GOP rout alters D.C.'s character with loss of colorful, capable legislators

WASHINGTON — Big thinkers, hardy veterans and a few real characters — the Republican trouncing claimed a broad spectrum of legislators whose departures will alter the character of Capitol Hill.

"Sometimes you have these larger-than-life figures who just humanize the place," said political scientist Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. While this was not a Congress known for boldness or achievement, he said, "Whenever you have a wave election ... there will be some distinctive departures."

Among the most surprising of Tuesday's losses was that of Jim Leach, a moderate Iowa congressman whose cool-headed pragmatism and global outlook drew the admiration of many outside his party. Like Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee, Leach was a party liberal whose sometime disagreement with President Bush's policies failed to save him from a wave of anti-Bush fervor.

Leach, a former Foreign Service officer who was in line to chair the House International Relations Committee, often raised his voice in favor of diplomacy, a contrast with administration Republicans.

"I winced most with Jim Leach's loss," Ornstein said. Like retiring Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe, "Leach has been one of the small number of extraordinary legislators ... with a larger sense [of] America's role in the world."

Republicans lost two policy-oriented legislators when Democrats took the seats of veteran Reps. Nancy Johnson in Connecticut and Clay Shaw in Florida. They were in line for the two top spots on the House Ways and Means committee, which Shaw was to chair. Their departures, along with those of Republican Reps. J.D. Hayworth of Arizona, Jim Nussle of Iowa and scandal-tarred Mark Foley of Florida, guts Ways and Means, the House's most powerful committee.

Johnson, a key opponent of the Clinton health-care plan in the 1990s, lost to anti-war Democrat Chris Murphy, who once served as campaign manager for a Democrat who narrowly lost to her.

Over five terms, Rep. Anne Northup of Kentucky bested Democratic challengers in her Louisville-based swing district. But the writing was on the wall when Bush lost in the district in 2004. This season, her support of the Iraq war and Democratic Party spending late in the race were enough to swing the contest to Democrat John Yarmuth, an alternative-newspaper publisher little known outside the state.

Defeat also cut deeply into the ranks of Republican culture warriors. Hayworth, a loud and brassy anti-illegal-immigrant advocate, lost to Harry Mitchell, a comparatively low-key former mayor of Tempe. A former sportscaster and conservative talk-show regular, Hayworth represented for 12 years the rapidly growing and increasingly affluent district that encompasses Scottsdale and Tempe. Mitchell ended that in part by playing up Hayworth's links to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

"There are people who are going to miss [Hayworth], because you never knew what he'd come up with," Ornstein said.

Environmental groups take a big share of credit for felling House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., in part by spending about $1.5 million in his district. The advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife established a campaign office there in April, hired eight organizers, recruited 2,000 volunteers and knocked on 75,000 doors in the past three months.

Defenders of Wildlife political director Mark Longabaugh said his group hammered Pombo both on his environmental record and his "ethical transgressions" that stemmed from the congressman's close ties to special interests. "Pombo was just target-rich throughout this campaign," Longabaugh said. "It was the gift that just kept giving."

In Pennsylvania, senior House Armed Services Committee member and global-conspiracy theorist Curt Weldon was thumped by retired Navy Vice Adm. Joe Sestak. Weldon, a committed internationalist fond of organizing freelance missions to the former Soviet Union, is under FBI investigation for allegedly channeling Russian business to his daughter's lobbying firm.

The rout of Pennsylvania's Republicans — which cost the GOP four House seats and saw the re-election of Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell — also claimed Rick Santorum, the Senate's No. 3 leader, who was elected in the Republican landslide of 1994. His vocal support of the war, and anti-feminist, anti-gay views — he once compared homosexuality to bestiality — put him in Democratic cross hairs. His was the first Republican Senate seat to fall — to state Treasurer Bob Casey Jr.

Santorum was "a very combative conservative ... a very savvy fellow most likely in line to become the whip," Ornstein said.

Santorum's loss, Ornstein said, means "the hopes of getting some larger measure of civility in the Senate may be better."