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1st lady speaker
to clean House 
Pelosi will be 2nd in line
of presidential succession


The night began as a squeaker, but it led to a new House speaker.

In a historic political evening, Democrats swept Republicans out of power in the House of Representatives for the first since the 1994 Republican revolution that made Newt Gingrich the speaker. Control of the Senate was hanging in the balance with the George Allen-Jim Webb race in Virginia too close to call with more than 99 percent of the vote counted.

Two years after a decisive election victory for President Bush and Republicans, Democrats picked up more than the 15 seats they needed to recapture control of the 435-seat House for the first time since 1994.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California – in line to become the first woman speaker in history – said as the returns rolled in, "Democrats support change. Democrats propose a new direction for all Americans, not just the privileged few."

"We are on the brink of a great Democratic victory," she predicted earlier in the evening.

Democrats needed to gain six seats to reclaim control of the 100-seat Senate for the first time in four years, and so far had taken three seats from Republicans.

Pelosi, 66, appears certain to be elected House speaker by fellow Democrats when the new 110th Congress convenes in January, replacing Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican.

Under U.S. law, the speaker is second in the line of succession to the presidency, behind only the vice president.

Pelosi has said she will not try to end U.S. funding of the Iraq war, will pressure Bush to shift course, begin a phased redeployment of U.S. troops and require Iraqis to take greater responsibility for their own nation.

Bush, disappointed at the Democrats' seizure of the House of Representatives, will hold a news conference today to urge his opponents to work with him, the White House said.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the outcome of the elections, in which Democrats were projected to win control of the House and pick up several Senate seats, was "not what we would've hoped."

"But it also gets us to a point: Democrats have spent a lot of time complaining about what the president has done. This is an opportunity for them to kind of stand up," Snow said.

All House seats, 33 Senate seats and 36 governorships were at stake yesterday.

Democrats have promised votes on much of their agenda within the first 100 hours of taking power in January, including new ethics rules and a hike in the minimum wage.

Republicans were clinging onto narrow control of the U.S. Senate.

Democrats toppled Republican senators in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Rhode Island, with races too close to call in Maryland, Virginia and Missouri.

Democrats won gubernatorial races in New York, Ohio and Massachusetts for the first time in more than a decade.

Charlie Crist kept the Florida governorship now held by the president's brother Jeb in Republican GOP hands.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, running as an independent, won a new term in Connecticut – dispatching Democrat Ned Lamont and thus winning when it counted most against the man who had prevailed in a summertime primary.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton coasted to a second Democratic term in New York, winning roughly 70 percent of the vote in a warm-up to a possible run for the White House in 2008. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania became the first Republican senator to fall to the Democrats, losing his seat to Bob Casey Jr., the state treasurer. In Ohio, Sen. Mike DeWine lost to Rep. Sherrod Brown, a seven-term House member. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, the most liberal Republican in the Senate and an opponent of the war, lost to Sheldon Whitehouse, former state attorney general.

In Virginia, Republican Sen. George Allen and Democratic challenger Jim Webb were locked in a seesaw race, neither man able to break ahead of the other.

In Tennessee, former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker held a narrow lead over Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr., campaigning to become the first black senator from the South in more than a century.

In Missouri, Sen. Jim Talent held a lead over Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill with nearly 25 percent of the precincts counted.

Montana Sen. Conrad Burns, seeking a fourth term, battled Democrat Jon Tester.

Indiana was particularly cruel to House Republicans. Reps. John Hostettler, Chris Chocola and Mike Sodrel all lost in a state where Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' unpopularity compounded the dissatisfaction with Bush.

Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson lost in her bid for a 13th term in Connecticut; Anne Northup fell in Kentucky after 10 years in the House; and Rep. Charles Taylor was defeated in North Carolina.

Scandal likely cost Republicans a seat in Ohio, where Democrat Zack Space won the race to succeed Bob Ney, who pleaded guilty to corruption this fall in the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Among the GOP losers, Hostettler, Santorum and DeWine all won their seats in the Republican landslide of 1994 – the year the GOP grabbed control of the House and Senate from the Democrats.

Surveys of voters at their polling places nationwide suggested Democrats were winning the support of independents with almost 60 percent support, and middle-class voters were leaving Republicans behind.

History worked against Republicans. Since World War II, the party in control of the White House has lost an average 31 House seats and six Senate seats in the second midterm election of a president's tenure in office.

All 435 House seats were on the ballot along with 33 Senate races, elections that Democrats sought to make a referendum on the president's handling of the war, the economy and more.

Democrats piled up early gains among the 36 statehouse races on the ballot. They captured governors' seats from Republicans in New York, Ohio and Massachusetts, broadening their hold on big-state power bases ahead of the 2008 presidential election.

In Ohio, Rep. Ted Strickland defeated Republican Ken Blackwell with ease to become the state's first Democratic governor in 16 years. Deval Patrick triumphed over Republican Kerry Healey in Massachusetts, and will become the state's first black chief executive. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer won the New York governor's race in a landslide.

Voters in Vermont made Rep. Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist independent, the winner in a Senate race, succeeding retiring Sen. James Jeffords. Brooklyn-born with an accent to match, Sanders will side with Democrats as he did throughout his House career.

New York elected Democratic Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to replace departing Republican Gov. George Pataki, according to media projections. Spitzer's victory restores the governor's seat to Democratic hands for the first time in a decade.

In Ohio, decisive in the 2004 White House race, Ted Strickland, six-term congressman and Methodist minister, was projected as the first Democrat in 16 years to be elected governor.

In other projected returns from the 36 states electing governors, Democrats were reelected in Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Wyoming, New Mexico and Tennessee, while Republicans incumbents were returned to office in Georgia, Nebraska, Connecticut and Vermont.