Voters: stay the course

After a desperate, 96-hour nonstop campaign blitz, Bob Dole tasted victory in the first-in-the-nation voting precinct of Dixville Notch, N.H., where citizens began casting their ballots just after midnight on Election Day. Mr. Dole took a 31-votes-to-20 lead over President Clinton (Ross Perot garnered five votes), but it was all downhill from there. Before the night was over, Mr. Clinton had racked up a 31-state, 379-electoral-vote landslide over Mr. Dole. But Mr. Clinton was denied a majority of the popular vote, and his electoral vote total exceeded his '92 total by just nine votes. While President Clinton became the first Democrat incumbent president to win election to a second term since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, voters renewed the Republican Congress for the first time since Calvin Coolidge was president. Despite spending $35 million in a deceptive ad campaign against Republican freshmen and some GOP candidates competing for open seats, the AFL-CIO could claim credit for retiring only a dozen first-term lawmakers--not nearly enough to wrest control of the legislature for the Democrats. The day after the election, Senate majority whip Don Nickles (R-Okla.) said on PBS's News Hour that any campaign-finance reform in the next Congress would include tough restrictions on organized labor's spending of mandatory worker dues on political campaigning. The same day, majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) promised a Senate probe of foreign campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee. Meanwhile, DNC officials announced Nov. 6 that general chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and operational chairman Don Fowler would be leaving their respective posts.

Changing course

Two days before the election, unnamed White House officials began naming the names of other administration officials who would soon be "resigning." The Associated Press carried a story Nov. 3 citing as a source a "senior administration official" who said eight key figures would likely be cleaning out their desks: Defense Secretary William Perry; Secretary of State Warren Christopher; Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor; Attorney General Janet Reno; Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary; Transportation Secretary Federico Pe¤a; Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros; and White House chief of staff Leon Panetta. The Washington Post Nov. 6 added two more to the list of possible departures: Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Education Secretary Richard Riley. On Nov. 7, Mr. Christopher made it official at a White House ceremony; the next day, as U.S. ambassador to Japan Walter Mondale announced his departure, North Carolina businessman and one-time Clinton administration aide Erskine Bowles accepted Mr. Panetta's job as chief of staff. Also confirming their departures: Mr. Reich and political aides George Stephanopoulos and Rahm Emanuel. Mr. Clinton said he is considering naming Republicans to some cabinet posts. Speculation centered on retiring Sen. William Cohen, a liberal Maine Republican, to head up the Pentagon. Defeated Senate candidate William Weld, the liberal Republican governor of Massachusetts, said in a post-election interview with the Boston Globe that he would consider an ambassadorial assignment in the Clinton administration.

Scandal watch

Warren Christopher's resignation from the State Department came the same day the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report stating that Congress, the Pentagon, and the CIA were all kept in the dark by Mr. Christopher's agency, which in 1994 decided to turn a blind eye to Iranian shipments of armaments to Bosnian Muslims. The report was inconclusive on the issue of whether the inaction constituted a "covert action" by the administration. An earlier House report suggested deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake may have committed perjury, obstruction of Congress, or conspiracy in their testimony regarding the weapons shipments. Sen. Al D'Amato (R-N.Y.) announced Nov. 7 he would leave the job of investigating possible Whitewater crimes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. But on the House side, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who will take over the chairmanship of a key congressional investigating committee, declared he plans to get to the bottom of the FBI files scandal. Also Nov. 7, Joseph Waldholtz, the former husband of retiring freshman Republican Rep. Enid Greene, was sentenced to three years in prison for committing fraud in connection with the Utah congresswoman's 1994 campaign. Ms. Greene was not charged.

Taking the initiative

Voters, rushing in where legislators often fear to tread, decided more than 90 citizen initiatives Nov. 5, ranging from a Colorado measure to tax church property (it failed resoundingly) to a Florida proposition requiring approval from a two-thirds majority of voters to raise taxes (it passed overwhelmingly). One of the most pioneering proposals on any ballot was California's Proposition 209, designed to end race- and gender-based preferential treatment in state hiring, contracts, and college admissions. The measure passed by a 54-to-46 percent margin, but the next day the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit to block its implementation. Legal experts said a definitive ruling may not be handed down for at least a year. Meanwhile, after a federal judge turned aside a court challenge to another California-passed initiative, Gov. Pete Wilson moved ahead with plans to stop illegal immigrants from receiving state aid. Elsewhere, pro-gambling initiatives suffered defeats in Nebraska, Washington, Ohio, Colorado, and Arkansas. Arizona voters approved Indian casinos, while voters in several Louisiana parishes decided to accept riverboat gambling. Pro-marijuana forces in both Arizona and California enticed voters to back a proposal allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana for "medical purposes." In Colorado, a parental-rights initiative--which appeared to have strong support a few months ago--withered under a concerted attack from groups that claimed the measure would make it difficult to prosecute abusive parents. The proposal--defeated by a margin of 58 to 42 percent--would have amended the state constitution to guarantee parents the right to "direct and control the upbringing, education, values, and discipline of their children."

Scraping the bottom

After 15 weeks of painstaking searches using scuba divers, metal detectors, and high-tech sonar, investigators of the TWA Flight 800 crash gave the go-ahead Nov. 4 for low-tech scallop-fishing dredges to start scraping the bottom of the ocean off Long Island, N.Y., for any plane wreckage still missing. The result: hundreds of pounds of new evidence, possibly including portions of the center fuel tank that may hold the key to the July 17 explosion and crash. Meanwhile, former ABC news reporter and Kennedy White House press secretary Pierre Salinger Nov. 7 claimed to have documentary evidence that the jumbo jet was accidentally shot down by a Navy missle; government officials strenuously deny this.

The company he keeps

The group that holds the American rights to the abortion-inducing drug RU-486 filed suit against a potential distributor Nov. 4, citing questions about "his character." The Population Council said in a lawsuit that it never would have granted a marketing license to Joseph D. Pike of San Diego had it known he was a convicted criminal and disbarred lawyer. A council spokeswoman said Mr. Pike was "not an appropriate person" to be involved in the introduction of the abortion drug. The Food and Drug Administration recently gave preliminary marketing approval for RU-486 after deeming it "safe and effective."

Mighty Mississippi

Mississippi's attorney general announced Nov. 4 he is dropping a court fight to strengthen the state's abortion regulations, already considered among the nation's most protective for the unborn. Attorney General Mike Moore said the state stood little chance of reversing a federal judge's ruling against a new set of protections, which included a ban on abortion clinics within 1,500 feet of a church or school and a requirement that each abortion clinic have a formal agreement with a hospital to receive emergency patients. Also Nov. 4, another Mississippi law--which allowed students to lead group prayers in government school classrooms, at assemblies, and sports events--languished in court. Without comment, the Supreme Court let stand lower court rulings striking down the prayer law on the grounds that it is "unconstitutional" under current church-state legal precedents. The next day, Kirk Fordice, the state's governor, was critically injured when his vehicle veered off a rural stretch of interstate highway, flipped over several times, and caught fire. Mr. Fordice, who was driving alone, suffered fractured ribs, a collapsed left lung, a broken shoulder, and a severely lacerated ear. The first GOP governor of Mississippi since Reconstruction, Mr. Fordice endured heavy media criticism in 1992 when he told the GOP governors' conference that the United States is a "Christian nation."

According to script

Russian president Boris Yeltsin survived a seven-hour quintuple heart-bypass operation Nov. 5. Renowned American heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey, who was present during the operation, said the surgery was flawless: "If you scripted it you couldn't do better." Doctors said the operation will allow Mr. Yeltsin's heart, which had been functioning at just 20 percent of its capacity, to revert to normal function.

Killer storm

In India, a fierce cyclone with winds close to 100 miles per hour roared through the nation's southeast coastal area Nov. 7 destroying some 10,000 homes. More than a thousand people were missing. Relief officials feared the death toll could reach 2,000.

Apartheid of the womb

The government of South Africa, still fresh from throwing off the yoke of apartheid, moved Nov. 5 to make unborn children second-class citizens, as the nation's Senate approved a bill allowing abortion on demand. The bill, which President Nelson Mandela said he will sign, provoked widespread demonstrations. Doctors for Life, South Africa's largest pro-life organization, moved to challenge the new law in court.

In brief

In Eastern Europe, voters in Bulgaria and Romania drove more nails into the coffin of communism. Bulgarian voters soundly rejected an "ex-communist" candidate who sought the presidency; Romanian voters sided with parliamentary candidates who promised to speed up privatization. In the Romanian presidential race, the incumbent, a former communist, was forced into a Nov. 17 runoff with a reform candidate. But in the former Yugoslavia, Serbian president Slobodan Milosovic bucked the anti-communist/socialist tide, rolling to victory as part of a coalition that included his hard-line communist wife. Pakistan's president fired Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto--as well as her cabinet and National Assembly--Nov. 7, accusing her of sponsoring police death squads, allowing rampant corruption, and bringing Pakistan to the brink of bankruptcy. Ms. Bhutto vehemently denied the allegations. In Japan, meanwhile, the newly elected parliament gave Prime Minister Ryutaro Hoshimoto a second term. Canadian authorities announced Nov. 4 one of the largest seizures of pornographic materials ever in North America. Police investigating an international child pornography ring confiscated some 30,000 pornographic computer files, which included photos and video clips of children, some as young as age 2.