California GOP Victory: A Harbinger of November?
June 11, 2006 — -- Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, who is charged with retaining the Republican majority in the House, predicted that the Republicans are "going to win the House … district by district, from the ground up."
Reynolds made his prediction during an exclusive debate on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," after Republicans won a congressional seat vacated by former Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., who is serving an eight-year jail sentence after pleading guilty to federal charges including conspiracy to commit bribery and accepting $2.4 million in bribes.
While conceding that "there's no silver medal for second," Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the association of Democrats attempting to re-take the majority in the House, said the California election nevertheless offers some encouragement to Democrats.
"The Republican Party spent $5 million in an overwhelmingly Republican district [and] eked out a victory," Emanuel said.
The special election in California, viewed by some pundits as a bellwether of the national midterm elections this November, pitted Republican Brian Bilbray, a former congressman, against Democrat Francine Busby, a local school board member, in a traditionally Republican district. The seat in California's 50th Congressional district was held by Cunningham since 1991.
Busby, a relative political novice, received 44 percent of the vote, approximately the same amount garnered by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in the 2004 presidential election. Bilbray returns to Congress after a five-year absence.
Emanuel said Bilbray won, in part, because he "attacked the president, of his own party," on immigration.
"All politics is local," Reynolds said. "It was a House campaign about [local issues]."
On other topics, the pair continued to squabble.
Referring to a resolution obtained by ABC News that reaffirms the U.S. commitment to the global war on terror and the effort in Iraq, Emanuel said, "One good casualty in this war on terror would be partisanship."
Emanuel decried the effort as a political maneuver intended to force House Democrats into the uncomfortable position of defining their support for U.S. troops and possible opposition to the war.
