My life

In the months before the elections, I had decided that the “sixth-year jinx” was way overrated, that citizens historically had voted against the President’s party in the sixth year because they thought that the presidency was winding down, that the energy and new ideas were running out, and that they might as well give the other side a chance. In 1998, they saw me working on the Middle East and other foreign and domestic issues right up to the election, and they knew we had an agenda for the coming two years. The impeachment campaign galvanized the Democrats to vote in larger numbers than they had in 1994, and blocked any other message swing voters might have heard from the Republicans. By contrast, the incumbent Republican governors who essentially ran on my platform of fiscal responsibility, welfare reform, commonsense crime-control measures, and strong support for education did very well. In Texas, Governor George W. Bush, after handily defeating my old friend Garry Mauro, gave his victory speech in front of a banner that said “Opportunity, Responsibility,” two-thirds of my 1992 campaign slogan. Large turnouts of African-American voters helped a young lawyer named John Edwards defeat North Carolina senator Lauch Faircloth, Judge Sentelle’s friend and one of my harshest critics, and in South Carolina, black voters propelled Senator Fritz Hollings to a come-from-behind victory. In New York, Congressman Chuck Schumer, an outspoken opponent of impeachment with a strong record on crime, easily defeated Senator Al D’Amato, who had spent much of the last several years attacking Hillary and her staff in his committee hearings. In California, Senator Barbara Boxer won reelection and Gray Davis was elected governor with far higher margins than their pre-election polls indicated, and the Democrats picked up two House seats on the anti-impeachment momentum and a large turnout of Hispanic and African-American voters.

In the House elections, we won back the seat that Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky had lost in 1994 when our candidate, Joe Hoeffel, who had lost in 1996, ran again and opposed impeachment. In Washington State, Jay Inslee, who had been defeated in 1994, won his seat back. In New Jersey, a physics professor named Rush Holt was behind by 20 percent ten days before the election. He pushed one TV ad highlighting his opposition to impeachment, and won a seat no Democrat had held in a century. We all did our best to close the vast fund-raising gap and I taped telephone messages that were directed to the homes of Hispanics, blacks, and other likely Democratic voters. Al Gore campaigned vigorously all over the country, and Hillary probably made more appearances than anybody else. When her foot became badly swollen during a campaign stop in New York, a blood clot was discovered behind her right knee and she was put on blood thinners. Dr. Mariano wanted her to stay in bed for a week, but she kept going, giving confidence as well as support to our candidates. I was really concerned about her, but she was determined to push on. As angry as she was with me, she was even more upset about what Starr and the Republicans were trying to do.

Surveys by James Carville and Stan Greenberg and by Democratic pollster Mark Mellman had indicated that, nationwide, voters were 20 percent more likely to vote for a Democrat who said that I should be censured by the Congress and that we should get on with the public’s business than for a Republican who favored impeachment. After the results came in, Carville and others implored all the challengers with a chance to win to adopt this strategy. Its power was evident even in races we lost narrowly that the Republicans should have won easily. For example, in New Mexico, Democrat Phil Maloof, who had just lost a special election in June by six points and was down by ten a week before the November election, began anti-impeachment ads the weekend before the election. He won on election day, but lost the election by one percent because a third of the voters had cast early ballots before they heard his message. I believe the Democrats would have won the House if more of our challengers had run on our positive program and against impeachment. Many of them didn’t do so because they were afraid; they simply couldn’t believe the plain evidence in the face of the massively negative coverage I had received, and the near-universal view of the pundits that what Starr and Henry Hyde were doing would be bad for Democrats rather than Republicans.