Each party has its own challenges

The primary elections concluded last week. Now comes the main event: the Nov. 2 general election, with control of Congress and statehouses across the nation in the balance. What are the top challenges facing the two parties?

BOTH PARTIES

Winning statehouses

Currently, Democrats have a narrow 26-to-24 advantage in governorships. Why is that important? Because next year, every state will draw new lines for its congressional and legislative districts, based on the 2010 census, and governors will play a big role in the once-a-decade process. The party that controls the remapping not only can protect its incumbents by drawing favorable districts, it can rejigger the lines to weaken the opposition.

The value of that advantage is clear in Georgia. Because of its growth, the state is expected to add at least one House seat to its congressional roster of 13, which is currently divided between seven Republicans and six Democrats.

A Republican governor, working with the GOP-dominated Legislature, would likely ensure the new district is in an area that favors their party. It’s also easy to see how adding the new seat would allow the redistribution of voters among the other districts, making it more difficult for Georgia’s two remaining white Democratic congressmen, Jim Marshall of Macon and John Barrow of Savannah, to retain their seats, should they survive this fall’s vote.

A new poll for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Georgia Newspaper Partnership shows Republican Nathan Deal holding a very narrow lead over Democrat Roy Barnes. The Texas race between Republican incumbent Rick Perry and Democrat Bill White is also tight.

But elsewhere, governorships currently held by Democrats in several big states with lots of congressional seats appear to be vulnerable.

Florida, once thought of as a potential target for the Democrats, increasingly appears safely Republican. And in California, another state Democrats hope to claim, former governor Jerry Brown is in a close contest with Republican Meg Whitman for the seat left open as term-limited Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger retires.

Beyond redistricting, all of those states will be battlegrounds in the 2012 presidential race.

DEMOCRATS

Holding the Senate

There’s a wide consensus that the Democrats are in grave danger of losing their majority in the House. The Republicans need to win 39 seats to gain control, and they’re now forecast to win as many as 55.

The Senate is a tougher challenge for the GOP. To win a majority there, it would need to take 10 seats in the 100-member chamber. While the Republicans are almost sure to gain seats, that large a margin is considered unlikely.

But it’s not impossible. The Democrats have many seats to defend. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., is far behind in the polls against her Republican challenger. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has been slipping against Republican Carli Fiorina. And even the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, is endangered, unable so far to pull away from tea party Republican Angle.

Republican wins in those races and some surprise defeats could leave the Democrats in the minority.

Veteran political forecaster Charlie Cook wrote in a recent column in the National Journal that with so many vulnerable seats, the Democrats are going to have to make tough choices about where to spend their campaign cash. Just defending Boxer’s seat, he pointed out, will be extremely costly in the vast Los Angeles and San Francisco media markets.

If the cost of holding onto the Senate is abandoning some marginal House seats, it may prove to be worth it for the Democrats. A wave of conservative legislation is expected to emerge from a Republican-controlled House — including the threatened dismantlement of this year’s health care reform law.

Without a Senate majority, the only weapon remaining to Democrats would be the filibuster and Obama’s veto — blunt instruments that could leave the federal government in a deadlock and allow the Republicans to cast the Democrats as obstructionists, standing against the public will expressed in the November vote.

The enthusiasm gap

In 2008, an unprecedented level of turnout by young and minority voters propelled Obama into the presidency. In primaries so far this year, it appears those voters are staying home — or switching sides. Turnout for Republican races is running more than 4 million ahead of that for Democrats.

The Democrats are spending millions of dollars across the country, including in Georgia, to send workers into the field to encourage those who supported Obama to turn out again in November in what is shaping up to be a referendum on his administration.

On the other hand, the enthusiastic Republican electorate hasn’t needed such prodding, voting enthusiastically and attracting independent swing voters. The Gallup poll reported last week that Democrats hold a slight — 44 percent to 41 percent — edge in party identification. But unless they can get their supporters fired up, that numbers advantage could be negated.

REPUBLICANS

Seizing the opportunity

The Republicans have a shot at taking the Senate in addition to the House. But there are still six weeks to go to Election Day, and nothing is guaranteed.

The time-honored rule of elections is that they are won in the middle. The party bases — loyal Republican and Democratic voters — tend to cancel each other out, leaving independents to make the choice.

The polls show those independents are upset with the Democrats and very dissatisfied with the state of the economy. But some Republicans fear that tea party-backed Senate candidates such as Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada could take positions that independents will find unsettling — such as advocating a radical makeover of Social Security. Seeming uncertainty among Republicans about the non-mainstream candidates could add to their uncertainty.

The fear is not that the unaffiliated voters will cast ballots for the Democrats, but that they’ll decide to sit this one out.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has already shown he recognizes the challenge. Though he didn’t support fellow Kentuckian Paul in the state’s May primary, he endorsed him after his victory, declaring at a campaign event that “the only way you make public policy in this country is to win general elections. And that’s why we’re here today, to send a clear and unmistakable message to every Republican in Kentucky that we’re going to elect Dr. Rand Paul to the United States Senate.”

McConnell, respected as a master political strategist, has also reached out to other tea party favorites such as Marco Rubio, who holds the lead in Florida’s Senate race, and has said he will support O’Donnell as well.

With influential Republicans such as Bush White House adviser Karl Rove declaring O’Donnell unelectable and Democrats crowing about a GOP “civil war,” the challenge for McConnell, House Republican leader John Boehner and other top Republicans will be keeping the party focused on winning in November.

Managing expectations

It’s one thing to win a majority, but another to use it.

When the Newt Gingrich-led “Republican Revolution” took over the House in January 1995, the new members were united behind a “Contract With America” that promised to make government smaller, leaner and more responsive.

But in implementation, the document’s clearly stated goals ended up being divided into numerous smaller bills, many of which became sidetracked. Though the new majority succeeded in reaching a compromise on welfare reform with then-President Bill Clinton, many supporters ended up disappointed by the disparity between what they had hoped would be accomplished and what was actually achieved. The Republicans lost ground in the 1998 elections, and a short time later, House Speaker Gingrich resigned.

Likewise, while the Democrats won some big victories after their 2008 sweep, the threat of Republican filibusters in the Senate and dissent in the party’s ranks have put on hold initiatives such as greenhouse gas legislation and a rewrite of immigration laws, leaving many party activists frustrated.

A new Republican majority may encounter similar frustrations as it tries to live up to pledges to dismantle the Democratic health care and financial legislation — both of which a still-Democratic Senate could block or President Barack Obama could veto.

The cacophony between tea party-backed candidates who insist on ideological purity and other Republicans who are willing to work out compromises could also cause tensions.

Still, the party could find unity around a more universal Republican goal: shrinking the size of government and its accompanying tax burden.