Tripod Home | New | TriTeca | Work/Money | Politics/Community | Living/Travel | Planet T | Daily ScoopPOLITICS & COMMUNITY
Mary Crawford
interviewed by Brian Hecht on 7 November, 1995
"A mixed bag of results."
Let the Spin Begin! ... Tripod reached RNC Press Secretary Mary Crawford late last night as the results from the 1995 elections were just beginning to trickle in ... Tomorrow: The Democrats respond!
Tripod: What was the most significant race on Election Day 1995?
MC: I don't know if there is a significant race. What is significant about what's happened this election night is, what we've captured is -- of the four major contests -- we're looking at resoundly winning two out of four, and doing better in the Virginia State Senate. We've got more seats in the Senate -- we're tied now, we're at parity with the Democrats -- which is more seats we've had since Reconstruction.
Specifically on Kentucky [where Democratic Lt. Governor Paul Patton defeated Republican Larry Forgy], the end results are ending up to be somewhere with Forgy having 49 percent of the vote. That's the highest percentage of the vote that any Republican candidate for governor has gotten since Louis Nunn won the governership in 1967. By a good bit. The closest anybody has come was our nominee in 1971 -- got less than 45 percent of the vote. So that's a good bit higher. Would we have like to have won? Of course we would have liked to have won. But 49 percent is nothing to sneeze at in Kentucky.
Tripod: Paul Patton explicitly targeted Speaker Gingrich in his campaign -- and he won. What kind of message is that sending?
MC: If you look at the tracking polling that we have access to, and look at the dates that they ran the very attack ads about Mediscare, personalized against the Speaker and the Republican agenda in Washington DC, that's precisely the time when our nominee picked up 12 points.
Tripod: So you think that actually helped the Republican?
MC: Yes, it did. If you watch the tracking and correlate it with what advertising was on television, there's no other conclusion to come to.
Tripod: A lot of the pundits are calling this election a referendum on the Republican revolution. What's your take on that?
MC: I'd say that it gets to be pretty hard, when you look at what these races boiled down to, as I pointed out in the case of Kentucky -- that it gets hard to make that conclusion. Does the national environment have anything to do with it? Of course it does. But is the national environment what drove these elections? Probably not, because if that were the case, you wouldn't have a mixed bag of results. You would have one party really dominating, if it were the national agenda driving it. Of course, you can't argue that it [doesn't] have some kind of impact. But I think it stretches logic, when you look at these results, to say that that's what drove these elections.
Tripod: Is there any clear message for '96?
MC: I wouldn't want to suggest, and we never have suggested, that these races are really some kind of indicator. I think if one party had totally dominated that you might have been able to argue that it was some kind of indication. But since that wasn't the case, it makes it tought to do that. These were state level elections. And when you look at those kinds of elections, the candidates and their campaigns are the number-one driving factor.
Tripod: With all the attention this year on the state legislature races, and the governorships, do you think that's just because of the election cycle, or are state politics becoming more important in this political climate?
MC: Oh, I think they've always been important. I think maybe they haven't always commanded the national media attention that they have this year. But they've always been important.
Tripod: What's the message that seems to have been the most successful for Republicans with voters this year?
MC: Well, when you look at what Governor Fordice ran on in Mississippi. If you look at what Governor Allen in the legislative candidates in Virginia ran on -- and we wound up doing far better in the State Senate then we've done since Reconstruction -- the issues are very similar. It's smaller government, it's lower taxes, it's government that's more responsive to the people, smaller bureaucracy, returning authority and responsibility to individuals as opposed to increasing the power and responsibility of government. They're pretty basic Republican principles, and so they're similar from state to state, and from the state level to the national level.
Tripod: So you don't think that there's been the anti-Republican backlash that people have predicted -- that this message is still resonant with the voters?
MC: Oh, I think clearly it is.
Tripod: And finally, Colin Powell is expected to announce his decision this week. In your heart of hearts, are you and people in your office hoping he will run, or sit this one out?
MC: In the national party, we are very strictly neutral. So we don't get into the business of encouraging or discouraging people from running. The chairman [Haley Barbour] has told General Powell that if he decides to run, he hopes he will run as a Republican, and that he would be more than welcome.
Tripod: Do you think he is a Republican?
MC: I wouldn't presume to speak for him.
You can view the Republican National Committee's homepage at http://www.rnc.org
Or, to learn about issues and candidates, check out Tripod's own Political Playbook.
Map | Search | Help | Send Us Comments
