End of an Age Vibes as the DC GOP Hegemony Begins to Buckle

The 2006 midterm is often viewed today as the ur-wave election. Indeed, it’s part of the only example in recent decades of two successive wave elections, something that just 20 years later seems almost inconceivable. What’s less remembered is that almost to the very end of the cycle it was considered a very uncertain thing whether Democrats would be able to retake control of the House of Representatives, which they hadn’t controlled since the 1994 blowout. In fact, if you looked at the numbers — polls, special elections, etc. — it had been pretty clear what was coming for months. To explain this discrepancy — how official D.C. had missed what was coming — many focused on the Foley Scandal which broke in September 2006. (Mark Foley, a lightly closeted House Republican got in trouble for what we’d now call sexting with underage male pages in the House page program and was forced to resign.)