They last three weeks before an election really matter.
I know because just before we signed the Contract with America and won the first House Republican majority in 40 years, I came within range of losing my seat for two consecutive elections.
In 1990, the Democrats ran a good candidate. I had been starving my district by crisscrossing the country recruiting candidates and building a team capable of winning a national majority. The folks back home got tired of being ignored and sent me a strong signal when I won by only 974 votes out of 156,562 cast (a .062 margin of victory). The race was in doubt until 2 a.m. the morning after the election. The last precincts in Fayette County finally finished counting which gave me a majority. At about 1:30 a.m., someone turned to me and said, “I thought election nights were supposed to be fun.”
Two years later, reapportionment had torn my district into pieces. Georgia Speaker of the House Tom Murphy was a hardcore Democrat who lived in Bremen, Ga., just nine miles from my hometown. He was determined to get me away from him. The Democrats created a new 6th Congressional District built around Cobb County, which was a Republican stronghold at the time. If I moved there, I would be many miles away from Speaker Murphy. Fortunately for me, the strongest Republican in the area, Johnny Isakson, wanted to run for governor and was happy to endorse me and encouraged me to run.
Everything looked fine. We had a good opponent in the primary in House Minority Whip Herman Clark, but our polls of Republican voters showed me winning the primary handily. The Atlanta newspapers were running the triple option against me daily (news stories, editorials, and cartoons) but we were used to surviving the liberal bias of Georgia’s biggest newspapers.
We went into primary night feeling good — and then the returns began coming in. We were shocked to watch strong Democratic precincts voting heavily for our Republican opponent, Clark. It turned out the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had organized a “boot Newt” campaign aimed at convincing Democratic voters to vote against me in the Republican primary. So, all our projections and polling were just plain wrong. They only accounted for Republican voters.
Despite all our best efforts we had no idea how effective the Democrats were going to be. We had no models for what would happen. We spent the evening with a real nail-biter just watching results precinct by precinct. In traditional Republican precincts, we were doing well seemed to be winning decisively. But in traditional Democratic precincts, we were seeing votes against us for which we hadn’t accounted.
By the end of the evening, I survived for the second close election in a row. We won by 1.39 percent, 35,199 to 34,719.
If I had lost either election, it is likely there would have been no Contract with America and no House Republican Majority. Our long period in the wilderness would have continued.
Two years later, with the national campaign and the Contract, we won five seats by less than 1 percent and another four by less than 2 percent. This included defeating Speaker Tom Foley, the first speaker to be defeated in 132 years and only the third in American history.
The GOP majority was only 230. So, if we had lost those nine close races, we would have only had a 221 to 213 margin with one independent (Bernie Sanders). Our ability to get things done, such as balancing the budget and welfare reform, would have been dramatically weakened. Those close elections helped change history.
I cite these close experiences to make the point that every vote matters, every phone call matters, and every vote matters.
Over the next three weeks, people will be thinking through their choices. If they are irritated enough by high prices and other current problems, they will be tempted to vote Democrat. If they worry about how bad and destructive a big government socialist Democratic Congress would be, they will be inclined to vote Republican. If they are bogged down in negativity, they may simply stay home.
There are enough elections hanging in the balance that every effort will count.
And we won’t know the outcomes until election night.
Polls are interesting, but elections are decisive.
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