GOP tradition fades in New England

updated 9:00 p.m. ET Nov. 9, 2008

HARTFORD, Conn. - A generation ago the Republican Party was the dominant political force in New England, populating the region's congressional delegations with moderates like Connecticut's Lowell P. Weicker Jr. and Rhode Island's John Chafee.

But today's GOP, led by a more socially conservative wing of the party, is finding votes harder to come by.

Voters on Tuesday cast out Connecticut's veteran Rep. Chris Shays, the last New England Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives. Sen. John Sununu was voted out in New Hampshire, leaving that state's Judd Gregg and Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe as the only Republicans among the region's 12 senators.

Shays' loss to former Goldman Sachs executive Jim Himes marks the first time since 1969 that southwestern Connecticut will be represented by a Democrat in the House.

"I felt that we were going to win this, I really did," Shays told supporters. "I felt that people were so good to me, they were so nice to me. But they were deciding they were going to go the other way."

New England's decision to "go the other way" in recent elections is a dramatic transformation for a region considered a Republican stronghold a generation ago.

GOP and New England
The Republican Party and New England have a long history together.

At their first presidential convention, in 1856, Republicans nominated John C. Fremont on a platform of abolishing slavery in the territories — a widely held view in the North. While Fremont lost, he carried 11 Northern states. Later, Abraham Lincoln captured the presidency by winning 18 Northern states.

By the late 1940s, Republicans held 21 of 28 of New England's seats in the House of Representatives. But the turning point came in 1964, when the Republicans nominated conservative Barry Goldwater for president, said Gary Rose, a political science professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.

Known for being fiscally conservative but more socially liberal, Northeast moderates — dubbed the Rockefeller Republicans after the former New York governor — started to be eclipsed by the more socially conservative wing of the party.

"The eastern establishment got weaker and weaker," Rose said. "Today, there's really no eastern establishment to speak of."

Chafee's son, Lincoln, was appointed to the Senate in 1999 after his father's death and was elected in 2000 to a six-year term. A moderate like his father, Chafee was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against authorizing the use of force in Iraq. But he was defeated by a Democrat in 2006.

That same year, Reps. Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons of Connecticut also were defeated by Democrats, buoyed by anti-Iraq-war and anti-President Bush sentiment.

"There is no longer, to speak of, a moderate voice within the party," Rose said. "It's a party that's becoming more narrow and there's really no sense of compromise within the party."

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