Americans appear ready to sweep a lot of Democrats into office on November 4. Not only does Barack Obama maintain a solid lead in the popular vote and electoral vote estimates, several Senate races that appeared safe Republican holds a few months ago are now considered tossups.
Polling is harder to come by in House races, but here too there is scattered evidence of a coming Democratic tsunami. Having already lost three special Congressional elections in red districts this year, House Republicans are now scrambling to defend many entrenched incumbents.
In this diary, I hope to convince you of three things:
1. Some Republicans who never saw it coming are going to be out of a job in two weeks.
On a related note,
2. Even the smartest experts cannot always predict which seats offer the best pickup opportunities.
For that reason,
3. Activists should put resources behind many under-funded challengers now, instead of going all in for a handful of Democratic candidates.
Allow me to elaborate.
1. A lot of seemingly safe incumbents have lost in wave elections, even in districts tilted toward their own party.
The Republican landslide of 1994 claimed my own Congressman Neal Smith, a 36-year incumbent who had a senior position on the House Appropriations Committee. Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley spent “what aides say may total $1.5 million to $2 million, a staggering amount for a House race” in 1994, but he still lost to George Nethercutt in Washington’s fifth district.
Many of you probably remember long-serving House and Senate Democrats in your own states who were swept away in the Reagan landslide of 1980.
By the same token, a lot of entrenched Republicans lost their seats during the 1974 post-Watergate wave. That was the year Iowans elected Tom Harkin and Berkley Bedell in the fifth and sixth Congressional districts, where both candidates had lost elections in 1972.
2. Even the political pros and the best analysts cannot always handicap Congressional races accurately, especially House races where public polls are scarce.
In 2006, could anyone have predicted that Lois Murphy (who almost beat Republican Congressman Jim Gerlach two years earlier) would fall short again in PA-06, while the massively under-funded Carol Shea-Porter would defeat Jeb Bradley in NH-01?
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee poured millions into IL-06 in 2006, only to see Tammy Duckworth lose to Peter Roskam. Meanwhile, Larry Kissell didn’t get the time of day from the DCCC and came just a few hundred votes short of beating Republican incumbent Robin Hayes in NC-08.
My point is that we can’t always know where our best chances lie. Sometimes a stealth candidate can catch an incumbent napping in a race that hasn’t been targeted by either party.
Look at the seats Republicans are now worried about, according to Politico:
GOP Reps. John B. Shadegg of Arizona, Lee Terry of Nebraska, Henry Brown Jr. of South Carolina and Dan Lungren of California are all fighting for their political lives, a reversal of fortunes that has caught even the most astute campaign observers by surprise.
Markos commented on the Politico piece,
Shadegg’s AZ-03 is R+5.9.
Terry’s NE-02 is R+9.0.
Brown’s SC-01 is R+9.6
Lungren’s CA-03 is R+6.7.
We haven’t had any public polls in Iowa’s fourth or fifth district races, but last week Republican incumbent Tom Latham (IA-04, D+0) released his first negative television ad, suggesting that his internal polls may show Becky Greenwald gaining on him.
I can’t tell you today who will win on November 4, but I guarantee you that some Democrats in “tossup” seats will lose, even as other Democrats take over “likely Republican” or “safe Republican” districts. Which brings me to my third point.
3. We need to expand the field of Republican-held districts we’re playing for.
Thankfully, the bad old days when the DCCC would target 22 races, hoping to win 15, are just a memory. The DCCC has put more than 60 Republican-held seats in the “Red to Blue” category. Not all of those seats have seen media buys or other significant financial investment from the DCCC, however.
Plus, as I mentioned above, Dan Lungren is sweating bullets in CA-03, which isn’t even on the Red to Blue list.
In 2006 we won at least two seats that were not in the Red to Blue program (IA-02 and NH-01) and came oh, so close in NC-08.
The bottom line is that a lot of Democratic challengers with the potential to win are not getting the support of the DCCC. This post at Swing State Project lists lots of seats once thought safe for Republicans, which are becoming competitive.
Where can netroots fundraising have the most impact? In my view, it’s in the winnable districts where there will be no influx of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the DCCC or other outside groups. Many of these are districts where an additional $50,000 or even $25,000 can make the difference.
The mother of all moneybombs dumped three-quarters of a million dollars into Elwyn Tinklenberg’s campaign in 24 hours over the weekend. It was a strong statement against the intolerance and bigotry Michelle Bachmann (MN-06) displayed on Hardball.
While I respect the enthusiasm, I can’t agree with those who are still asking the netroots to give to Tinklenberg, even after he’s collected more than $750,000 and the DCCC has promised to put $1 million into this race. Tinklenberg now has the resources to run an aggressive paid media and GOTV effort for the next two weeks. He probably has more money than he can spend effectively with so little time left.
Raising $50,000 for each of ten good challengers would be a better use of our energy than continuing to push activists to give to Tinklenberg.
Remember, few challengers are able to match incumbents dollar-for-dollar, but that doesn’t mean they can’t win. They don’t need to match incumbent spending, but they do need the resources to improve their name recognition and capitalize on the Democratic wave.
Which House races should we target for a moneybomb? I would suggest looking at the list of candidates on the Blue America ’08 page at Act Blue, as well as the candidates endorsed by Russ Feingold’s Progressive Patriots Fund. We have good reason to believe that those candidates will stand up for progressive values.
I would then pick a few Democrats on those lists who are not benefiting from large independent expenditures by the DCCC or others.
Our money will go further in districts with relatively inexpensive paid media.
I would also favor candidates taking on particularly odious incumbents, such as Dennis Shulman (running against Scott Garrett in NJ-05) and Debbie Cook (facing Dana Rohrbacher in CA-46). RDemocrat has written a book’s worth of material on why we should support Heather Ryan against “Exxon Ed” Whitfield in KY-01.
And what kind of Iowan would I be if I didn’t mention Rob Hubler, who is taking on Steve King in IA-05? My fellow Iowa blogger 2laneIA published this comprehensive diary showing that if we’re talking about the most ignorant and bigoted wingnuts in Congress, King gives Michelle Bachmann a run for her money. Click the link to read all about King’s “greatest hits,” including his suggestion that we electrify the border fence with Mexico like we do “with livestock,” his prediction that terrorists will be “dancing in the streets” if Obama becomes president, and his pride in working to scale back funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (which he calls Socialist Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents). King considers his work to reduce SCHIP funding a “key moment” in his Congressional career.
Amazingly, there’s even more to dislike about King than 2laneIA had room to mention in that piece. For instance, while still a state senator, King was a leading advocate for Iowa’s “official English” law, which was adopted in 2002. Then he filed a lawsuit in 2007 to stop the Iowa Secretary of State’s office from providing voter information in languages besides English. It’s not for nothing that Ann Coulter calls King “one of my favorites.”
Hubler is a good progressive who spoke out against the FISA bill and supports the Responsible Plan for Iraq. I just found out yesterday that during the 1980s he was INFACT’s national director of the boycott against Nestle. Hubler also happens to be running a great campaign, but he is not getting much outside help except from Feingold’s Progressive Patriots Fund, which has sent an organizer to work on the campaign.
Two dozen House Democrats already represent districts with a partisan voting index of R+5 or worse. We should be able to increase that number in two weeks and send home Republicans who didn’t even realize they were in trouble.
Few people have enough money to donate to every worthy Democratic candidate. But if the netroots could raise more than three-quarters of a million dollars for Elwyn Tinklenberg in just over 48 hours, we ought to be able to raise $50,000 each for ten good challengers, whose races are relatively low-profile.
Who’s with me on this, and which districts should we target?
I don’t know why but I’m really bullish about NJ-05. I have many friends in that district and they all agree on one thing: Garrett has to go. However, I don’t know if Shulman can break through the heavy Republican lean of Sussex and Warren counties.
myself wonder how you figure KY-01 is or can be competitive.
Here’s a taste of the financial numbers.
$8,000 to $900,000
I received an email from Debbie Cook’s campaign saying they have stacks of material to mail out, they just need donations for postage. It would be a shame to let it just sit there, when Republicans in Sacramento have said this is a close race. Imagine, another blue congressional district in Orange County.
I agree with some of these seats which are not currently being contested. I also agree that Garrett may indeed be a surprise upset in two weeks. Hubler is running a grassroots campaign and the DCCC is overlooking this race for that reason. Other Republicans that have weak showings are Buyer (IN), Keller (FL), Bachmann (MN), Bartlett (MD), McHenry (NC), and Dent (PA). However, I do not think that Heather Ryan has a chance. It’s hard to be pro-choice in a conservative district. It simply will not materialize.
is a great idea. Every House seat counts the same, whether they are in cheap or expensive media markets. This may be our last shot at many of these crappy GOP incumbents for a decade or more.
2 candidates I would suggest who could use a late cash infusion are:
Daniel Johnson, NC-10, challenging Patrick McHenry
Roy Carter, NC-5, challenging Virginia Foxx
McHenry and Foxx are especially vile members of the GOP caucus. It is embarrassing to have them representing North Carolina in Washington.
I strongly second desmoinesdem’s support for Rob Hubler. Steve King is my current representative. I want overthrow the King and replace him with Rob who will serve the people of the District. King continues to spew his vitriol as shown in an article just published today.
Could be a mistake to try to pick out individual candidates to back. Every one of us can be an expert on who “doesn’t have a chance in hell” — and due to the power of self-fulfilling prophecy, we’re almost always right. Or in another way to play this dead-end game, we can all be experts on who doesn’t really need our money, and urge donations go elsewhere (a role I’ve played in a Comment above).
But what desmoinesdem is proposing a kind of venture capital fund of longshots, the political equivalent of high tech start-ups, if you will.
Go to Silicon Valley looking to invest $50,000 in a bunch of nerds with an idea for a world-changing gimmick, you’ll lose your money, say, 19 times out of 20. But if you luck upon one winning idea and team — say, Yahoo or e-Bay or Google, back in the day — you can see your money multiply 50 times.
And if a bunch of us pool our funds and invest in 20 start-ups, then the one winner more than makes up for the 19 losers and makes us all rich. No single investor has to pick out one single stock, we invest in a fund knowing that some will be losers but hope that a few will be big winners.
The political venture fund would put, say, $5,000 or $50,000 into each of 20 very long shot candidates, all of whom would otherwise probably lose. If one or two of them win, the venture fund gets a return about as good as the DCCC, which seems to think that dropping $500,000 or a cool million on one candidate is a good investment. If three or four of them win, then we might beat D-Trip’s performance with an enormous return on our money.
There’s also opportunity to outperform the usual House race by picking longshots, like Rob Hubler, in western Iowa, where taking down the incumbent in a red state is worth more than picking up an open seat in New Jersey or Ohio.
Kos has been pretty good at using the Orange to Blue program in this way, but O2B is not a pure venture play. It has a broader, dare I say more diffused goal. O2B likes “netroots-backed” candidates, which allowed a love affair with Al Franken. A worthy candidate, he’s a celebrity with a prodigious fund-raising ability, and in no way a long shot. This campaign would not belong in a pure venture fund or aggressive growth portfolio. And Dan Maffei in NY-25, Eric Massa in NY-29, and especially Darcy Burner in WA-08 are legacy members of O2B, carrying over from ’06 their now well-funded campaigns, and they are hardly longshots this time around.
Also, it’s too easy to get emotional and squander the contributions. I deeply regret the many thousands of dollars raised on the blogs for a grudge match in a primary in VA-11 — who remembers and who cares, now that we’re all supporting the winner. It’s also a question whether a political venture fund should be in both House and Senate races; a modest donation makes a bigger impact in a smaller, i.e., House race.
Overall, O2B is probably the model for this sort of thing. Desmoinesdem would just push the concept a bit further by looking to pick the longer of the longshots. But I just don’t know if the O2B model venture fund is feasible without tens of thousands of blog readers behind it to raise the big bucks. Looks like it’s been hard enough to raise a few hundred dollars for Ron Hubler from diaries alone.
Even a little money can make a huge difference. Longtime Daily Kos diarist Barry Welch appealed for funds on that site and reported back that the $600 he got allowed him to pay for the radio time for the four days before the election in nine counties in his Indiana district. Damn, that’s worth doing even if Barry is a very long shot in a deep red district in a traditionally red state. Of course, early money is like yeast; it pays for the good website, the professional photos of the candidate, computers and office space, etc. But late money doesn’t have to be wasted if the campaign has been building a volunteer base.
But it should be easier to promote the concept of a venture fund — looking for a handful of longshots to win, out of a much larger portfolio of possibilities picked by a small team of experts– than to try here to draw up a list of names we can all agree to support. And maybe we are too late in the game for another O2B type pool of funds to be raised and spent effectively. But we should prepare for the 2010 cycle.
The concept of a portfolio of longshots is most appealing in a wave year, but it is probably valid in most elections.