A big factor in Snowbarger's defeat was the Clinton impeachment. There was a huge anti-conservative backlash among upscale white urban liberals in 1998.
All five Republican Congressmen defeated for reelection that year (Snowbarger, Rick White, Bill Redmond, Jon Fox, & Mike Pappas) represented districts with a significant number of such voters.
"A big factor in Snowbarger's defeat was the Clinton impeachment. There was a huge anti-conservative backlash among upscale white urban liberals in 1998.
All five Republican Congressmen defeated for reelection that year (Snowbarger, Rick White, Bill Redmond, Jon Fox, & Mike Pappas) represented districts with a significant number of such voters."
Interesting theory, but Clinton wasn't impeached until after the election. The only House GOP casualties of impeachment came in 2000, when Jay Dickey was defeated in a Democrat-leaning southern Arkansas district (it actually voted for Gore over Bush while Bush was carrying the state) and when House Impeachment Manager Jim Rogan was defeated in a California district that had gone from solidly GOP to solidly Democrat within a decade.
Snowbarger was defeated mostly due to RINOs sitting on their hands or else voting for Moore, Redmond lost because his victory had been a fluke (he would have never won in the first place without a Green Party candidate taking over 10%), and White, Fox and Pappas each represented suburban districts that had become comfortably Democrat. While the potential impeachment was an issue used by Democrats in 1998, I don't think it was a major reason in any of those losses (although Pappas didn't help his chances any by reading a poem on the floor of the House praising Kenneth Starr).