Free Fall? What Free Fall?
First of all, in '94 the Democrats were particularly [vulnerable] to a terrible year because they had a lot of open seats and a lot of those open seats were in Republican presidential districts. 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. The 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. 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.
After Hurricane Katrina, how successful can you be at winning over black voters?
Our ability to target voters differently means there are conversations going on in the black community that maybe didn't go on as aggressively before. In a world where you have a limited budget, if you're targeting entirely by geography, to target a neighborhood where you're able to get 1 in 10 votes or 1 in 5 votes may not have been cost effective. On the other hand, if you're targeting based on lifestyle, which is what we do today, you can be much more effective at reaching out to people.
Do Sen. John McCain and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani have a chance of winning the 2008 presidential nomination?
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 potentially very strong candidates running.
What about 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 side; she arouses passion in our side.
Will you run again for chairman?
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.
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