABC News is plus-11 Democratic electorate, CBS/New York Times plus-5, Newsweek plus-8, Time plus-8, AP/Ipsos plus-8. So, every one of these polls has an electorate that looks more Democratic than any electorate has looked in 25 years.
Second, the Gallup specifically is the outlier in the change in the generic ballot. The Pew poll that came out recently showed no change in the generic ballot since the Foley scandal; other national polls have shown on average a 2-point dip, the Gallup showed a 23-point dip, which I don't think is convincing.
The third issue of course is the relevance of the national polls in predicting House races and the challenge that Democrats always have is that our voters are more efficiently distributed. You saw that in the recent battleground that came out between [pollsters] Celinda Lake and Ed Goeas, which showed an 8-point Democratic advantage on the generic ballot. But in the Republican districts that the Democrats have to win to win back Congress, it was even. In the Democratic districts, it was a 21-point Democratic advantage.
On polls showing a 3-point loss in people identifying as Republicans since January
I think 2 or 3 points seems reasonable. Now I will say again, from a national perspective, I believe that's the case. I don't believe that's the case in every single race at all. I think most races have not seen that much of an impact.
On differences between the 1994 [in which Democrats lost control of the House] and 2006 congressional elections
First of all, in '94 the Democrats were particularly amenable to a terrible year because they had a lot of open seats and a lot of those open seats were in Republican presidential districts. So in '94, I believe, there were 35 open seats, and they lost 22 of them. Nineteen of the 22 they lost were open seats in Republican presidential-leaning districts measured by the 1988 [performance by] George Herbert Walker Bush. Why do I not use 1992? He got 37 percent of the vote. I don't think that's a real measurement of a presidential performing district. ... There are 20 Republican open seats this year; 17 of the 20 Republican seats this year are Bush-leaning seats, meaning Bush won those districts with an average of 61 percent.
Second difference from '94 is the people who are in the toughest races; people like [Connecticut Rep.] Nancy Johnson and [New Mexico Rep.] Heather Wilson and others are very battle tested. In '94, the 34 incumbents that lost, 26 of them had won by 10 percent or more in the previous election.
Important difference No. 3 that I think is going to be relevant this year is that Republicans had a positive agenda they could be for and voters in '94 embraced many of the concepts behind that positive agenda. You don't see that at all this year.
Fourth, they never saw it coming. We have seen it coming. Fifth, they ran an election that was very much a referendum on Clinton. ... In 2006, what you find is a lot more Republicans running as a choice election between themselves and the other candidate on the ballot. ... Another example, and obviously how much you can extrapolate from this is debatable, but there were 39 Democratic primaries this year. In 36 of the 39 primaries, turnout this year was lower than the average turnout in the same state in primaries over the last 20 years. That doesn't indicate a surge for the Democrats.
On North Korea
It seems to me people who have consistently been on the record against missile defense and whose secretary of state tried to ply the North Korean dictator with a signed basketball by Michael Jordan are not necessarily the best people to be critical of what's happening in North Korea. I think one thing we know was the attempt to appeal to the better side of Kim Jong Il did not work, and so it seems to me that the party ... that said there is an axis of evil, that said we need missile defense, and that said we need to be tough in dealing with this threat is the one that is likely, if you're looking at the issues and looking at the facts, to benefit in terms of the public's focus on this.
On the Mark Foley scandal
First of all, obviously what you had was someone who did things that were very inappropriate and outrageous. The moment that the congressional leadership learned about it, they gave him the political death penalty. They said, "You're out of here, or we're going to throw you out." That's the most aggressive posture they could have taken. They also, the moment they heard about it, took the most aggressive posture from an investigative perspective, calling in [the Department of Justice] and the FBI. And they're trying to take ... the most aggressive posture they possibly can to make sure these kids are protected in the future.
On calls for Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign
I think [it's] frankly playing politics, because the same people did not suggest in past scandals that speakers ought to be held accountable for the activities of the individual, even when the individual did worse things and the speaker provided less punishment.
On possible presidential runs by Sen. John McCain and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
As the referee, I don't think it's appropriate to speculate on the quality of the teams, but I will say that I think that we have a lot of very strong candidates running, and I would include ... I don't want to get into it, nothing good can come from that.
On a presidential run by Sen. Hillary Clinton
I think that the asset and the liability that Mrs. Clinton brings to the table is the passion she arouses in voters. And she arouses passion in their sides, she arouses passion in our side. And, at the end of the day, will our nominee and their nominee be very polarized? Yeah, but that's where the country is, and we'll see where it all comes out.
On his future plans
I'm going to decide in the next few weeks. I'm not going to decide with regard to the election. It'll be as much as anything a personal decision. I mean, I've now traveled over 300,000 miles. Being chairman is a challenging job. I'll be involved in politics; the question is at what platform is my involvement.