ly every Democratic Party candidate associated with President Bill Clinton's domestic policy agenda was either swept from office or defeated by a Republican incumbent. It was a political landslide repeated on the state level as well. Republican gubernatorial candidates won their states with only one major exception, the narrow defeat of George Bush's son, Jeb., by Florida's incumbent governor, Lawton Chiles. Another Bush progeny, George Jr., defeated Texas' respected governor Anne Richards, while one of the Democratic Party's star performers, Mario Cuomo, was brought down by an obscure Republican state senator, George Pataki. Even conservative print media was amazed at the field of challengers springing from nowhere; the National Review went so far as to headline a story on the New York contest with the title "George Who?" (Brookhiser, 1994, p. 22)
It was within this context that Michael Huffington made his appearance upon the national scene to challenge Dianne Feinstein. Although she had only served out the final third of a mid-term-election senatorial seat, Feinstein's two years in office had established her as a major player in Washington political circles (Zeiger, 1994, p. 11). Moreover, she is an established California politician, having served as the mayor of San Francisco and competed in two high-profile races for senator and governor against Pete Wilson, both of whom he won. Michael Huffington, by contrast, had only two years political experience to his credit, from 1992-94 as the U.S. Representative from Santa Barbara, and those were marked by a low profile and minimal participation (Blumenthal, 1994, pp. 59-60). Nevertheless, as noted earlier, the 1994 elections presented a window of opportunity that Huffington chose to open.
1994, in fact, has turned out to be a good year for candidates without experience - for experience has been reinterpreted to the electorate as "political baggage" (Zeiger, pp. 11-12). Mic...