Exultant Republicans won control of both houses of Congress, handing President George W. Bush historic bragging rights and two years to push through an agenda starting with deeper tax cuts.
Sweetening the prize, Republicans claimed a majority of the governors' races and left Democrats grumbling about a popular wartime president.
Bush made celebratory calls into the early morning hours yesterday and already was talking of his own 2004 re-election campaign. White House advisers, boasting about a new mandate, were planning for the president to make a triumphal appearance yesterday and beckon Democrats to fall in line.
PHOTO: AP
Chastened, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, said, "It's important for us to take those moments in the current Congress where we've been able to find ways to reach common ground and build on those in the coming Congress."
Up for grabs Tuesday were 36 seats on the 100-member Senate, all of the 435 House seats, as well as three dozen governorships and other state and local offices.
When the new Congress is sworn in in January, it will be the first time in 50 years that Republicans take outright control of the White House, Senate and House.
Republicans will hold at least 51 Senate seats -- plus Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote. In the House, Tuesday's voting padded the Republican majority by at least two votes.
Republican Representative Saxby Chambliss, who denied incumbent Democrat Max Cleland a second term in the Senate, heard directly from Bush that Republicans should stay mobilized.
"He said that two years from now he wants you all on his team," Chambliss told cheering supporters.
"Oh, wow," said North Carolina's Elizabeth Dole, one of seven newly elected Republican senators. "What a night!"
And Robert Ehrlich, who will be the first Republican governor of Maryland in nearly four decades, declared, "To Maryland Republicans, our time in the desert is over."
There was some consolation for Democrats. They broke the Republican grip on governorships in Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania, electoral troves critical to Bush's designs on a second four-year term. Democrats also captured formerly Republican or independent-held governorships in Kansas, Maine, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Still, Republicans claimed at least 20 of the 36 governorships at stake Tuesday.
Norm Coleman, Bush's recruit to challenge incumbent Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone, narrowly defeated former vice president Walter Mondale, the Democrat named to the ballot after Wellstone's death in a plane crash 11 days before the election.
Bush's younger brother Jeb easily held onto the Florida governor's office, prevailing over the full force of a national Democratic Party that had made him its No. 1 target -- not only to avenge the 2000 presidential recount debacle in Florida, but also as hopeful prelude to toppling the president in 2004.
Former Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris -- Republican heroine for her role in the 2000 presidential recount -- coasted to election for a House seat.
Tuesday's off-year ballot appeared to draw little more than a third of eligible Americans to the polls, where widely anticipated technical problems amounted to little more than a few hiccups.
The trend in the House as of early yesterday pointed toward single-digit Republican gains and a possible turnover in Democratic leadership. Officials said Rep-resentative Dick Gephardt of Missouri would decide within a day or two whether to seek a new term as minority leader.
The Republican majority for a fifth straight election assured Illinois Representative Dennis Hastert a third term as House speaker.
Senator Patty Murray, chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said her side was outgunned nationwide by a Republican White House that raised a record US$180 million-plus, micromanaged the selection of Republican candidates and blanketed the campaign trail with Bush, first lady Laura Bush, Cheney and his wife, Lynne.
Daschle spoke of common ground, but it was unclear how cowed Democrats would be.
Bush will have to reach out to at least some Democrats because Senate rules can require 60 votes to get legislation and nominations approved.
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