Tuesday, November 4, 1986/The Battalion/Page 5
707 TEXAS • 2305 CAVITT
World and Nation
Republicans seeking
gubernatorial majority
I
!■ |
; Texas leads
i nation in '85
: executions
i
WASHINGTON (AP) — Eigh
teen death-row inmates were exe-
! cuted in 1985, bringing the total
number of executions to 50 since
capital punishment was reinsti
tuted nearly a decade ago, the
! federal government reported
| Sunday.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics
said Texas carried out the most
I executions last year with six.
Georgia and Florida each had
three. Virginia executed two pris
oners, while Indiana, Louisiana,
Nevada and South Carolina each
| used capital punishment once.
At the end of last year, 32
I states held 1,591 prisoners under
I death sentences, all for murder.
I Five other states have legalized
capital punishment but had no
one on death row last year.
Of all the inmates on death
row, 17 were women, 903 were
white and 672 were black. Their
median age was 32. About 11.5
percent of the U.S. population is
I black.
<
WASHINGTON (AP) — With
more than one-third of the nation’s
governorships certain to change
hands, Republicans are bidding in
today’s elections for their first
statehouse majority since the Nixon
era.
GOP hopes are dependent on
more than a dozen races too close to
call, mostly in the South and West.
The large number of toss-ups and
lack of any unifying campaign
theme or issues had both sides hedg
ing bets and eyeing a mixed bag of
final poll trends as the campaigns
ended.
“There are so many races that are
within an eyelash,” said Michele Da
vis, director of the Republican Gov
ernors Association.
At a time when governors of both
parties are emphasizing pragmatism
over ideology, schools and jobs
emerged as major issues across many
of the 36 states that were electing
governors.
But the campaigns themselves,
sometimes fiercely negative, were
the issues in a number of states. One
was Pennsylvania, a toss-up state the
GOP was struggling to hold, where
former Gov. William Scranton and
his wife took to the campaign trail to
defend their son’s candidacy against
a personal television attack.
The Democrat, Robert Casey,
“launched the most despicable TV
ads I have ever witnessed in any po
litical campaign,” the elder Scranton
said, calling them “a new low in per
sonal invective and character assassi
nation.” They focused on Lt. Gov.
William Scranton Ill’s work in Tran
scendental Meditation, showed old
photos of him in beard and long
hair, and said he got his current job
because of his family.
Casey taunted: “If Bill Scranton
can’t stand up and fight for himself
as a candidate, how will he be able to
stand up and fight for anyone else as
governor?”
Republicans hold only 16 of the
50 governor’s mansions, and haven’t
won a majority since 1969, when
they reached a peak of 32 governors
under President Richard Nixon.
But just as the arithmetic of 1986
favored the Democrats in the battle
for the Senate, the GOP had the
edge in the governors’ races.
Democrats were defending 27 of
the 36 seats up this year. And of the
19 incumbents who were scheduled
to leave office, 15 are Democrats.
Even the Democrats acknowl
edged the GOP was likely to buck
the historical midterm trend of
losses for the party holding the
White House.
Chuck Dolan, head of the Demo
cratic Governors Association, said
Democrats could lose four to eight
seats — short of the 10 they need for
a majority.
“The GOP falls flat on its face in
terms of taking a majority,” he said.
Davis, the GOP strategist, said a
majority is possible “if every good
break goes our way,” and said a six-
to-eight seat gain was probable.
Even if they retain a majority.
Democrats would consider it a set
back to lose in three of the biggest
states at risk — Florida and Texas,
which they now hold, and Pennsyl
vania, where they could gain.
GOP fighting history to retain Senate control
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(AP) — Democrats, with history and election-
year arithmetic on their side, are trying to regain
a Senate majority that was swept away six years
ago in the Reagan landslide.
Republicans — still hoping Ronald Reagan can
rally the public one more time with his “last hur
rah” blitz — nonetheless were talking more and
more about the long odds facing GOP candidates.
In person in California and Nevada, on tele
vision screens around the country and even via
automatic telephone machines that delivered pre
recorded personal appeals, Reagan seemed to be
everywhere at once urging the public not to let
him down.
“Think of the Senate elections as a matter of
numbers,” said Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., Reagan’s
White House assistant for political affairs. “Think
of it as the Alamo starring Ronald Reagan as Davy
Crockett, but this time the good guys might win.”
But the stakes and the math of the Senate battle
are against the GOP:
• Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.
• Thirty-four seats are being decided.
• Democrats need a net gain of only four seats
to win a majority.
• Democrats are defending only 12 of those
seats while Republicans are trying to protect 22.
Experience also predicts GOP losses.
In midterm elections at the six-year point of a
presidency, the party in control of the White
House has lost an average of about seven seats in
the Senate.
U.S. House likely to stay ‘solidly Democratic’
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of
the most expensive, negative and
unfocused campaigns in memory
likely will leave the House of Rep
resentatives pretty much the way it is
now: solidly Democratic.
Both parties have predicted an
overall gain for the Democrats of as
many as 10 seats in the chamber
where they already hold a 253-180
majority.
A gain of that size, however,
would be a departure from recent
political history, which has seen
much larger losses in off-year elec
tions for the party in control of the
White House.
So both sides are poised to call
such an outcome a victory.
Democratic incumbents are un
contested in 53 districts nationwide,
and are rated as solid favorites in at
least 184 others, which automatically
would put them well over the 218
seats needed for control.
Sixteen Republicans have free
rides to re-election, and GOP candi
dates are likely victors in another
112 districts.
With so many officeholders se
cure, the focus is largely on the 43
open seats where there are no in
cumbents seeking re-election; an un
usually high number are rated as
toss-ups.
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