downticket

— Republicans may fare better in this round of reapportionment than they did twenty years ago because after four years in office, Huckabee is not the novice that White was, but hte pattern of electoral competition during the first decade of the twenty-first century will probably continue to look like that of the 1990s — slow, consistent, hard-fought gains for downticket Republicans — when, with a little foresight, electoral gains might have gone much easier for them.