Author: Crisitunity

Get ready for a Texas-sized primary battle: it’s been long threatened, but now Kay Bailey Hutchison has launched a committee to explore a run for governor in 2010. (And, of course, by the time you’re officially “exploring” (i.e. starting to raise funds), you’re actually pretty damn well committed to seeing it through.) As an added edge for Hutchison, as a federal official she’s still able to raise money during the Texas legislative session, while Perry (a state official) cannot.

This creates the prospect for more interesting internecine warfare between Republicans (with Perry expected to line up social conservative support and Hutchison carrying the flag for the Chamber of Commerce types and what otherwise passes for moderates in Texas). But even more significantly, if KBH becomes governor, that leaves an open senate seat. (Unless Texas law has changed recently, the seat would be subject to short-term appointment followed by a special election… that’s how KBH became senator in the first place, beating the hapless Bob Krueger in a 1993 special election, who had been appointed by Ann Richards to replace Lloyd Bentsen, who retired to become Clinton’s Treasury Secretary.)

Houston mayor Bill White, the Dems’ best hope in Texas, is probably also watching carefully, hoping to jump into whatever race Hutchison(almost undisputedly Texas’s most popular politican) doesn’t jump into. If KBH becomes governor, White may actually have a shot in a special election for an open Senate seat against a generic R.

Add one more to the list of potential Democratic open seats in the House to be filled by special election soon: CA-31 in downtown Los Angeles. Xavier Becerra, House member since 1992, has, in something of a surprise pick, been asked by the Obama administration to be U.S. Trade Representative. (Anonymous sources seem to conflict over whether or not he has already accepted.)

A vacancy in the Fightin’ 31st will not pose much of a threat; it’s D+30 and 70% Hispanic. State Senator Gilbert Cedillo (SD-22) seems to overlap much of this same turf, but this is also the turf of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (AD-46), who was just term-limited out of his Assembly position and may well be looking for something new to do.

If anything, the interesting fight over the musical chairs will be in the House leadership, where Becerra was just elected vice chair of the Democratic caucus, the #5 role on the leadership totem pole, possibly meaning more reshuffling involving Chris Van Hollen ditching the DCCC to become vice-chair, or perhaps Debbie Wasserman Schultz leapfrogging into the job, or perhaps another challenge by Marcy Kaptur (who was defeated by Becerra for the job several weeks ago).

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (11/23-25, likely voters):

Harry Reid (D-inc): 46

Jon Porter (R): 40

(MoE: ±4%)

Looks like Nevadans are feeling kind of lukewarm about Harry Reid these days. (“Lukewarm” and “Harry Reid” in the same sentence? Wow, I’ll bet that’s never happened before…) In a prospective 2010 matchup, he’s beating Jon Porter (who recently got bounced from his NV-03 seat by Dina Titus) by six points, although he’s well below the 50% comfort level.

The numbers below the fold look worse for Reid; his approval/disapproval rating is only 38/54 (luckily, Porter’s are little better at 40/39). When asked whether they’d choose to reelect Reid or consider replacing him, respondents say 32% reelect, 23% consider someone else, and 41% say replace him. Against a strong challenger with a statewide reputation, Reid could face some real trouble, leaving him possibly the only endangered Dem-held seat in 2010. However, between the badly depleted Republican bench in Nevada (Porter may truly be their best bet, as Lt. Governor Brian Krolicki may be looking at indictment rather than a run against Reid, and Rep. Dean Heller is likely to either stay in place or go for Governor) and Nevada’s rapid demographics-driven bluening, this race could just as easily turn into a non-issue.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (11/17-19, likely voters, 11/10-12 in parentheses):

Jim Martin (D): 45 (46)

Saxby Chambliss (R-inc): 51 (49)

(MoE: ±4%)

The newest R2K poll of the Georgia senate runoff shows Jim Martin falling further behind incumbent Saxby Chambliss at 51-45, but Markos points out an interesting detail: the previous week’s poll, which was 49-46, found that the respondents had voted 49-47 for Chambliss in the general election (which closely mirrored the actual 49-46 result). This sample, however, finds that the respondents voted 52-44 in the general, suggesting a more Republican-leaning batch.

The fluctuation may also reflect some difficulty in pinning down who exactly fits the ‘likely voter’ mold for a runoff election: is it anyone who voted in November, or only someone who votes with regularity? Martin probably owes his close showing in the general to high turnout from young and/or African-American voters with sporadic voting track records but who were highly motivated to come out for Obama… and Obama seems hesitant to expend too much political capital on this race right now. On the other hand, with Republicans probably demoralized and undermotivated to return to the polls, and with a lot of Obama staffers deployed to the state, it’s at least possible Martin could pull out the upset through disparities in ground game.

Quinnipiac (11/13-17, registered voters):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 42

Christopher Christie (R): 36

(MoE: ±2.2%)

Oh no!!! Look how close the New Jersey governor’s race is! I sure hope the Republican Governors’ Association doesn’t pour millions and millions of dollars into this race in order to push their super-strong candidate over the finish line! [/wink]

In all seriousness, Chris Christie, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, would be a good recruit for the Republicans (he isn’t an announced candidate, but is widely mentioned as the leading GOP contender); Christie has made a name for himself in local media by cutting a swath through corrupt Jersey politicians from both sides of the aisle. Coupled with mediocre favorables for Corzine (43 approve/46 disapprove in the same sample, with 51% saying he does not deserve to be re-elected), this might give Democrats some pause… except in the context of how verbose New Jerseyites are in expressing their contempt for their elected officials, and the rate at which New Jersey Democratic officeholders tend to overperform their early polls, those numbers put Corzine on track toward a convincing victory next year.

The supposed heir apparent to Joe Biden’s Senate seat, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, has pulled his name from consideration for the soon-to-be-open seat, according to Chris Cillizza.

This actually may not come as that big a surprise, as Beau Biden will be deploying to Iraq for a year as a military lawyer and will not be available to serve in the Senate during that time. Importantly, the younger Biden did not rule out running for the seat in the 2010 special election, when he would be done with his military obligation.

So, this really doesn’t alter the conundrum that we talked about last week facing incoming governor Jack Markell (or outgoing governor Ruth Ann Minner, depending on the order in which the handovers happen): does Lt. Governor (and gubernatorial primary loser) John Carney get the nod, with the expectation of a permanent post, or does an elder statesman placeholder get the seat for two years, followed by Beau Biden (or a battle royale between Biden and Carney)?

More vote counts have been released in the Alaska Senate race, and they show Mark Begich building slightly on his 814-point lead from yesterday.

Mark Begich (D): 137,527 (47%)

Ted Stevens (R): 136,466 (47%)

Bob Bird (AIP): 11,933 (4%)

Fredrick Haase (L): 2,215 (0%)

Ted Gianoutsos (NA): 1,218 (0%)

It’s unclear if there’s going to be a second wave of results for the day (according to the release schedule, this should be all for today), but if this is everything for today, then Begich is in really good shape. Today was the day for the counting from the Mat-Su Valley (home turf for Sarah Palin and the state’s most conservative core).

Today the state expects to count all absentee and questioned ballots left from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and northern and western Alaska. Elections officials will also count most, if not all, Fairbanks ballots today. Tuesday is the ballot count for Anchorage and Southeast, where the majority of outstanding votes lie.

If Begich emerged from Mat-Su counting day with more rather than fewer votes, with areas like more Begich-friendly areas still on the table, then he’s starting to look like he’s in the clear. The question is starting to be whether he can get above the 0.5% threshold to avoid a state-paid recount.

UPDATE: It looks like a few more votes trickled in; at 11 pm Eastern, the lead is now 1,022 votes.

The Center for Responsive Politics has an extremely interesting post today about how many victors in congressional races outspent the losers. The answer, in case you didn’t guess, is almost all of them (93% in the House).

There were 28 House races where the candidate who spent less money still won the race. (This appears to discount the role of third party expenditures, as you’ll see in the case of LA-06, where the role of Cassidy was to spend little while outside parties poured in the cash. Perhaps a project for a future day will be to add IEs to these numbers and re-order them.) All of the races you will recognize from our competitive House Ratings list. If you want to see the list in its entirety, please click through to their story… but I thought I’d add a wrinkle and rate the races not according to how much was spent but according to the winner/loser ratio. In other words, which victorious candidates won most efficiently? Here are the top 10:

District	Winner	$$$	Loser	$$$	Ratio
GA-13	Scott (D)	$842K	Honeycutt (R)	$4,406K	19.1%
LA-06	Cassidy (R)	$620K	Cazayoux (D)	$2,279K	27.2%
PA-03	Dahlkemper (D)	$712K	English (R)	$1,905K	37.4%
FL-16	Rooney (R)	$1,021K	Mahoney (D)	$2,418K	42.2%
SC-01	Brown (R)	$702K	Ketner (D)	$1,641K	42.8%
NC-08	Kissell (D)	$1,100K	Hayes (R)	$2,509K	43.8%
AL-02	Bright (D)	$850K	Love (R)	$1,929K	44.1%
OR-05	Schrader (D)	$1,030K	Erickson (R)	$2,308K	44.7%
NJ-07	Lance (R)	$942K	Stender (D)	$2,092K	45.0%
VA-02	Nye (D)	$733K	Drake (R)	$1,372K	53.4%

In the Senate, there were only two races where the more frugal candidate won: North Carolina and New Hampshire. New Hampshire was very close (99%), but Kay Hagan won this one on the cheap: $6,014K to Dole’s $15,716K, or 38% (although, again, you should factor in the millions dumped into NC by the DSCC).

One other lesson from this story: self-funding doesn’t work. 49 Congressional candidates spend $500,000 of their own money, and of them, only 6 House candidates and 1 Senate candidate won. Perhaps the saddest case of this was Sandy Treadwell, who ran against Kirsten Gillibrand in NY-20. Treadwell poured in at least $5.9 million of his own money. (Gillibrand spent $3.6 million, but only $250 of that was her own money.) The return on Treadwell’s investment: priceless. If by ‘priceless,’ you mean losing to Gillibrand by a 23-point margin.

There’s already been a lot of analysis of the evolving political trends from 2004 to 2008 (including from me, although still nothing beats that widely-circulated New York Times county-change map) based on preliminary election returns. But with the exception of dreaminonempty‘s remarkable and must-see map diary over at Open Left, no one has really focused much on what longer-term trends look like, especially at the county-by-county level.

One question I was left with after this election was what areas have changed so much that they used to stick with the Democrats (or Republicans) even in their absolute darkest hour, but now favor Republicans (or Democrats). The darkest hour for Democrats was a pretty easy choice (Walter Mondale); for Republicans, I was initially thinking of Barry Goldwater, but his pre-Civil Rights Act map is just too different from today’s map to be useful, so I settled for the GOP’s second biggest recent failure, Bob Dole.

As I suspected, Mondale/McCain counties were clustered mostly in the same Appalachian swath where Obama underperformed the most at the statewide level; much of this transition is very recent, as a number of these counties (especially eastern Kentucky and western Pennsylvania) even went for Kerry. There were also some southern counties that are around 50/50 white/black, where enough white voters used to be yellow-dog Dixiecrats to put even Mondale barely over the edge, but collapses in white rural southern voting for Dems at the presidential level has allowed Republicans to take those counties more recently.

To my surprise, there were actually more Mondale/McCain counties than there were Dole/Obama counties. (In case any righties are trolling this article looking for some scraps of solace, there’s your takeaway: OBAMA UNDERPERFORMS MONDALE!!!) There are 97 Mondale/McCain counties, and only 85 Dole/Obama counties (or independent cities).

However, there’s a key difference. While the Mondale/McCain counties are rural and very small (and generally stagnating or getting smaller), the Dole/Obama counties include many of the nation’s largest population centers. The Mondale/McCain counties have a median 2000 population of 16,000, while the Dole/Obama counties have a median population of 103,000. The sum population of all Mondale/McCain counties? 3,197,000. For all Dole/Obama counties: 25,846,000. There’s pretty much the story of the 2008 election right there.

More specifically, there are only five Mondale/McCain counties with a 2000 census population over 100,000. Four are collar counties around Pittsburgh (Beaver, Fayette, Washington, and Westmoreland). These are counties that used to be manufacturing and coal-based union strongholds, hence the willingness to vote Dem even in the face of all that was Mondale. Unfortunately, these counties all share one common thread: little in-migration, and an elderly population aging in place (all of these counties are 17-18% 65+, a rate unseen pretty much anywhere else other than Florida)… and these counties become both smaller and more conservative each year as former unionists die off. (Bear in mind John Murtha’s comments too, as most of these counties are the core of his district.)

The fifth county is Anoka County in the Minneapolis suburbs, where there may have been something of a favorite son effect in 1984, but this is also an area where exurbanification and the mega-church religious right seems to be edging out traditional rural Lutheran Minnesota values (as seen by this county’s choice of congresscritter: Michelle Bachmann).

By contrast, the four largest Dole/Obama counties all have a population over one million: Harris (Houston) and Dallas in Texas, and San Diego and Riverside in California. These are all counties that are young, fast-growing, and most ominously for the GOP, are on the verge of tipping to Hispanic pluralities in the next decade.

Now maybe that can be shrugged off because California and Texas weren’t in play this year, but in the 800,000-1,000,000 population range are a number of swing counties in swing states that basically swung the election: Orange County, Florida (Orlando), Marion County, Indiana (Indianapolis), Hamilton County, Ohio (Cincinnati), and Fairfax County, Virginia (DC suburbs). And below that, fully 43 of the 85 Dole/Obama counties have populations over 100,000. Even the loss of the Pittsburgh-area collar counties can be more than compensated, population-wise, with the four eastern Pennsylvania counties that went Dole/Obama: Berks, Chester, Dauphin, and Monroe.

Here’s a map of the Mondale/McCain counties (in red) and the Dole/Obama counties (in blue):

Continue over the flip for full lists of the counties…

Mondale/McCain counties

AL: Colbert, Jackson, Lawrence

AZ: Greenlee

GA: Crawford, Greene, Marion, McIntosh, Mitchell, Taylor, Telfair, Webster, Williamson

IL: Franklin

IA: Dallas, Davis, Monroe, Ringgold

KY: Ballard, Breathitt, Floyd, Harlan, Knott, Letcher, Livingston, Lyon, Magoffin, Marshall, Morgan, Muhlenberg, Perry, Pike, Union, Webster

LA: Allen, Pointe Coupee, West Baton Rouge, West Feliciana

MI: Keweenaw

MN: Anoka, Chisago, Jackson, Pennington

MO: Mississippi, Oregon, Reynolds

NC: Tyrrell

OK: Coal, Haskell, Hughes

PA: Armstrong, Beaver, Fayette, Greene, Lawrence, Washington, Westmoreland

SC: Edgefield

TN: Benton, Cannon, DeKalb, Franklin, Grundy, Henry, Hickman, Humphreys, Lake, Lincoln, Overton, Perry, Robertson, Smith, Stewart, Trousdale, Van Buren, Warren, White

TX: Cottle, Dickens, Fisher, Morris, Newton, Orange, Robertson, Stonewall, Swisher

VA: Buchanan, Dickenson, Russell

WV: Brooke, Clay, Fayette, Hancock, Lincoln, Logan, Mingo, Wyoming

Dole/Obama counties

AL: Jefferson

CA: Alpine, Butte, Mono, Nevada, Riverside, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Trinity

CO: Arapahoe, Jefferson, La Plata, Larimer, Ouray, San Juan

FL: Orange

GA: Douglas, Newton, Rockdale

ID: Teton

IL: Boone, Carroll, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, McHenry, McLean, Sangamon, Stephenson

IN: Marion, Tippecanoe

MD: Charles

MI: Berrien, Clinton, Eaton, Jackson, Kent, Leelanau

MN: Olmsted

MS: Oktibbeha

MT: Lake, Lewis & Clark, Gallatin

NE: Douglas, Lancaster

NV: Carson City, Washoe

NH: Belknap, Carroll

NJ: Somerset

NM: Los Alamos

NC: Forsyth, Pitt, Wake, Watauga, Wilson

ND: Cass, Grand Forks

OH: Hamilton

PA: Berks, Chester, Dauphin, Monroe

SC: Barnwell, Charleston

SD: Brookings

TX: Dallas, Harris

UT: Grand

VA: Albemarle, Chesapeake, Danville, Fairfax, Fairfax city, Harrisonburg, Henrico, Loudoun, Manassas, Manassas Park, Prince William, Staunton, Winchester

WA: Island

WI: Calumet, Waupaca

Say it ain’t so, Joe! You’re leaving us after only… uh… 36 years? Biden’s departure from the Senate leaves some pretty big shoes to fill, and while filling Obama’s Senate seat has been a hot topic of discussion here at SSP for the last week (and even Rahm Emanuel’s seat, for that matter), we haven’t talked about the situation in Delaware much.

There may, at this point, be more uncertainty about who gets to pick the replacement than who gets picked… which is odd, because it’s quite certain that Jack Markell will take over from Ruth Ann Minner as governor. Here’s the problem, according to ABC’s Political Radar:

Just prior to Tuesday’s election, Biden told a local television station that he does not want to resign his Senate seat until the moment he were to become vice president.

Delaware has not determined the time of its Jan. 20, 2009 gubernatorial nomination. But Gov. Minner’s office tells ABC News that the decision is traditionally made by the incoming governor.

So, who gets to replace Biden depends on when Jack Markell decides he wants to have his own inauguration ceremony on the 20th. If it’s before the presidential inauguration (and if Biden gets his wish of remaining in office until the moment of becoming Veep), Markell will get to appoint the replacement. (The tea leaves seem to indicate this will happen, as the ABC story cites Markell’s spokesperson as citing Gov. Pierre DuPont IV’s 12:01 am swearing-in in 1989 as precedent for doing it early in the day.)

Who, then, does Markell (or Minner) appoint? One obvious possibility is Minner herself, but Minner is 73 and has indicated that she is not interested in the job.

The most talked-about option seems to be Beau Biden, the Delaware Attorney General who also just happens to also be Joe Biden’s son. There’s one problem: Beau Biden is a member of the military, and is currently training prior to a one-year deployment to Iraq (as a lawyer, not as a front-line soldier). Military law (as well as his inability to be present for votes) would prevent him from serving in the Senate during his deployment, which makes his appointment right now impossible or at least ineffective. In addition, Biden Jr. has seemed leery of appointment in the past, perhaps unwilling to get tarred with the brush of nepotism; in 2005, Minner offered him the Attorney General post when it was vacant, but he chose to wait until 2006 to run for it and win it.

As a result, the possibility of a placeholder occupying the seat for two years, with the understanding that Biden Jr. would run for it in the 2010 special election, seems somewhat likely. Supreme Court Justice Myron Steele, who is close to Minner, is often mentioned in that context (although it’s possible Minner herself could keep the seat warm for two years). Secretary of State Harriet Windsor Smith’s name also crops up, at least in the placeholder context.

The other likeliest outcome is the appointment of Lt. Gov. Jack Carney, who lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary to Markell. The possibility of appointing the gubernatorial loser to the Senate seat was occasionally broached during the campaign; Carney, however, made it clear that if appointed to the Senate seat, he would want it to be on a permanent basis, not as a seat-filler for Biden Jr.

Finally, as an out-of-the-box choice, Chris Cillizza says that some Beltway chatter is talking up Obama campaign manager David Plouffe for the job, who grew up and went to college in Delaware.

Regardless of whether the 2010 candidate is Biden or Carney, the 2010 race could turn into a very competitive race if Delaware’s popular at-large GOP representative Mike Castle ran for the Senate. At age 69 and in the wake of some health problems, though, that challenge doesn’t seem likely.

UPDATE (David): We also discussed Biden’s successor in this August post when he was first named to the ticket.