Burns, Allen concede, sealing Dems Senate victory

WASHINGTON – Virginia Republican Sen. George Allen today conceded defeat to his Democratic rival, Jim Web, today, sealing transfer of the U.S. Senate to the Democrats.

Allen was trailing by more than 7,000 votes after Tuesday's election.

Democrats completed their sweep by ousting Allen, the last of six GOP incumbents to lose re-election bids in a midterm election marked by deep dissatisfaction with the president and the war in Iraq.

Earlier today, Republican Sen. Conrad Burns conceded to Democrat Jon Tester in Montana, in another close contest.

In the House, Democrats won 230 seats and led in two races, while Republicans won 196 seats and led in seven races. If current trends hold, Democrats would have a 232-203 majority — 14 more than the number necessary to hold the barest of majorities in the 435-member chamber. Without losing any seats of their own, Democrats captured 28 GOP-held seats.

"In Iraq and here at home, Americans have made clear they are tired of the failures of the last six years," said Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, in line to become Senate Majority leader when Congress reconvenes in January.

The shift dramatically alters the government's balance of power, leaving President Bush without GOP congressional control to drive his legislative agenda. Democrats hailed the results and issued calls for bipartisanship even as they vowed to investigate administration policies and decisions.

As watershed elections go, this one rivaled the GOP's takeover in 1994, which made Newt Gingrich speaker of the House, the first Republican to run the House since the Eisenhower administration. This time the shift comes in the midst of an unpopular war, a Congress scarred by scandal and just two years from a wide-open presidential contest.

Allen lost to Democrat Webb, a former Republican who served as Navy secretary in the Reagan administration. A count by The Associated Press showed Webb with 1,172,538 votes and Allen with 1,165,302, a difference of 7,236.

Democrats will have nine new senators on their side of the aisle as a result of Tuesday's balloting. Six of them defeated sitting Republican senators from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Rhode Island, Montana and Virginia. The other three replaced retiring senators from Maryland, Minnesota and Vermont.

Their ideologies are as varied as their home states. Bernie Sanders, an independent who will replace Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords, is a Socialist who has served in the House and voted with Democrats since 1990. Bob Casey Jr., who defeated Republican Sen. Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, is an anti-abortion moderate. Webb once declared that the sight of President Clinton returning a Marine's salute infuriated him.

Beside the Webb-Allen race, the Montana Senate contest also was too tight to call early Wednesday. But by midday, Democrat Tester outdistanced Republican Burns, who had to fight off campaign miscues as well as his ties to Jack Abramoff, the once super-lobbyist caught in an influence-peddling scheme. Burns conceded this morning.

In the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who would become the first female speaker in history, called for harmony and said Democrats would not abuse their new status.

She said she would be "the speaker of the House, not the speaker of the Democrats." She said Democrats would aggressively conduct oversight of the administration, but said any talk of impeachment of President Bush "is off the table."

In the Senate, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the head of the Democrats' Senate campaign committee, said, "We had a tough and partisan election, but the American people and every Democratic senator — and I've spoken to just about all of them — want to work with the president in a bipartisan way."

Burns reached Tester on the phone as the grain farmer and state Senate president headed for a barber shop to get his flattop hair trimmed.

The call was "very cordial, very professional. It was positive," Tester told The Associated Press.

Tester said he was looking forward to taking office in Washington and working with both Democrats and Republicans to deliver on campaign promises.

Burns, a three-term GOP senator whose campaign was troubled by gaffes and voter discontent, did not plan any public appearances today. But he released a written statement saying he was ready to "help as Montana transitions to a new United States Senator."

"We fought the good fight and we came up just a bit short. We've had a good 18 years and I am proud of my record," he said.

Burns, 71, didn't say what he plans to do now, though he indicated he was looking forward to taking some time off. "I hope there is still a good-sized buck out there, because I am going hunting," he said.

Tester spent much of the day running farm chores, picking up a barrel of oil in Great Falls on the way to his grain farm in Big Sandy, spokesman Matt McKenna said.

"This was a hard fought campaign, and I think that Montana is glad it is in their rear view mirror and Jon tester is ready to move forward," McKenna said.

Tester, 50, ran as an outsider to the Washington culture — the same theme Burns had used nearly two decades earlier.

The Virginia contest was the last undecided Senate race in the country, and Webb's victory tipped the scales, giving the Democrats control of 51 Senate seats and majorities in both the House and Senate for the first time since 1994.

Allen, 54, son of a Hall of Fame football coach, served as governor in the 1990s and was popular for abolishing parole and instituting other conservative reforms. In 2000, he knocked off two-term Democratic Sen. Charles Robb and won plaudits in the GOP for what some considered a Reagan-like ability to tout a conservative message in an upbeat manner.

Allen had been expected to cruise to a second term this year and make a run for the White House in 2008.

In Webb, however, he faced an unconventional challenger. Supporters drafted Webb, a political neophyte, to run because of his early opposition to the Iraq war.

Allen was comfortably ahead in polls until August, when he mockingly referred to a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian descent as "Macaca," regarded by some as a racial slur. The incident, caught on videotape, became international news. Some former football teammates from the University of Virginia also charged that Allen had commonly used a slur for blacks — something he denied.

Webb, a 60-year-old Naval Academy graduate and decorated Vietnam veteran, tried to tie Allen to President Bush and the war during the campaign. He also seized the Reagan edge, having served in the former president's administration, and used a video in ads that showed Reagan praising him.

Moving swiftly to establish himself as the winner, Webb early Wednesday began assembling a transition team shortly after he proclaimed victory.

"The vote's been counted and Jim won," said Webb campaign spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd. Some absentee ballots remained to be counted, she said, but Webb considered it "a formality more than anything else."