[2] George W. Bush's election as Governor of Texas laid the groundwork for his successful campaign for president in 2000.
Clinton's first two years in office saw a tax increase and the passage of an assault weapons ban; he then allowed homosexuals to serve in the military, all of which sparked backlash.
His push for universal healthcare became 'the straw that broke the camel's back', as the GOP ran heavily against it in the midterms and is argued to be the main reason for the Democrats' significant losses in the 1994 elections.
In the Senate elections, Republicans successfully defended all of their seats and won eight from the Democrats, defeating incumbent Senators Harris Wofford (Pennsylvania) and Jim Sasser (Tennessee), in addition to picking up six open seats in Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.
Republicans won the national popular vote for the House of Representatives by a margin of 6.8 percentage points and picked up 54 seats.
Written by Larry Hunter, who was aided by Newt Gingrich, Robert Walker, Richard Armey, Bill Paxon, Tom DeLay, John Boehner and Jim Nussle, and in part using text from former President Ronald Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address, the Contract detailed the actions the Republicans promised to take if they became the majority party in the United States House of Representatives, last achieved in 1952.
In 2014, historian John Steele Gordon, writing in The American, an online magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute, said that "(t)he main reason (for the Republican victory in 1994) was surely the Contract with America..." in part because it "nationalized the election, making it one of reform versus business as usual.