Clipped Coattails

Nov. 2, 2004, proved rewarding for President George W. Bush as well as for two of his former Cabinet officials who also appeared on the 2004 ballot. In Florida, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez won the state's open Senate seat, while in Indiana, former Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels knocked off Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan.

In winning those seats, Martinez and Daniels continued a Republican trend that began in 2002, when two Cabinet secretaries from prior GOP administrations, Elizabeth Dole and Lamar Alexander, also won election to statewide office. They aren't the only former Cabinet officers to win elected office-as recently as 1996, former Veterans Administration chief Max Cleland won a Georgia Senate seat-but their victories highlight a curious and glaring feature about their Clinton administration counterparts. Despite the immeasurable political skills of former President Bill Clinton, the senior administration officials who served under him have posted a dismal record at the polls.

In 2002, two years after Vice President Al Gore failed in his own presidential bid, three Clinton Cabinet heads-HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo in New York, Labor Secretary Robert Reich in Massachusetts and Attorney General Janet Reno in Florida-all ran unsuccessfully for governor. So did White House Counselor Bill Curry, who lost a gubernatorial bid in Connecticut.

Erskine Bowles, Clinton's Small Business Administration director and later his chief of staff, was defeated by Elizabeth Dole in an open North Carolina Senate race despite spending about $7 million out of his own pocket. Gloria Tristani, a Clinton appointee to the Federal Communications Commission, failed to unseat New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici. In Arizona, Fred DuVal, Clinton's intergovernmental affairs director, fell short in a congressional primary. A handful of other, lower-profile Clinton officials and appointees also met with defeat at the ballot box in 2002, not to mention Clinton-era Democratic National Committee chair Steve Grossman, who ultimately withdrew from the Massachusetts gubernatorial race.

Last year, perhaps because the supply had been exhausted or perhaps out of caution, the flow of Clinton alumni running for office nearly came to a halt. But voters weren't any more receptive in 2004 than they were in 2002: Bowles, for example, lost another Senate bid by 52 percent to 47 percent.

To be sure, the Clinton team hasn't been completely shut out. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton famously made the leap from the East Wing to the Senate in 2000. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson easily captured the New Mexico governorship in 2002, while Rahm Emanuel, a senior White House adviser, won an Illinois election to Congress the same year.

But those wins fail to balance out the disproportionate number of defeats, which suggests that service in the Clinton administration is a political liability. Certainly Bowles, a Southern candidate who was twice bludgeoned by opponents over his Clinton connection, could reasonably apportion some of the blame to the former president.

Yet in most other contests, extraneous factors explain the string of losses. Cuomo, Reno and Reich, for example, faced stiff primary competition. Tristani ran against an entrenched incumbent. Other candidates, some of whom were running for the first time, found that their former boss made campaigning look far more effortless than it really is.

Since Bill Clinton hasn't appeared on a ballot since 1996, there's no way to quantify his effect in any of these races. Yet one conclusion is inescapable: His political popularity was nontransferable. An American original, his charisma and amazing gift for retail politicking were enough to carry him to two terms in the nation's highest office. But those same traits were so personal to him that they could not be imparted. Neither, it seems, could his administration's accomplishments-again, because the nature of his failures were so deeply personal.