The G.O.P.'s Silver Lining

By Ed Magnuson

The victory was impressive. The winning party picked up eight seats across the nation, making historic breakthroughs in the South that seemed to suggest a continuing realignment of regional political loyalties. This was not the smashing Democratic coup in Senate races; it was the Republicans' success in slashing the Democrats' domination of the nation's gubernatorial mansions from a count of 34 to 16 to just 26 to 24. In an otherwise cloudy Election Day for the G.O.P., Republican strategists justifiably flaunted this silver lining.

Republicans will now govern the Sunbelt's three largest states: California, Texas and Florida. For the first time since Reconstruction, Alabama will have a Republican Governor, and for only the second time in this century, a Republican will lead South Carolina. The G.O.P. captured governorships being vacated by Democrats in Maine, Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico. In Wisconsin, Republican Challenger Tommy Thompson ousted incumbent Democrat Anthony Earl. Democrats managed to win G.O.P.-held governorships in just three states: Oregon, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.

But the results did not constitute the sweeping trend toward a realignment of regional politics that Republicans had sought. Defying tidy analysis, eleven states chose candidates from opposing parties for Senator and Governor. Unlike the Senate contests, the Governors' races found the Democrats far more vulnerable: 27 of 36 seats at stake had been held by Democrats. Yet in the West, where eight Democratic executive mansions were at risk, Republicans managed a net gain of only one.

The Republican gains could provide the party with significant organizational strength for the 1988 presidential campaigns. But as New Hampshire Republican Governor John Sununu notes, "The easiest way to build up party structure is to hold the statehouses." And at this more basic level, Democrats picked up about 180 state legislative seats nationally, and will apparently control both chambers of the legislatures in 27 states, one more than at present. Republicans will dominate both houses in just nine states, two fewer than before.

Many gubernatorial races were influenced more by special circumstances than by shifting party loyalties. Texas Republican Bill Clements won back his office from Mark White, the Democrat who had defeated him four years ago. Texas, moreover, suffers heavily from depressed oil prices, and White had the courage -- some might say the foolhardiness -- to raise taxes twice in an attempt to keep his state solvent. Alabama's Democrats went through such a bloodletting to determine the winner of their primary that Republican Guy Hunt benefited from the fratricide.

New Mexico's Republican winner Garrey Carruthers, a former Interior Department official who has never before held elective office, profited from voter disgust with the corrupt and feckless administration of outgoing Democrat Toney Anaya. Arizona's new Governor Evan Mecham is an ultraconservative Pontiac dealer who had run for the office unsuccessfully four times. He made it this year, mainly because a turncoat Republican, Bill Schulz, jumped belatedly into the race as an independent and siphoned votes away from Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction Carolyn Warner. Quipped Mecham, who won with just 40% of the vote: "Happiness is being the only Republican on a ballot that has two Democrats."

In both parties, some incumbents showed great strength: California's George Deukmejian kept the nation's most populous state in G.O.P. hands and got 4.4 million votes in his rematch with Tom Bradley, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles. Michigan Democrat James Blanchard won 69% of the vote in an easy re- election win over G.O.P. Challenger William Lucas, the first black Republican ever to run for Governor. But the most smashing win of all was executed by Maryland Democrat William Donald Schaefer. A popular four-term mayor of Baltimore who had guided the city's successful harbor redevelopment, Schaefer won 82% of the vote.

Among the 21 newly elected Governors, several winners seem particularly notable:

-- Bob Martinez. Only the second Republican to govern Florida since 1877, Martinez, 51, was elected mayor of Tampa in 1979, when he was a Democrat. After re-election in 1983, he switched parties, explaining that he was "more comfortable" as a Republican, even though he was shifting to what he still concedes is the "minority party" in Florida. Holder of a master's degree in labor relations, Martinez developed a reputation for running Tampa efficiently. He is of Spanish descent, and ran up huge margins in Miami's Cuban districts. Although Martinez benefited from a serious split among Democrats, his nearly 300,000-vote victory margin established his own statewide political appeal.

-- Tommy Thompson. A combative G.O.P. floor leader long accustomed to fighting a Democratic majority in the Wisconsin state assembly, Thompson, 44, scored a major upset by unseating Democrat Anthony Earl, who had balanced the state's budget by raising taxes. Running a Reagan-like antispending, antitax campaign, Thompson contends that "we're spending ourselves poor in Wisconsin." He intends to order all state agencies to submit budgets 5% lower than this year's and then "resell their programs both to the legislature and to me."

-- Kay Orr. Nebraska's state treasurer became the first Republican woman Governor as well as the first woman to be elected Governor of a state by $ defeating another woman, Democrat Helen Boosalis. An articulate fiscal conservative, Orr, 47, had climbed the party ladder, starting as an envelope stuffer in 1963. Unafraid to tackle difficult problems, Orr an- nounced on the morning after the election that she would form a jobs creation council to help small towns recover from the farm depression and a task force to try to remedy the state's agricultural ills.

-- Roy Romer. A self-made millionaire as a real estate developer and heavy- equipment dealer, Colorado Democrat Romer, 58, turned his business acumen to advantage as state treasurer: he devised a bond investment plan that earned the state $32 million in two years. As a former chief of staff to retiring Governor Richard Lamm, the confident and energetic Romer sometimes greeted visitors with a brusque "Tell me who you are and what you want," softening the approach with a smile. He has been tightfisted with state funds, and is more solicitous of the Republican legislators than Lamm has been. Yet when his Republican opponent Ted Strickland generously proposed that a $250 million windfall from the federal tax-reform act be passed along to state taxpayers at about $200 each, Romer suggested that much of the money be used instead for education, highways and other investments in Colorado's future. He won anyway.

With reporting by Dan Goodgame/Los Angeles and Joseph J. Kane/Atlanta