Month: December 2008

It seems like Barack Obama is determined to have a Salazar in his Cabinet. From the Denver Post:

U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar is a leading contender to become President-elect Barack Obama’s secretary of the Interior, two sources have confirmed.

Reuters News Service used even stronger language in a report Sunday, saying Salazar had become the top candidate for the job. […]

A source close to Obama’s transition team told The Denver Post late last week that Salazar was under consideration for the Cabinet position.

The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak, said at the time it appeared that it was all but up to Salazar as to whether he wanted the post.

A second source close to the process also confirmed Sunday that Sala zar was a leading contender. The senator’s spokesmen did not return telephone messages seeking comment.

A vacancy here would be filled by an appointment from Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter, but would also add another race to the growing list of 2010 Senate contests. (Oh right, his term was up anyway.) If Ken Salazar indeed gets the gig, who would you like to see take his place in the Senate?

Update: In the diaries, Adam Kretz gives us a lengthy list of possible Salazar successors.

Strike another name off the watch list.

MNPublius first heard the news, and MinnPost.com confirms the news: Democratic Rep. Tim Walz won’t be running for Governor in 2010:

Word had been circulating that Walz was calling key supporters to inform them of his plans. Walz confirmed his decision in an interview with MinnPost moments ago.

This bluntly:

Me: “I’m calling to confirm rumors that you have decided not to run for governor.”

Walz: “That’s correct.”

Given the rogue’s gallery of losers that the DFL has nominated for Governor in recent cycles, it’s no surprise that a lot of Minnesotans hoped Walz would step forward and attempt to snap the DFL’s remarkable losing streak. Guess not.

(Hat-tip: Rev. Wright)

Corrupt GOP Gov. Jim Gibbons is up for re-election in 2010. Assuming he survives a primary, who should run against him for Team Blue?

From the Hill:

Less than a week after being reappointed as the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) will announce that he will not seek a tenth term in 2010, according to a source with knowledge of the decision.

Hoekstra, who has denied earlier reports that he will retire and consider a run for governor, will make the announcement on Monday, the source told The Hill.

There’s no word yet whether Hoekstra, who will turn 57 in 2010, will run for the Governor’s office, but this news certainly points in that direction.

On its face, Hoekstra’s district isn’t particularly compelling turf for Democrats to play on — Bush won it by 21 points in both 2000 and 2004. However, SSP’s Pres-by-CD crowdsourcing project revealed that McCain barely held his ground in this district, winning by only 50.8% to Obama’s 47.5%. Of course, some pretty extraordinary circumstances contributed to that result: McCain flipped the bird to the entire state of Michigan and retreated from the playing field weeks before E-Day, so no doubt the conservative base was pretty demoralized here. Even still, perhaps a local Dem can come out of the woodwork and make this an interesting race. Anyone know who we got on the bench?

I guess he’s learned how to quit Ted Stevens:

Hawaii Democrat Daniel K. Inouye , the third longest-serving U.S. Senate incumbent, has affirmed his plans to run for re-election in 2010, rebuffing speculation that he might not choose to run for a ninth term at age 86.

“Make no mistake, I am a candidate for re-election in 2010. I am calling upon my friends and supporters to once again stand with me,” Inouye said in a statement provided to CQ Politics. “I am taking nothing for granted in what I expect for be an exciting and vigorous campaign. I am looking forward to it.”

Even though I’m not personally too fond of Inouye,  this is probably for the best, since I’m a lot less fond of one of his would-be successors, former Rep. Ed Case. Case said he backs Inouye’s re-election, so we won’t be seeing him in the Senate any time soon.

Meanwhile, Gov. Linda Lingle (R) is term-limited, and it’s possible she’ll try running against Inouye. The coming vacancy in the statehouse might also prompt a round of musical chairs. In the simplest scenario, Case could run for governor himself. Alternately, if Reps. Mazie Hirono (HI-02) and/or Neil Abercrombie run for governor, Case might run for either of those two House seats. No matter what, decisions will have to be made soon.

So let me ask this: If Hirono or Abercrombie decide to try moving up, who do you like as replacements? I’d want to see State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa (who very narrowly lost the primary to Hirono in 2006) give it another shot if Hirono goes for HI-Gov. Your thoughts?

Just days after former state Comptroller John Sharp threw his hat into the ring for the Senate seat that Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison may vacate soon, the Houston Chronicle reports that Houston Mayor Bill White will join the race shortly:

Mayor Bill White has decided to seek the U.S. Senate seat held by Kay Bailey Hutchison, should the two-term Republican resign next year to challenge the sitting governor, the Houston Chronicle has learned.

Ending months of speculation about his political future, White plans to announce his intentions at an event next week, according to several sources close to the mayor. […]

White, a third-term mayor and former state Democratic Party chair, has been discussed for years as a possible gubernatorial candidate, in part because of his appeal as a popular, moderate leader from the state’s largest city.

Many political observers in Texas speculate that KBH will resign from the Senate sometime during the next year, which would trigger a free-for-all special election without party primaries. You can expect a lot of candidates to throw their hats into the ring if such a scenario occurs; in a 1961 Texas Senate special election, over 70 candidates ran for the vacant seat, and a much more modest list 24 names appeared on the pre-runoff 1993 special election ballot.

(H/T: Senate Guru)

One happy result of our crowdsourcing presidential results-by-congressional district project is that it pointed our way to a spreadsheet put together by Benjamin Johnstone-Anderson, not an SSPer that I know of, but clearly an elections geek of the highest order. This spreadsheet covers the entire state of Washington at the precinct level (not just in split counties), and it’s designed to give results not just by congressional district, but also by municipality and legislative district.

The nice thing about this kind of spreadsheet is that it lets us do the same sort of analysis at the state level that we at SSP are fond of doing at the national level. By calculating a half-assed sort of PVI (based only on 2008 numbers) and arranging LDs from most to least Democratic, we can form a picture of who the most vulnerable legislators of each party are, much more precisely than just by looking at county-level data. (In most states you can at least look at party registration numbers to measure districts, but there’s no registration by party in Washington.) This would be a fantastic resource to have for as many states as possible, and I’d like to encourage other SSPers to perform and post the same sort of analysis for their states (if the necessary information can be found).

District	Where	2008 %	“PVI”	Sen.	Rep. 1	Rep.2
43	Univ. District	88.8/9.6	D+37	D (2010)	D	D
37	S. Seattle	86.1/12.6	D+34	D (2010)	D	D
36	Ballard	83.8/14.8	D+31	D (2010)	D	D
46	N. Seattle	82.6/15.9	D+30	D (2010)	D	D
34	W. Seattle	77.6/20.8	D+25	D (2012)	D	D
11	Renton	71.0/27.3	D+19	D (2012)	D	D
32	Shoreline	69.9/28.6	D+17	D (2010)	D	D
27	Tacoma	67.6/30.6	D+15	D (2012)	D	D
22	Olympia	64.7/33.4	D+12	D (2012)	D	D
29	Parkland	64.3/33.6	D+12	D (2010)	D	D
21	Lynnwood	64.1/34.2	D+12	D (2010)	D	D
33	Des Moines	63.6/34.7	D+11	D (2010)	D	D
48	Bellevue	63.5/35.0	D+11	D (2010)	D	D
41	Mercer I.	63.6/35.1	D+11	D (2012)	D	D
40	Mt. Vernon	62.9/35.3	D+10	D (2012)	D	D
38	Everett	61.3/36.3	D+9	D (2010)	D	D
1	Bothell	61.2/37.0	D+9	D (2012)	D	D
3	Spokane	60.0/36.9	D+8	D (2012)	D	D
45	Redmond	60.8/37.7	D+8	D (2010)	D	D
49	Vancouver	59.7/38.4	D+7	D (2012)	D	D
30	Federal Way	59.0/39.4	D+6	D (2010)	D	R
23	Bainbridge I.	58.7/39.5	D+6	D (2012)	D	D
5	Sammamish	57.5/41.1	D+5	R (2012)	R	R
19	Longview	56.6/40.9	D+4	D (2012)	D	D
24	Port Angeles	56.0/41.8	D+4	D (2012)	D	D
44	Snohomish	56.0/42.2	D+3	D (2010)	D	R
47	Auburn	55.8/42.6	D+3	D (2010)	D	D
28	Lakewood	55.6/42.8	D+3	R (2012)	D	D
42	Bellingham	53.8/44.2	D+1	R (2010)	R	D
35	Shelton	52.8/45.1	D+0	D (2010)	D	D
17	Orchards	52.0/46.3	R+1	R (2012)	D	D
39	Monroe	51.6/46.1	R+1	R (2012)	R	R
25	Puyallup	51.8/46.5	R+1	D (2012)	R	D
10	Oak Harbor	51.7/46.5	R+1	D (2012)	R	R
26	Port Orchard	51.1/46.9	R+1	D (2010)	R	D
31	Enumclaw	50.2/47.9	R+2	R (2010)	R	D
15	Sunnyside	49.7/48.4	R+3	R (2010)	R	R
6	Country Homes	49.6/48.5	R+3	D (2010)	R	D
2	Orting	47.9/50.1	R+5	R (2012)	R	R
18	Battle Ground	46.6/51.6	R+6	R (2012)	R	R
20	Centralia	45.4/52.5	R+7	R (2012)	R	R
9	Pullman	43.1/54.7	R+10	R (2012)	R	R
12	Wenatchee	42.8/55.3	R+10	R (2012)	R	R
4	Spokane Valley	42.3/55.1	R+10	R (2012)	R	R
14	Yakima	42.7/55.6	R+10	R (2012)	R	R
16	Walla Walla	38.6/59.6	R+14	R (2012)	R	D
7	Colville	38.1/58.9	R+14	R (2010)	R	R
13	Ellensburg	38.1/59.7	R+15	R (2010)	R	R
8	Kennewick	36.6/61.6	R+16	R (2010)	R	R

Analysis over the flip…

We can see that only about one-third of these districts are what you’d think of as being competitive (let’s say a “PVI” between D+5 and R+5)… and there are almost no legislators of the wrong party in uncompetitive seats. There’s only one Republican representative in a seat better than D+5, and one Democratic representative in a seat worse than R+5. This points to a big built-in structural advantage for Democrats in Washington; there are 23 (out of 49) districts greater than D+5, so they barely need to rely on swing territory at all to maintain control of the legislature.

The good news is, as much as the Democrats are in a position of strength in the legislature (near the 2/3s mark in each chamber), there’s still room to expand and not much defense to play. There are 7 Republican senators (out of 49) and 14 Republican representatives (out of 98) in districts won by Obama, while there are no Democratic senators and 1 Democratic representative in districts won by McCain.

In fact, the one Democratic senator who lost in 2008, Marilyn Rasmussen in the 2nd LD, would have been the only Democratic senator in a McCain district had she not lost in an upset. The top-of-the-ticket data goes a long way to explaining her loss; the 2nd is an growing exurban area in rural Pierce County with a lot of growth, so there’s an influx of new voters unfamiliar with Rasmussen’s long tenure in the district and thus not likely to ticket-split. This is also the same part of WA-08 that, both times, basically gave Dave Reichert his victory margin over Darcy Burner, and it seems to be one of the only areas in the state that is going in the wrong direction.

Unfortunately, the Democrats missed the opportunity in 2008 to take out the two most vulnerable GOP senators according to this table, Cheryl Pflug in the 5th and Mike Carrell in the 28th; they’re safe till 2012. (They also lost what was considered to be the most hotly contested senate race, a little further down the table. Don Benton in the 17th survived by only a few hundred votes.)

The most theoretically vulnerable GOP senator up in 2010 is Dale Brandland in the Bellingham-based 42nd; however in practice, two other senators slightly lower on the list, Pam Roach in the 31st and Jim Honeyford in the 15th, are likelier to be vulnerable (Honeyford because he represents Washington’s second-least-white district, with fast-growing Latino and Native populations but a mostly Anglo electorate, meaning that victory is possible with a larger minority turnout… and Roach simply because her sheer Jean Schmidt-style odiousness makes her a perpetual target).

Democrats will also be defending two senate freshmen in 2010 in districts that have an R+ PVI (although that Obama won): Derek Kilmer in the 26th and Chris Marr in the 6th. These are the two districts where the GOP picked up Democratic-held open House seats, so these races will bear watching.

The above-mentioned 5th may also be the best place to pick off some GOP representatives: Jay Rodne and Glenn Anderson. (One rep, Skip Priest in the 30th in the blue-collar suburbs of Federal Way, clocks in higher, but he’s pretty well-entrenched and certainly the most moderate Republican left in the House.) I’m wondering why the 5th (the furthest-out reaches of the affluent Eastside suburbs plus rural eastern King County) has never been heavily targeted; without seeing 2004 data, my guess is that it’s never voted anywhere near this heavily Democratic before. Even the nearby 41st and 48th had a mostly Republican legislative bench until a few years ago and probably didn’t go for Gore or Kerry by 25-point margins; this just seems to be the last district on the Eastside to fall into the Democratic column. We just need to show up to compete, preferably with some good candidates (like a certain netroots heroine with kickass fundraising skills?).

In the 2008 election, the Dems lost one Senate seat to drop back to a 31-18 lead. In the House, the Dems flipped two seats and the GOP flipped three, so the composition moved to a 62-36 edge and GOP each flipped two seats, for a wash, so the composition stayed at 63-35 edge. Dems need to gain 2 seats in the Senate and 4 3 in the House to make it over the magic 2/3s mark (although hopefully they won’t need to override Chris Gregoire on anything, but she won’t be around forever). Doable? Tough, but possibly so.

I think you and I are destined to do this forever.

UPDATE (David): Please take the Swing State Project’s annual Blogad reader survey. This survey helps potential advertisers learn more about the site and the blogosphere in general. The better information they have, the more ads they are likely to run, which helps ensure we can keep the lights on here at SSP. So if you can spare just a few minutes, we’d be grateful if you could take the survey. Thanks so much!

From the Pioneer Press:

Franken also received unexpected good news when Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann dropped a mini-bombshell, telling the board that in overwhelmingly Democratic Duluth – which has not officially tallied rejected absentees – about 40 percent of that city’s 319 rejected absentee ballots were mistakenly rejected. Gelbmann said the city rejected the votes because either the voter or the witness did not date their signatures. He said he couldn’t find any state law to support such a rejection.

(Hat-tip: Paleo)

I’ve heard rumors about this for several days now, but Politicker’s James Pindell says that Carol Shea-Porter is getting increasingly serious about running for Senate:

For the last few weeks Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter has been exploring a run for the U.S. Senate and indications are that she is growing increasingly serious about it. In fact, there is the belief among some that she could even announce an exploratory committee in the next few weeks, several Democratic sources say, though those closer to her dismiss the it off hand.

Nevertheless, her agressiveness is something of a shock to many Democrats and particularly to associates of fellow Democratic Congressman Paul Hodes. Hodes had made it known last year that he was at least interested at a run in 2010 against Republican incumbent Judd Gregg though he was unsure whether or not he will run.

But while Hodes evaluates the pros and cons of a run, Shea-Porter has been more pro-active. She has a new consultant and she has hardly been quiet about soliciting advice on topic.

While it is striking some as a bold move — possibly even brazen — Shea-Porter has been making the argument that she is better Senate candidate than Hodes because she has been in tighter contests and won them. She also uses the fact that she has won despite long odds before. And then there is Manchester, the state’s largest city, where she won all 12 wards a month ago.

Talk amongst yourselves.