Roll Call: Top 10 House Races in Last 50 Years

May 17, 2005

If you were to pick the “top” U.S. House race of the past 50 years, which would you pick?

Think fast because Roll Call, the political “bible”, estimates that there have been almost 11,000 Congressional races since 1955. Roll Call recently picked the “Top 10” House races in a special issue celebrating their 50 years of publication.

A campaign with ads produced by MMH senior partner Larry McCarthy came out #1. Roll Call rated George Nethercutt’s 1994 upset of Speaker of the House Tom Foley (WA-05) as the biggest win of all.

“If we were ranking races on this list, there is no dispute that this contest would come in at No. 1,” wrote Roll Call. “Nethercutt earned giant-killer status for life by becoming the first person to defeat a sitting Speaker since 1862 … the defeat of then-Speaker Tom Foley (D-WA) was clearly the hardest-fought contest with the most monumental outcome.”

Larry McCarthy engineered the 51- 49 upset with ads that hit Foley hard, attacking the Speaker for “sweetheart” stock deals. When Foley tried to rebut, McCarthy put Nethercutt on the air (with his dog Chestnut) saying Foley had accused him “of everything but kicking my dog.”

Return to MMH in the News Home