By DAN JUNEAU

In 1994, Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party stunned the political world with their massive victory in the House elections.

In one fell swoop, Gingrich and company overturned decades of Democratic Party dominance of the U.S. House of Representatives by gaining more than 50 seats in that year’s election. The Democrats were shocked and dismayed.

While the leadership pondered what went wrong, the street fighters of the party – the labor unions – began to assemble and polish the weapon they believed would return total congressional control to the liberal Democratic establishment.

The weapon? Massive targeted voter registration drives and an election day “get out the vote” (GOTV) effort they believed would be unparalleled in the nation’s history.

Organized labor followed through on its promise and poured millions of dollars into GOTV. No other group or coalition came remotely close to putting up the cold hard cash and massive manpower that labor injected into the congressional races in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002.

At first, labor’s game plan seemed to be working.

Democratic victories in the House elections of 1996, 1998 and 2000 brought the party to the threshold of reclaiming a majority. After successfully escaping what could have been a disastrous round of congressional reapportionment battles in state legislatures throughout the country, the Democrats felt certain that House majority control would be theirs after the 2002 elections.

But a strange thing happened to the Democrats on their way back to a majority: Their most lethal weapon in prior elections – labor union financed GOTV – could not carry the day for them. In fact, early evidence indicates the Republicans may have had a decided advantage in voter turnout in the Nov. 5 elections.

What happened to the vaunted edge the unions gave the Democrats in voter turnout, and what does this election say about turnout implications for the future?

The first chink in the armor of “superior” voter turnout efforts by the Democrats had to do with the true strength of their base.

After their congressional debacle of 1994, Democrats pushed strongly for relaxed voter registration standards. They passed “Motor Voter” laws that allowed unregistered voters to register at driver’s license and welfare offices all over the nation.

The Democrats also engaged in massive voter registration drives, signing up individuals who had expressed no interest in voting in prior elections.

While Democrats added numbers to their base through such efforts, they were not adding committed voters. Shoving a voter registration card in someone’s face may make that person register to avoid embarrassment, but it will not necessarily make him or her a “voter.”

After spending millions to register new potential voters, the Democrats spent even larger sums trying to pull those somewhat disinterested voters out of their homes to go vote. In state after state, they were not as successful as they needed to be.

Republicans, on the other hand, utilized a more energized base to win many close races. The strong physical presence of a popular Republican president was a main catalyst in their success – but not the only one. Republicans have learned from their defeats at the hands of union GOTV efforts.

They spent more money – and employed it in a more sophisticated fashion – on voter turnout than ever before.

They will continue to do so. Mainline Republican voters, and the Independents and suburban swing voters who decide elections, can be reached much more effectively through the Internet and with targeted ads than Democratic base voters.

As long as the Republicans have a base that is easier to target and more inclined to vote, expect them to pour huge resources into stealing the GOTV advantage from the Democrats to increase their odds of winning.

DAN JUNEAU is the president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.