Tag: House

Here’s one other activity for everyone in comments, one where you can genuinely help us out by doing some crowdsourcing. As you’ve probably noticed, the list of Dems on the House race ratings board keeps growing and growing, to the extent that the large majority of members in GOP-leaning or swing districts are already on there. However, in the interest of being thorough, we’re wondering if anyone else should be on there.

To help out, here’s a table of the remaining Dems in districts with a Cook PVI of D+10 or less. (I was going to stop at D+5, but that’d be a short list, and it seems like there are occasional rumors of vulnerable members that extend higher up the list than that.) So, with an eye toward commenters who actually live in or near these districts or are connected to them, we’re wondering: do any of the Dems in these districts have compelling opponents (or not-so-compelling ones who still have the money, or deep-pocketed third-party friends, to advertise)? Are any of them egregiously phoning their own campaigns in, not treating this year any differently than any other one? Are there any other under-the-radar reasons why we should be concerned about any of these races (i.e. minor scandals or ill-conceived votes that haven’t resonated outside the local media)?

A few of these races have had public polls where there was a wide margin (OK-02, CT-02); a few more have had the incumbent release a crushing internal in response to rumored close GOP polls that never really surfaced (MN-07, PA-13). (And one of them, of course, was on the board but got taken off thanks to a little Nazi problem.) But for most of them, we’re simply bereft of information… and that’s where you guys come in.

In case you’re wondering, there are only three Dem-held seats on the board that go higher up the list than this: the open seat race in RI-01 (D+13), John Dingell in MI-15 (D+13), and Barney Frank in MA-04 (D+14).

Even in unfavorable election climates or off years, I always seem to get election fever at some point in September.  As disgusted as I’ve been in recent months watching the political climate get increasingly toxic, I still can’t help but feel the special energy in the air that seems to emerge in the weeks leading up to an election.  Last fall, I directed this energy towards a list of the 20 most exciting Senate races of my lifetime.  This fall, rather than dwell on deteriorating Congressional elections, I thought I’d compile a list of exciting House races.  Originally, I was gonna do another top-20 or top-25 list, but found that to be hard to compile.  Instead, I’ll do a list state by state of exciting House elections, unless it’s a rare state that hasn’t really had a good battleground House race in my lifetime (I’ve been paying attention for about 20 years now).  Anyway, here goes….

Alabama–2008 AL-02 (Bobby Bright vs. Jay Love)  I think it was clear to most of us two years ago that Democrat Bobby Bright would make Dan Boren look like Dennis Kucinich in the off chance he was elected in the open seat of a very conservative district in southeastern Alabama.  Still, it was exciting to contemplate the plausible yet unlikely scenario of a Democratic Congressional victory in this seat.  A Bright victory was gonna require a compilation of elements working together, including Bright’s personal popularity as the Mayor of Montgomery, the overall disfavor with which the Republican was in even in the Deep South at that point in time, and maxed-out African-American turnout with Obama at the top of the ballot.  Amazingly, these moving parts all came together and Bright prevailed by a less than one percent margin.  Even more surprisingly, Bright seems to be the frontrunner for re-election in a much less hospitable climate this year.  If nothing else, his case study represents a far better political strategy than his Alabama colleague, opportunist, and one-time Democrat Parker Griffith.

Alaska–2008 AK-AL (Don Young vs. Ethan Berkowitz)  This is as close as it gets to an exciting House race in Alaska, and like most would-be competitive elections in Alaska, the polls dramatically overstated the strength of the Democrat on the ballot.  Berkowitz was comfortably ahead in the polls and Young looked like a dead man walking until the surprising election night tally gave Young a decisive victory.  Moral of the story:  if a Democrat isn’t ahead by 20 points or more in a pre-election poll in Alaska, expect the Republican to win.

Arizona–2006 AZ-05 (Harry Mitchell vs. J.D. Hayworth)  There were a slough of races across the country in 2006 where Democrats were insurgent and one on the periphery of the competitive list was this Republican-leaning district in the eastern Phoenix metro area, pitting the Democratic Mayor of Tempe against right-wing blowhard Hayworth, who had seemingly positioned himself to the right of his district.  At best, this struck me as a second-tier target at the time.  Turnout was low, which seemed to help the challenger, and Mitchell’s decisive four-point victory proved to be one of most pleasant surprises of the night.

Arkansas–2000 AR-04 (Mike Ross vs. Jay Dickey) Despite an overwhelming Democratic registration advantage in his rural southern Arkansas district, Jay Dickey survived eight years as a conservative firebrand until the turn of the millennium.  Strangely, just as Arkansas began a transition away from the Democratic Party in the 2000 election, Dickey’s hourglass ran out of sand.  Al Gore was narrowly winning the district at the top of the ticket, but wasn’t offering any real coattails for Democratic challenger Mike Ross, who had to win the seat all by himself by running as a slightly less conservative alternative.  Although Democrats were beating a flurry of Republican incumbents in the Senate in 2000, there were very few incumbent Republicans getting toppled in the House that year.  Dickey was one of them, however, losing by two points.  Ross, meanwhile, is likely to be the last standing Democrat in the Arkansas House delegation in another five weeks.

California–1996 CA-46 (Loretta Sanchez vs. Bob Dornan) California House races have rarely been competitive given the heavily gerrymandered seats, but the state’s rapidly changing demographics over the last couple of decades have made a number of previous districts that were Republican strongholds suddenly unfriendly, and the best example of an incumbent being completely stunned by was right-wing firebrand Bob Dornan.  Dornan had just run a quixotic bid for the Presidency in 1996, a ego-driven run that apparently distracted him so much that he didn’t notice that the Latino population in his Orange County district had grown to the point that his politics were too far to the right of his own constituents let alone America at large.  It was one of the more stunning outcomes of a House race in my lifetime as political newcomer Loretta Sanchez took Dornan down.  Dornan was a sore loser, alleging voter fraud for years afterward and claiming his seat was stolen from him.  He ran again two years later to prove that in a “fair” election where the ballot boxes weren’t stacked up with illegal votes, he would win.  The outcome:  Sanchez was re-elected by an 18-point margin.  Better luck next time, B-1 Bob.

Colorado–2002 CO-07 (Bob Beauprez vs. Mike Feeley)  When Colorado gained a Congressional seat after the 2000 Census, the district was drawn to include a swath of suburban Denver and to be as competitive as possible.  The district immediately lived up to expectations featuring one of the closest races in the country in 2002.  It was a Republican year in Colorado, as with much of the nation, and Republican Beauprez was able to take advantage of that by scoring a 121-vote victory.  He held onto the seat for two terms before his kamikaze run for Governor which may have saved him from being voted out of his Congressional seat as the district drawn to be competitive just a few years earlier was fast becoming heavily Democratic, and in fact would swing to the Democrats in 2006.

Connecticut–2006 CT-02 (Joe Courtney vs. Rob Simmons)  On the basis of his moderate politics and appealing biography, Rob Simmons held the most Democratic House seat occupied by a Republican heading into the 2006 midterm wave.  Despite the wave, Simmons came within a hair’s breadth of hanging onto his seat.  The CT-02 race was the closest in the country in 2006 and Democrat Courtney upset the incumbent by a mere 83 votes.  Had Simmons challenged Courtney again in the more favorable Republican climate of rather than ran for the Senate, my money would be on him taking his seat back.  Interestingly, this seat has been a hot potato for both parties.  Just ask former Democratic Congressman Sam Gejdenson who hung on by an ever more ridiculously small 21-vote margin in the 1994 bloodbath before narrowly losing to Simmons in 2000.

Delaware–no competitive House races in my lifetime

Florida–2000 FL-22 (Clay Shaw vs. Elaine Bloom)  At first, I had no clue what Joe Lieberman brought to the table to be Al Gore’s Vice-Presidential nominee, but the soaring Democratic margins in Jewish-heavy South Florida on election day convinced me of Lieberman’s “useful idiot” utility.  A region that had leaned Republican during the 80s and into the 90s was suddenly firmly in the Democratic camp, and almost swept away in the 2000 Florida tide was long-time Republican incumbent Clay Shaw in his coastal Palm Beach and Broward County district.  Even though it was still only marginally Democratic compared to the more heavily Jewish districts flanking it to the west and south, Gore-Lieberman was nonetheless winning and providing some coattails to Democratic challenger Bloom, but she came up just short by a margin of 599 votes.  Coming up just short in Florida seemed to be a bit of a recurring theme in 2000, but thankfully Shaw was still living on borrowed time and would be defeated six years later.

Georgia–2006 GA-12 (John Barrow vs. Max Burns)  The Democratic landslide in the 2006 midterms was so impressive that leading up to election day there were really only two Democratic incumbents who were in battleground races, and both of them were in Georgia.  A court-ordered redrawing of Congressional lines put two Democratic incumbents in less Democratic districts, at the same time as both were being challenged by former Republican Congressmen.  Couple all of this with low voter turnout due to no competitive or high-profile races in Georgia that fall and one-term incumbent John Barrow looked to be in real trouble.  Even his new district leaned Democratic and was 42% African American, but would enough of them turn out to save him from Burns?  Turns out the answer was yes, but barely.  Barrow prevailed by less than a thousand votes and prevented the Democrats from losing a single incumbent in 2006.

Hawaii–1996 HI-01 (Neil Abercrombie vs. Orson Swindle)  I hadn’t paid any attention to this race until I saw the returns and was shocked by the tightness of Abercrombie’s margin.  Furthermore, I was familiar with the challenger, who had appeared on Nightline a few years earlier and positioned himself to the right of Pat Buchanan on just about every issue.  I couldn’t believe this guy almost won in Hawaii.  I still don’t understand what made the race so close.  Perhaps it was affection for Swindle’s war hero biography.  Either way, it was one more example for Democrats that they should never take victory in Hawaii for granted.

Idaho–2008 ID-01 (Walt Minnick vs. Bill Sali)  As if there any other choice here!  Here’s another race that struck me as just out of reach no matter how huge the Democratic tidal wave would be.  A Democrat winning in modern-day Idaho?  C’mon!  I knew Republican incumbent Bill Sali was considered a dunderhead but that (R) next to his name had to be worth 20 points by itself, right?  Barack Obama didn’t seem to inspire the usual level of terror in the minds of Rocky Mountain voters as past Democratic Presidential nominees, and overperformed in the polls, providing–strangely enough–coattails for Minnick…or at least diminished coattails for Sali.  The result was an impressive 4,000-vote victory for Minnick.  Despite being the Tea Party’s Democrat, I still find it kind of impressive that most forecasters expect Minnick to hang onto his seat this year even in such a toxic climate for Democrats.

Illinois–2004 IL-08 (Melissa Bean vs. Philip Crane)  There haven’t been many true barnburner House races in Illinois.  The 2000 open seat House race was close, but Republican Mark Kirk, who continues to haunt us today, prevailed so I decided not to pick that one.  Edging it out was this upset of a long-time GOP incumbent four years later.  Phil Crane’s profile was diminishing in this affluent suburban Chicago district, but it still seemed like a stretch that an upstart Democrat could prevail here.  But with the coattails of John Kerry and especially landslide Senate race winner Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, Democrat Melissa Bean was able to upset Crane and be one of the few Democrats to topple a GOP incumbent in 2004.

Indiana–2004 IN-09 (Mike Sodrel vs. Baron Hill)  Here’s a race that didn’t go the way any of us wanted it to go but nonetheless has to be considered impressive given the unexpected upset of an incumbent few thought was vulnerable.  Democrat Baron Hill had been winning in his Republican-leaning district in southeastern Indiana for six years, but with Bush’s landslide shellacking of John Kerry at the top of the ticket in 2004, the headwind proved too strong and Hill was taken out by Republican challenger Mike Sodrel by a little over 1,000 votes.  Thankfully, there’s a happy ending to this story as Hill reclaimed his seat two years later.

Iowa–2006 IA-02 (Dave Loebsack vs. Jim Leach)  This was somewhat of a tough call.  There were a couple great House races in Iowa, including the pitting of two incumbents in 1992, Dave Nagel and Jim Nussle.  Unfortunately, the arrogant Nussle narrowly prevailed.  In 1996, Democrat Leonard Boswell prevailed by a one-point margin in an open seat in a very swing district over Republican Mike Mahaffey.  Ultimately, however, I have to go with the huge upset that was little-known Democrat Dave Loebsack taking on decadeslong moderate GOP incumbent Jim Leach.  Despite the Democratic wave of 2006 and the considerable Democratic lean of the southeastern Iowa district, virtually nobody had Leach on their radar screen as likely to be felled.  But the wave proved too strong and Loebsack prevailed by a comfortable margin of nearly 6,000 votes.  When given a choice between a really close race or a surprising upset, I will usually choose in favor of the upset.

Kansas–2006 KS-02 (Nancy Boyda vs. Jim Ryun)  I was torn on this state as well.  Dennis Moore’s 1998 unseating of right-wing GOP incumbent Vince Snowbarger was a welcome moment where the GOP monopoly of Kansas’ Congressional delegation was broken.  But exceeding it was one of the biggest upsets of the 2006 Democratic wave.  I had seen a poll in the weeks leading up to the election showing Boyda narrowly leading Ryun in the solidly Republican eastern Kansas district, but I dismissed it as an outlier and very few seemed to believe this was a viable Democratic pickup opportunity until election night when Boyda prevailed.  The jubilation was short-lived, however, as Boyda was defeated two years later.

Kentucky–2006 KY-03 (John Yarmuth vs. Anne Northup)  Kentucky hasn’t had too many genuinely close House races in recent years, and the ones that were close always seemed to include Anne Northup and Ken Lucas, incumbents whose districts were generally unfriendly to their parties.  The Democrats had been trying for years to take out Northup, representing the Democratic-leaning Louisville metro area but always fell short.  One reason why I remember this specific race fondly is that it was something of a bellwether of how the night was gonna go, as Kentucky often is with its first-in-the-nation poll closings.  If Yarmuth beat Northup, it would be a good sign that the Democrats would have a good night.  Yarmuth did end up beating Northup…and the Dems did have a good night.

Louisiana–2004 LA-03 (Charlie Melancon vs. Billy Tauzin III)  After the third consecutive election night beatdown on November 2, 2004, Democrats were starving for any kind of win, and they would get one with the Louisiana runoff in House district 3.  The Republican-leaning seat was being vacated by Republican Billy Tauzin so he could get a lobbyist job with the pharmaceutical industry, a premise that didn’t help his son who was vying to fill dad’s seat.  Tauzin III was originally expected to walk off with the seat, but Melancon came from behind and prevailed by a narrow 569 votes.  If only Melancon could mount that kind of a surprise comeback in this year’s Senate race.

Maine–1996 ME-01 (Tom Allen vs. James Longley)  Technically there were one or two closer House races in Maine in the last 20 years (Michaud vs. Raye in 2002 for example) but the best symbolic win was the victory of center-left New England represented by Allen against one of the 1994 GOP freshman class’s biggest crazies, James Longley, who carried around a giant sign with the national debt numbers around Capitol Hill with him.  This is Maine’s more Democratic seat and its trendline was already moving leftward, meaning the biggest surprise was that Longley ever won this seat in the first place.

Maryland–2008 MD-01 (Frank Kratovil vs. Andy Harris)  Maryland’s district map is not particularly conducive to close races.  The closest they came before this race was 2002 when moderate Republican Connie Morella was taken out by Chris Van Hollen after she had finally been gerrymandered into a district that was unwinnable for any Republican.  But it was this epic 2008 contest that was hands-down Maryland’s best.  Moderate Republican Wayne Gilchrest was beaten in the primary by real article conservative Andy Harris.  Gilchrest went onto endorse the Democrat Kratovil and carried over enough of his supporters to Kratovil’s side to make this a contest.  Democratic of a state as Maryland is, McCain was still winning this Eastern Shore district by double digits, giving Kratovil a fierce headwind even in the most ideal of conditions.  The district’s polarization was clear as the extremely narrow vote count came in, with the rural Eastern Shore counties voting for the Democrat and the upscale exurbs of Baltimore and Annapolis voting for the Republican.  Kratovil won just enough to win the race, and held an unlikely seat for the Democrats for two years, although it’s gonna be an extraordinarily tough hold this fall.

Massachusetts–1996 MA-06 (John Tierney vs. Peter Torkildsen)  Two Republican incumbents in Massachusetts were taken out with some coattail assistance from the 1996 Clinton landslide, but the best race was a rematch from 1994 in which the Democrat Tierney prevailed in the northeastern Massachusetts district by a margin of fewer than 400 votes.  Massachusetts maintained an all-Democratic Congressional delegation for the next 13 years until the election of Scott Brown earlier this year, and impressive streak given the size of that delegation.

Michigan–2000 MI-08 (Mike Rogers vs. Dianne Byrum)  It’s a good thing Debbie Stabenow eked out a Senate victory against Spencer Abraham in 2000 because the competitive Lansing area House district she vacated narrowly went Republican in her absence.  It was yet another razor-thin margin race in the millennial year with Rogers prevailing by a mere 111 votes.  Unfortunately, Republicans controlled the redistricting process in Michigan and they made Rogers’ district much more Republican-friendly and he would be comfortably victorious in his subsequent races.

Minnesota–2000 MN-02 (Mark Kennedy vs. David Minge)  I grew up in Minnesota and this one was a tough call.  From a personal standpoint, the insurgent candidacy of Tim Walz taking down incumbent Gil Gutknecht in my home district was the most exciting.  The 1992 David Minge vs. Cal Ludeman faceoff was also incredible, with the Democrat Minge prevailing by a few hundred votes when the final precincts were counted in the middle of the night.  But the political scientist in me has to regrettably defer to the surprise victory of Mark Kennedy over Minge eight years after Minge’s original election as Minnesota’s marquee House race of the last generation.  Nobody expected this race would be competitive and Kennedy has to be credited for running a brilliant campaign, allocating his limited resources to a saturation of radio ads in some of the district’s Republican strongholds.  Working against Minge was Congress staying in session right up until the election and keeping him from doing his usual bike tour of the vast rural farm district.  Also working against him was that vast rural farm district being infiltrated by the fast-growing and incredibly Republican western exurbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul.  Minge could be considered a Blue Dog in name only, voting with the Democrats the vast majority of the time and generally staying on the good side of the district’s populist farmers in the center-right district, but these yuppies in the exurbs expanding their ranks in the district had little use for a farm populist and saw Kennedy as one of their own.  I stayed awake into the wee hours of the night, stunned by how razor-thin the margin was with each new set of returns.  In the end, Minge came up 155 votes short.  The county map from the district showed clearly the battle lines with the farm counties holding strong for Minge and the exurbs going strongly for Kennedy.  That dynamic meant Minge’s days were numbered in the district no matter.  Despite the depressing outcome, one good thing came out of Kennedy’s victory.  State Republicans looked at him as such a wunderkind for having taken that seat that they cleared the field for him in the 2006 Senate race, only to discover he really wasn’t a very good politician at all and ended up getting destroyed by Amy Klobuchar by a 20-point margin.

Mississippi–2008 MS-01 (Travis Childers vs. Greg Davis)  It seems like a lifetime ago, but just a little over two years ago the political climate was hospitable enough that Democrats were even electable in northern Mississippi.  Helpfully the open seat pitted a Democrat from the rural part of the district against a yuppie Republican from the southern suburbs of Memphis, which has a bit of a cultural disconnect from the rest of northern Mississippi.  As a result, Childers the Democrat vastly overperformed traditional Democratic numbers in the rural counties and prevailed by a comfortable margin, and then went onto win a full term in the 2008 general election.  I’d be surprised if Childers prevailed again this year in the current climate, but he’s defied the odds before.

Missouri–2000 MO-06 (Sam Graves vs. Steve Danner)  Democrat Pat Danner had a bout with breast cancer and had to retire from her battleground House seat in 2000, creating an open seat where her son faced a young Republican challenger.  Every part of Missouri outside of Kansas City and St. Louis has been trending Republican in the last 15 years or so, and this district is split about evenly between suburban Kansas City and rural northwestern Missouri.  In another case study of an urban vs. rural divide, although this time with the rural vote favoring the Republican unlike with Minge in MN and Childers in MS, Graves narrowly prevailed at the same time that George Bush was beating Al Gore in the district, running up the score in the rural counties and offsetting Danner’s advantage in the Kansas City area.  The district has gotten far redder in the years since and Graves hasn’t faced a serious challenge since that first one.

Montana–1992 MT-AL (Pat Williams vs. Ron Marlenee)  After the 1990 Census, Montana lost its second Congressional district, merging the state into one giant district and forcing two incumbents into a tough faceoff.  Long-time liberal Democrat Pat Williams represented mountainous western Montana and conservative Ron Marlenee represented ranch-heavy eastern Montana.  It was one of the toughest grudge matches of the year, and Williams prevailed by about three percentage points.  He held on for one additional term, surviving the 1994 Democratic massacre and then retiring.  The seat has not been back in Democratic hands since.

Nebraska–1994 NE-02 (Peter Hoagland vs. Jon Christensen)  It always struck me as strange as a boy that uber-Republican Nebraska was fairly competitive in Congressional elections, at various points in the 1980s and 1990s holding both Senate seats and at least one of the three House districts.  The Democrat Hoagland in this Omaha-area district would unfortunately be taken out in the 1994 Republican wave in a narrow race where he was upset by Republican newcomer Jon Christensen who would hold the seat for a few terms before the baton was passed by current GOP representative Lee Terry.  While demographic changes suggest this seat could become competitive again, the 1994 election seemed to represent a time when previously localized Nebraska elections tended to be nationalized, to the detriment of Democrats.

Nevada–2006 NV-03 (Jon Porter vs. Tessa Hafen)  Here was another race that always seemed second-tier in the 2006 battleground.  The young Hafen didn’t seem quite ready for primetime and the suburban Las Vegas district didn’t seem likely to has swung Democratic enough to dump Porter.  And they didn’t….but barely.  Porter hung on by one percentage point and it was clear that something serious was going on in suburban Las Vegas that didn’t bode well for either Porter or the 2008 GOP Presidential nominee.  By 2008, when Porter had an even stiffer challenge from top-tier Democratic challenger Dina Titus, it lacked drama because Porter’s defeat at this point seemed inevitable.  Much like CO-07, a former Republican-leaning district designed to be as much of a swing district as possible had transformed into a near Democratic stronghold.  Whether it holds in 2010 and beyond is another story, but the 2006 Porter-Hafen race was definitely the first sign of the district’s transformation.

New Hampshire–2006 NH-01 (Carol Shea-Porter vs. Jeb Bradley)  The biggest Cinderella story of the 2006 Democratic sweep began in the primaries where longshot Carol Shea-Porter upset the establishment choice.  The seat seemed like quite a reach to turn over at the time but was all but written off by the party after the victory by Shea-Porter who seemed to liberal and too unpolished to take on incumbent Jeb Bradley.  On election night, there was bigger surprise than seeing the Democratic tidal wave, which hit New Hampshire especially hard, had dragged Shea-Porter across the finish line.  She was victorious again for the rematch with Bradley in 2008.

New Jersey–2000 NJ-12 (Rush Holt vs. Dick Zimmer)  Democrat Rush Holt upset a Republican incumbent in 1998 who sang a version of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Starr” in reference to special prosecutor Ken Starr on the House floor.  Holt’s victory was thought to be a fluke in the Republican-leaning central New Jersey district, and was widely expected to be felled in 2000 against perennial Senate candidate Dick Zimmer vying for his old House seat back.  The hero of this story was probably Al Gore, who ran up the score big-time in New Jersey and likely provided Holt just enough coattails to prevail in his bid for a second term, winning by 481 votes.  Holt’s district became more Democratic after the 2001 reconfiguration and he hasn’t faced a strong challenge since.

New Mexico–2006 NM-01 (Heather Wilson vs. Patricia Madrid)  Heather Wilson built a reputation as a political survivor, always managing to win as a Republican in her blue Albuquerque-based district.  But it was widely expected by everybody that she met her match in the toxic Republican climate of 2006 facing what appeared to be her most formidable foe thus far in Attorney General Patricia Madrid.  Most polls suggested Madrid held the lead in the months leading up to the election, but some ninth-inning gaffes and an apparent continued affinity for whatever x-factor Wilson had in her district allowed her to prevail by 875 votes and became one of the GOP’s least expected survivors of the 2006 Democratic wave.  It’s hard to imagine she could have survived the even more substantial Democratic wave that hit New Mexico in 2008, and sensing this, Wilson retired.

New York–2002 NY-01 (Tim Bishop vs. Felix Grucci)  In a very ugly year for Democrats, one of the few bright spots was picking up this seat in the Hamptons on Long Island, formerly a Republican stronghold that moved towards the Democrats during the Clinton era.  Republican incumbent Grucci accused Bishop of falsifying rape statistics on the college campus where Bishop was the admissions counselor, but the accusation proved to be baseless and Grucci refused to back away from it.  This helped Bishop secure a 3,000 vote winning margin and made Grucci one of only two incumbent Republicans to lose in 2002.

North Carolina–2006 NC-08 (Robin Hayes vs. Larry Kissell)  The race I was constantly pointing out as the most likely dark horse of the 2006 cycle featured the scrappy schoolteacher running a great campaign against a GOP incumbent who made himself vulnerable by flip-flopping on the 2005 CAFTA trade agreement in a blue-collar district devastated by job loss.  I found it frustrating that few seemed to be paying attention or taking Kissell’s challenge seriously, and proving that even a broken clock is right twice a day, my theory was confirmed on election night as Kissell came within 329 votes of victory in a very low turnout contest where there were no major races at the top of the ballot in North Carolina.  Kissell seemed like such a better fit for the district than Hayes, and voters realized that two years later when Kissell prevailed by an impressive 10 points over Hayes in the rematch.

North Dakota–2002 ND-AL (Earl Pomeroy vs. Rick Clayburgh)  It’s pretty amazing how three Democrats managed to seize control of North Dakota’s Congressional delegation in the 1990s, and Pomeroy overcame a number of decent challenges in his first several terms, with none bigger than Rick Clayburgh, the state’s Tax Commisioner who was aggressively hyped by Republicans, including then popular Dick Cheney, who viewed Pomeroy as vulnerable.  Pomeroy prevailed, and by a better than expected five-point margin, and hasn’t had a tough race since but looks to have one this year.  Given how few close elections there have been in North Dakota in my lifetime, this contest provides a helpful geographic baseline for a competitive Democratic contest in the state.  A winning Democratic campaign can expect to have a county map that looks like an upside-down L, with the northern two tiers of counties and the eastern counties in the Red River Valley as most likely to go Democratic…and the southwestern and south-central regions of the state (Bismarck, Dickinson) being the most Republican.

Ohio–2005 OH-02 (Jean Schmidt vs. Paul Hackett)  If there was a single defining moment that restored Democrats’ faith in the sanity of the American people after the Bush re-election and leading up to the 2006 midterms, it was this special election in a very Republican district in suburban Cincinnati filling the seat of Rob Portman, who continues to haunt us five years later.  The Democrats had an ideal candidate in Iraq War veteran Hackett making waves with provocative comments about President Bush, while the Republicans were running the very weak Jean Schmidt.  Still, virtually nobody expected a contest in this Republican stronghold until the returns started rolling in and showed Hackett came within four points of shocking the world.  Hackett performed especially strong in the rural Appalachian counties on the district’s east side, suggesting these voters were still within grasp for certain kinds of Democrats.  While outright victory would have been sweeter, this race provided a huge boost in Democratic morale and raised the possibility of a Democratic Congressional takeover the following year.

Oklahoma–1994 OK-02 (Tom Coburn vs. Virgil Cooper)  It says a lot about the uncompetitiveness of most Oklahoma House elections in the last 20 years if this stinker of a race rates as my most exciting.  In Oklahoma’s most Democratic district, long-time incumbent Democrat Mike Synar was defeated in the primary, signaling early voter restlessness and leaving an open seat that was hypothetically vulnerable but still seemed a reasonably good bet for Democrats to hold even in a hostile political environment given the tremendous Democratic tilt to the eastern Oklahoma district.  Unfortunately, primary winner Virgil Cooper came up short against one of the 1994 freshman class’s most conservative new members and the continued bane of progressive existence 16 years later, Tom Coburn.  To make matters worse, Coburn held the seat for three terms despite his radicalism and embarrassing comments.  The seat has since reverted back to the Democrats (sort of) but the fact that they elected Coburn three times suggests it probably won’t stay there as soon as there’s not a Democrat running with the last name Boren.

Oregon–1994 OR-01 (Elizabeth Furse vs. Bill Witt)  The 1994 Republican sweep was particularly merciless to Democrats in the Pacific Northwest, but there was one survivor.  One-term incumbent Elizabeth Furse prevailed by 301 votes over Republican challenger Bill Witt in the suburban Portland district.  The district has become much more comfortably Democratic in the years since.  Witt challenged Furse again in 1996 but Furse prevailed by a more significant margin before throwing in the towel and ceding the seat to current representative David Wu.

Pennsylvania–2002 PA-17 (Tim Holden vs. George Gekas)  Pennsylvania has been the state with the most hotly contested House races in the last couple of decades.  There were races where newcomers came out of the blue to upset incumbents not thought to be endangered (Jason Altmire 2006), races with challengers who were thought to be toast that managed to survive (Jim Gerlach 2006, Paul Kanjorski 2008), and several races hyped as too-close-to-call that lived up to expectations (Patrick Murphy vs. Mike Fitzpatrick 2008, Joe Hoeffel vs. Jon Fox twice in 1996 and 1998).  But the race that upstaged them all was the battle of two incumbents who districts were combined after the 2000 census.  Republicans controlled the redistricting process in 2001 and designed one of the most inhospitable district maps in the country for Democrats.  The new PA-17 was designed specifically to end Tim Holden’s career, with the Harrisburg area district consisting of more than 60% of Gekas’ old turf and shedding much of Holden’s stronger territory to a neighboring district.  Holden aggressively pursued re-election while Gekas generally took for granted that he would prevail.  Just about everybody was surprised when Holden prevailed 51-49 on election night in a generally Republican year.  Since then, the district has become more Democratic and Holden has coasted to victory easily since then.

Rhode Island–never in my lifetime has there been a competitive House election in Rhode Island

South Carolina–1992 SC-04 (Bob Inglis vs. Liz Patterson)  It’s hard to conceive that as recently as the early 1990s Democrats were still winning Congressional races in the land of Bob Jones University.  The district had been trending dramatically Republican but Democrat Patterson had strong familial ties that helped insulate her, and had survived her first three elections with comfortable winning margins.  She finally met her match in 1992 against recent Tea Party casualty Bob Inglis who upset her rather unexpectedly with a 5,000-vote win in what was the last genuinely competitive House race in South Carolina in recent history.  The district has since become South Carolina’s most reflexively Republican.

South Dakota–2004 SD-AL (Stephanie Herseth vs. Larry Diedrich)  Growing up right next door to South Dakota, I’ve long been fascinated by it’s close political contests, of which there have been several in my lifetime.  One such close contest that wasn’t supposed to be was the June 2004 special election filling the seat left open by the convicted murderer Bill Janklow.  The Democrat Herseth had familiarized herself to voters in the 2002 House race and had an 11-point lead headed into election day….but that lead sounded too good to be true for an open seat in Republican-leaning South Dakota.  And so it was with early returns rolling in and indicating Herseth not only wasn’t running away with the race, but was not even reaching the baseline of support in the East River counties that Tim Johnson had in the epic 2002 Senate race.  Thankfully, Sioux Falls delivered a good margin for Herseth and she did better in Republican West River than Johnson had done as those numbers rolled in later in the evening, securing Herseth a one-point margin of victory and delivering yet another exciting election night in South Dakota.

Tennessee–2002 TN-04 (Lincoln Davis vs. Janice Bowling)  This wasn’t necessarily the closest race in recent Tennessee House elections, as that honor goes to Bart Gordon who slipped through the 1994 Republican wave with a one-point victory.  But this was by far the most wide open race with a newly configured rural swing district in Middle Tennessee without any towns larger than 10,000 people.  Thinking of how miserably Republican Tennessee has gotten in recent years, it’s hard to believe that the Yellow Dog Democrats still made much of the state competitive as recently as 2002.  In this case, they helped the moderate Lincoln Davis take back a Republican-held seat by a comfortable five-point margin.  It was one of the few bright spots of the 2002 midterms and Davis has held onto the district impressively since, although it seems likely that a Republican gerrymander will render his seat all but winnable by 2012.

Texas–2006 TX-23 (Ciro Rodriguez vs. Henry Bonilla)  There have been a number of very good House races in Texas over the last 20 years, albeit few with happy endings for Democrats.  And the close races where Democrats did prevail tended to be races where they were playing defense.  Charlie Stenholm always seemed to eke out wins in the 1990s and early 2000s despite the growing Republican headwind in his district. Chet Edwards survived the Tom DeLay gerrymander in 2004.  But the 2006 elections finally produced a couple of bright spots for Texas.  The first was short-lived where Democrat Nick Lampson won by default in Tom DeLay’s old district where his challenger was a write-in candidate.  But the second close contest proved to be a more significant victory.  One of the 2004 Delaymanders was ruled unconstitutional on the grounds of Voting Rights Act, forcing the Republican-leaning 23rd district to be reconfigured and take in more Hispanic voters.  However, even after the new district lines were drawn, the district still had a Republican lean and conventional wisdom suggested the Republican Bonilla still had an edge over former Congressman Rodriguez who was running in a district with very little of his old territory.  But it turned out Bonilla’s would-be advantage was built on artificially strong Bush-era numbers that were no longer relevant as Rodriguez surged to a convincing victory.  The contest was fairly prophetic as the Hispanic vote’s shift to Democrats became much more pronounced moving towards the 2008 election.

Utah–2002 UT-02 (Jim Matheson vs. John Swallow)  This was a tough call as the original 1990 election and subsequent three-term survival of Democrat Bill Orton in one of the most Republican districts in the country was nothing short of astounding, but I still have to give the edge to this 2002 race.  If any incumbent Democrat in the country looked DOA after the 2001 redistricting, it was Jim Matheson who prevailed in a moderate (for Utah) district in 2000 for his first term.  Heading into his second term, however, Matheson’s district was split up and forfeited  much of Democratic territory in Salt Lake City.  It was the least Republican district in Utah, but still considerably more Republican than the district he had won in 2000.  Shocking the world much like Tim Holden did in Pennsylvania that same year, Matheson prevailed by a half-percentage point, 1,600-vote margin and has been able to hold the seat in the three election cycles since.

Vermont–1990 VT-AL (Bernie Sanders vs. Peter Smith)  Bernie Sanders ran as an independent in 1988 for the open seat to Vermont’s House delegation.  That was about the tail end of Vermont’s centuries-long allegiance to the Republican Party, and Smith won the contest.  Two years later though, Sanders came from out of nowhere and upset Smith in a double-digit landslide, becoming the only independent in the House in decades.  I’m not sure if there was a pressing issue that drove Sanders’ surge in 1990 or a gaffe by Smith, but Sanders held onto the seat until he ran for the Senate 16 years later, facing only one serious challenge in the 1994 Republican wave, where his winning margin was only three points.

Virginia–2008 VA-05 (Tom Perriello vs. Virgil Goode)  Everybody knew going into the election night of 2008 that it was gonna be a very year for Democrats in Virginia.  Strong Democratic victories in the Presidential and Senate race went according to plan and provided coattails for Democrats to pick up two seats that were expected to be prime targets, but they ended up snaring a bonus House seat that virtually nobody saw coming.  Republican Virgil Goode, representing a mostly rural district in central and south-central Virginia had accumulated a little political baggage during his long political career, but easily survived the 2006 wave and wasn’t looked at as at all likely to fall at the hands of political newcomer Tom Perriello.  The results told a different story on election night as Democrats outperformed traditional margins throughout the district, and although McCain held on to narrowly win the district at the top of the ticket, Perriello shocked the world and prevailed by a margin of about 700 votes.  He’s considered by many to be 2010’s most endangered 2008 incumbent, but he still has to like his position today better than his position at the end of September two years ago!

Washington–1994 WA-05 (George Nethercutt vs. Tom Foley)  Count this as another race “exciting” in the wrong way with the first sitting Speaker of the House voted out of office in about a century and a half.  1994 was a bloodbath for Democrats in the state of Washington with SIX of the state’s nine House seats turning over to the GOP.  The majority of these seats would swing back in the next three election cycles that featured some great contests, particularly the razor-thin 1996 Linda Smith vs. Brian Baird contest in WA-03.  But Tom Foley’s seat in Republican-trending eastern Washington would never return to the Democratic fold.  I still remember hearing the litany of Democratic heroes who bit the dust as a 17-year-old watching the bloody 1994 returns.  But names like Mario Cuomo and Ann Richards still struck me as comparatively small potatoes in comparison to the sitting Speaker of the House, but as the hours pressed on, Dan Rather kept telling me that is was within the realm of possibilities that Foley could lose…and sure enough, but the next morning Foley’s less-than-two-point defeat was official.  Just proves that a House race can be epic and exciting but still a disaster.  After a tumultuous 1990s in Washington House races, the only seat that’s been competitive this past decade has been the WA-08 district occupied by Dave Reichert.

West Virginia–2000 WV-02 (Shelley Moore Capito vs. Jim Humphreys)  Up until 2000, a competitive House election in Democrat-dominated West Virginia was only theoretical, but the state was at the beginning stages of its long-term realignment to Republicans that year and the impossible became reality.  The losing effort by Al Gore at the top of the ticket  undoubtedly provided some countercoattails for the Democratic candidate, and a third-party candidate took more than 5% of the vote that may or may not have come from Humphrey’s expense, but whatever the case, the open seat went to Republican Capito by a two-point margin.  She’s kept her grip on the seat with limited challenge ever since and my suspicion is her story will be the standard for the other two West Virginia seats as soon as Republicans pull off their initial victories in them.

Wisconsin–2000 WI-02 (Tammy Baldwin vs. John Sharpless)  Tip O’Neill’s “all politics is local” adage seems a little dated this decade where just about every election cycle is nationalized in one way or another, but it still held true in many cases in the 1990s, a time when Provo, Utah, was represented by a Democrat in Congress while Madison, WI, was represented by a Republican.  One-time Republican Congressman Scott Klug retired from his Madison-based district in 1998, however, and the seat went to Tammy Baldwin, who was not only a Democrat but the first openly gay non-incumbent to ever win a House race.  Baldwin won comfortably in the 1998 open seat but for whatever reason had a stiffer challenge the second time against Republican Sharpless.  I honestly have no recollection of the particulars that drove this contest–whether Sharpless was a top-tier candidate or whether there was some backlash against Baldwin’s sexual preference–but she prevailed by a scant two percentage points even as Al Gore was comfortably winning the district at the top of the ballot.  Baldwin has won the district with ease in the four elections since and there have been relatively few close House races in the state this decade.

Wyoming–2006 WY-AL (Barbara Cubin vs. Gary Trauner)  2006 was such a good year for Democrats that even Wyoming was a battleground state!  The conditions were ripe for a pick-up as the incumbent Barbara Cubin was crass and unlikeable, a third-party libertarian candidate was taking conservative votes away from Cubin (who made physical threats against the guy), and the Democrat successfully walked the tightrope and made himself politically acceptable to a large number of conservative Wyoming voters.  Unfortunately, even this perfect storm fell just short of taking down Cubin who won a bleak 48% plurality with a margin of just over 1,000 votes over Trauner.  The margin was close enough, however, to convince Cubin to retire before 2008.  Trauner gave it another whirl in the open seat and looked good for picking it up, but fell short by a surprisingly strong 10-point margin the second time around.  I expect it’ll be a very long time until there’s another close Congressional race in Wyoming.

This was a fun but consuming little exercise…much more involved than my top-20 Senate race list.  My old World Almanacs from the 1990s came in very handy in providing some forgotten names and the margins of victory in the close races.  I used to study those almanacs after every election in the pre-Internet era, but find House race tracking much easier since purchasing a home computer in 2000.

It’s likely that the 2010 midterms will displace some of the current entries on this list.  The election nut inside me is hoping for a few down-to-the-wire cliffhanger contests for which I’m up into the wee hours of the night tracking the final sets of returns.  Odds are there will be quite a few such races as there almost always are.

Have I missed any classics here?  Or do you disagree with my choice for a given state?  Feedback is always welcome.

This morning I took a look at all of the House Polling since since September 12th that is listed at electoral-vote.com.  There have been 31 polls taken since the 12th.

In 2008 the Democrats beat the GOP by 10.68%.In the 31 polls I looked at, the average shift in the margin was -10.88.  Sounds awful, doesn’t it?

It is, but what it also suggests is that the generic ballot isn’t anywhere close to GOP +10. What really caught my eye was comparing the numbers against the Cook PVI.  On average, the 31 races are about 6 points better for the Democrats than where you would expect them to be in a 50-50 race.  This is the power of incumbency, and suggests that when you look at individual races Democrats are running ahead of where they should be given the generic ballot.

This is a very rough analysis, obviously.  But in the past I have found comparing swings in local races against the National Swings very useful.

Here is the data:

https://spreadsheets.google.co…

After some recent discussions on here regarding wealthier suburban districts that have been held by Republicans since 1994, but lean Democratic, I have compiled a list of such districts:

These districts were selected for meeting the following criteria:

1)  Above average median income (42,000 per individual or higher)

2)  A PVI score of D even to D+7

3)  Held by a Republican for at least one term since 1994

In no way I claim any of these seats are in play, but I am just providing a list of seats that could fall if the anti-Democratic wave is concentrated in suburban districts.  Many of them are considered in play though.  Others probably are not in play unless the Democratic incumbent runs a terrible campaign and/or the Republican runs a really competent campaign.

Colorado-7

Ed Perlmutter – D+4

Connecticut-2

Joe Courtney – D+6

Connecticut-4

Jim Himes – D+5

Connecticut-5

Chris Murphy – D+2

Florida-22

Ron Klein – D+1

Iowa-3

Leonard Boswell – D+1

Maryland-2

Dutch Ruppersberger – D+7

Massachusetts-6

John Tierney – D+7

Michigan-9

Gary Peters – D+2

New Jersey-12

Rush Holt – D+5

New York-1

Tim Bishop – D-EVEN

New York-2

Steve Israel – D+4

New York-4

Carolyn McCarthy – D+6

New York-25

Dan Maffei – D+3

Ohio-15

Mary Jo Kilroy – D+1

Oregon-5

Kurt Schrader – D+1

Pennsylvania-7

Joe Sestak – D+3 (Open)

Pennsylvania-8

Patrick Murphy – D+2

Pennsylvania-13

Allyson Schwartz – D+7

Virginia-11

Gerry Connolly – D+2

Washington-2

Rick Larsen –  D+3

Washington-9

Adam Smith – D+5

The Heart of This Year’s Darkness: The Deep South

There are seven Southern House seats that are, in my opinion, absolutely gone: the two open Arkansas seats, the Louisana 3rd, Tennessee 6th, Florida 2nd, and the Virginia 2nd and 5th. I still think we have a ghost of a chance in the Tennessee 8th, but that one is likely toast too.

If its any consolation, I think that the Arkansas 2nd and Tennessee 8th are long term pains in the neck for the GOP. The bright spot in the Deep South is the Louisana 2nd, which we should get back, so that effectively cancels out our loss of the 3rd district, which disappears in redistricting anyways.

I’m actually optimistic when it comes to pretty much every Deep South incumbent except for Allan Boyd. If my memory serves me right, the last one of those to lose under non flukey circumstances was Max Burns in the Georgia 12th in ’04. So I have Bright, Childers, Barrow, Spratt, Edwards, Ciro Rodriguez, and Marshall hanging on.

In the upper South and border states, things are a bit better. I think the North Carolina delegation is in relatively good shape, and that we hold onto the Virginia 11th as well. Kentucky is fine. In Florida south of the I-4 corridor, Kosmas and Grayson are far from gone (pure tossups, though I like Grayson’s chances better), Klein’s challenger in the 22nd is insane, and we could actually come out of Florida in better shape, if the only loss is Boyd and Garcia picks up the 25th. The GOP has yet to nail down Florida 12 as well.  

The Other Pain Center: The Industrial Midwest

Our incumbents in Missouri are in pretty good shape; I’m firmly convinced that Ike Skelton is too much of a fixture to lose and Russ Carnahan’s seat is too Democratic. Roy Blunt isn’t exactly setting the world on fire either on the Senate side, which is a plus. In Illiois, we should break even; minus Halvorson but plus Seals; Foster is a likely winner as well. I can live with that. I think Brad Ellsworth’s seat is a likely loss, but Donnelly and Hill narrowly hold on. The success of the auto bailout saves Gary Peters in the 9th District, but Mark Schauer is in trouble in the 7th. In Ohio, Kilroy isn’t strong enough, and Driehaus’s district is too polarized this year for him to survive; he’s not going to get the AA turnout he needs there. Boccieri should be okay in the 16th.

The Mid Atlantic

In the Mid Atlantic region, there are two seats that are currently very far gone: Pennsylvania 11th and New York 29th. Neither of those should be a long term hold for the GOP (PA-11 is too Dem, NY-29 goes in redistricting). There are a large number of seats I’m very concerned about here: the New York 24th (though I feel better seeing some positive numbers for Arcuri there), John Adler in the New Jersey 2nd, the Maryland 1st, and the Pennsylvania 3rd, 7th, and 10th; though Carney’s opposition seems sub-par. I particularly feel very queasy about the open 7th in Pennsylvania. Altmire, Murphy, and Holden should be okay,. Against this, we will pick up the open seat in Delaware.

New England

In all of New England, I think our only problems lay in the New Hampshire seats; my best guess is that we hold the 1st, and lose the open 2nd District. There are some who think MA-10 is in play, but I have my doubts, and even if it is, guess who gets screwed over in redidtricting….

The Upper Midwest and Plains

Our incumbents in Minnesota and Wisconsin seem to be in relatively good shape; Kagan could lose, but I honestly think he’ll be okay, and Julie Lassa’s opposition doesn’t seem to be that strong. Sadly, Michele Bachmann isn’t going anywhere though. In the Dakotas, I think we’ve been seeing too much Rasmussen and too little of anything else. I’m more worried about Pomeroy than Herseth-Sandlin because of Hoeven at the top of the ticket, but I think those are both holds at the end of the day.

I think that Dennis Moore’s seat in suburban Kansas City is a likely loss; the only incumbent in the region I have any reservations about is Leonard Boswell in the Iowa 3rd; he was in trouble even in the wave year of ’06. Why he didn’t get out of dodge in ’08 is beyond me…..

The West

This is the region where we’ve gotten the most help from the GOP. The top of the ticket for the GOP in Colorado is a godsend, which will give Markey a fighting chance, which is all you can ask for in this year’s environment. The spillover effects from Sharon Angle likewise help Dina Titus in suburban Las Vegas, and Jan Brewer doens’t look so hot in Arizona which helps out Harry Mitchell.

I’m guessing that we lose the open Washington 3rd, along with the Colorado 4th. Mitchell has a strong enough brand name in Tempe that he narrowly holds the Arizona 5th, and Titus’s seat could go either way. Somehow, I think Walt Minnick holds on, as does Harry Teague. We are plus one in Hawaii.

So, here’s the Dem lost causes (15):

-Arkansas 1st

-Arkansas 2nd

-Florida 2nd

-Louisana 3rd

-Kansas 3rd

-Illinois 11th

-New Hampshire 2nd

-New York 29th

-Ohio 1st

-Ohio 15th

-Pennsylvania 11th

-Tennessee 6th

-Virginia 2nd

-Virginia 5th

-Washington 3rd

GOP Goners (5)

+Delaware AL

+Florida 25th

+Hawaii 2nd

+Illinois 10th

+Louisana 2nd

Dem “It’s Not Looking Good” Seats (11)

-Colorado 4th

-Florida 24th

-Indiana 8th

-New York 24th

-Maryland 1st

-Michigan 7th

-Nevada 3rd

-New Jersey 2nd

-Pennsylvania 3rd

-Pennsylvania 7th

-Tennessee 8th

Dem Watch List

-Arizona 5th

-Florida 8th

-Iowa 3rd

-Illinois 15th

-Indiana 2nd

-Indiana 9th

-Michigan 9th

-Missouri 4th

-New York 20th

-New York 23rd

-Ohio 16th

-Pennsylvania 10th

-Virginia 11th

GOP Watch List

+Arizona 3rd (nothing but a gut feeling here)

+Florida 12th

+Minnesota 6th

Overall Guess: ~R + 29 seats

As a note feel free to comment about any of these races, and I’ll give you my thoughts

So, most of us saw the NY Times story. If not, here’s the link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09…

So, you’re Chris Van Hollen, and you’re having a crappy Labor Day weekend, because you have to make the calls to Democratic incumbents saying: it’s probably not happening this year. Who do you call? Here’s my five choices. List yours below (or argue with mine) If you think it’s too early to make these calls, who do you think is going to get the call sooner rather than later?

Mike Acuri – NY-24. Acuri’s health care vote hurts him, but why he’d be on my list is Richard Hanna barely lost to him in 2008, in a good Democratic year, and has as much COH last time I checked as Acuri. I think this one is lost.

Steve Driehaus – OH-1 Steve Chabot barely lost this seat to Driehaus in 2008, and this is going to be a bad year for Democrats in Ohio. Chabot has a COH advantage as well.

Betsy Markey – CO-4 I know StephenCLE, for one, would disagree with this, but I don’t think Markey’s going to get as much benefit off the governor’s race in Colorado as he does. Cory Gardner is a good candidate, this is a tough district for Dems anyway, and a recent Republican poll had Markey down by 11. Markey does have more COH then Gardner, but he has enough to compete. Markey’s mention in the NYT story probably isn’t a coincidence.

Travis Childers – MS-01 This one is tough. I can see why it’d be a difficult choice between Childers and Frank Kratovil in Maryland on who gets a call, since both represent similar Repubican districts, but I think Childers has a tougher opponent and a tougher district.

Tom Perriello – VA-5 I saved the worst for last. Perriello is one of my favorite congressmen, but I just don’t see how he survives this year. Rob Hurt is a good opponent, and the polls are grim, even if you think those Survey USA polls exaggerate. He gets the call.  

One of the things that has come up in this election is whether the macro vs. micro climate, and which is better in terms of determining the outcome of this year’s election. Simply put, Republicans have nominated some pretty bad candidates (Angle, Paul, and possibly Buck, although I think the verdict might still be out on the latter) who would be unelectable in a different year.

Anyway, I thought it would be a fun exercise to put together a list of 10 candidates who were preceived as weak choices for their respective parties at the time, but went on to win in “wave” elections. Feel free to disagree or nominate your own choices below.

Gary Hart (D) vs. Peter Dominick (R), CO-SE, 1974

Peter Dominick was a two term Senator who had served only two years before as the chairman of the NRSC. His opponent was the upstart campaign manager of George McGovern’s disasterous bid for the presidency, which lost the state of Colorado by a substantial margin. But Hart took advantage of the post-Watergate environment to crush Dominick 57.2%-39.5%, beginning a political career that would end in Monkey Business thirteen years later

Alfonse D’Amato (R) vs. Elizabeth Holtzman (D) and Jacob Javitz (I), NY-SE, 1980

D’Amato, the presiding supervisor of the town of Hempstead was given little chance against longtime New York Senator Jacob Javitz, but taking advantage of Javitz’s illness and the conservative tide in 1980, he upset Javitz in the primary. Javitz decided to run as an independent in the general election, but instead of taking moderate Republican votes away from D’Amato he split the liberal and moderate base with Elizabeth Holtzman, who was vying to be the first woman Senator from NY, and in the year of Reagan’s first landslide D’Amato won a close race.

John LeBoutillier (R) vs. Lester Wolff (D), NY-6th District, 1980

Another New York race. LeBoutillier was the original wingnut, a 27-year old rabidly conservative Republican who beat a 16-year incumbent to win election to this Long Island district in this very Republican year. He only lasted one term before being ousted. He’s currently a columnist for NewsMax.com

Jesse Helms (R) vs. Jim Hunt (D), NC-SE, 1984

The always very controversial Helms was considered dead meat against North Carolina’s very popular Democratic governor Jim Hunt. Up until the last couple weeks of the campaign, Hunt was still the favorite in what was then considered one of the nastiest campaigns ever run in American history. But Helms rode the Reagan landslide win that year to hang on to his Senate seat.

Kent Conrad (D) vs. Mark Andrews (R), ND-SE, 1986

Andrews was a longtime North Dakota congressman who joined the Senate in 1980, receiving 70 percent of the vote. He looked so unbeatable for reelection that the state’s Democratic congressman, Byron Dorgan, took a pass. But North Dakota tax commissioner Kent Conrad stepped up to the race, and in a bad year for farm-state Republicans, beat Andrews in a suprise upset

Steve Stockman (R) vs. Jack Brooks (D), TX-9th District, 1994

Jack Brooks had been a congressman for 40 years and was chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee. Stockman was pretty much of a nobody who held no political office, although he had run against Brooks once before, in 1992, losing pretty badly. However, Brooks sponsorship of a crime bill opposed by the NRA along with being in the Republican wave year of 1994 doomed Brooks. Stockman, who was dogged by controversy throughout his term, lost to Nick Lampson in 1996.

Rod Grams (R) vs. Anne Wynia (D), MN-SE, 1994.

Grams was a one term congressman and former broadcaster who is likely the most conservative senator ever to be elected from Minnesota. Wynia was a well respected state legislator who was the benificiary of a campiagn by prominent Minnesota DFLers to elect a woman to the Senate. But, in the year of Republican sweep, Grams beat her in a very close race. He lost to Mark Dayton six years later.

Bill Frist (R) vs Jim Sasser (D), TN-SE, 1994

One more from the 1994 election debacle. Bill Frist was a prominent Tennessee physician and major stockholder in his family’s health care company. Jim Sasser was on the short list to succeed George Mitchell as Senate Majority Leader, and he was from a state the Clinton-Gore ticket had won two years before. But Tennessee took on a decidedly conservative bent in 1994, and Sasser lost by 13 points

George Allen (R) v. Jim Webb (D), VA-SE, 2006

In this case, it may not be that Jim Webb was neccesarily a weak candidate, but George Allen was perceived as so strong. A popular former Virgina governor and future Presidential candidate, Allen was viewed as the prohibitive favorite to win reelection, but in an upset prompted by his own stumbles and a good campaign run by Webb, he lost in a very close race.

Kay Hagan (D) vs. Elizabeth Dole (R), NC-SE, 2008

We all are familiar with this recent one, so no need to rehash it. Suffice it to say that no one would have predicted two years before an obscure state legislator would beat the head of the NRSC so badly.  

These are the dog days of summer as far as politics go, when the polls are many but the insight they offer is fleeting, because it’s too damn early to know anything, and when campaigns are coming up with their grand strategies that will unleash victory once people start paying attention, which right now, they mostly aren’t.

Nonetheless, I thought it might be instructive to chronicle what I think political junkies should be paying attention to right now, seperating the wheat from the chaff. This is my opinion and by no means comprehensive, so give your own thoughts on this as well.

Right now, the year is battling between 1994 (an all out disaster for the governing Democratic party) and 1982 (where the losses were small and manageable for the ruling Republicans). I don’t see much of a sign it’s going to be 2002 (where the dominant Republicans actually picked up seats), but who knows. Anything can happen in the next three months.

So here’s what I’m paying attention to:

Unemployment: Not the weekly unemployment numbers, which can fluctuate, but the monthly unemployment reports. We have two of these coming out before Labor Day, and while both are important the September 3rd one will set the narrative for the remainder of the fall. I think we will see some growth in jobs and a either a small fall or rise in the unemployment rate, which will not be good news for the Dems, but not the worst news either. If job creation goes negative for either month, however, or their is a more than 3 percent rise in unemployment, it’s very bad news for the Dems. Conversely, a big rise in job creation or drop in unemployment could mitigate some losses for Dems in November. Keep in mind that while unemployment didn’t seem to matter in 1982 or 1994 in predicting election results, there are reasons to expect it might play a more outsize role in the coming election (in 1982, Reagan had began to tame inflation, which made people feel better about the rise in unemployment, and 1994 was more about Clinton’s failed health care plan, his stance on gun control and perceived mistakes then the economy).  

Obama’s approval rating: Obama is right now about where Clinton was at this time in 1994 and Reagan in 1982 (Reagan actually may have been slightly less popular). Clinton dropped further, of course, and the result was a disaster for Democrats. Conversely, Reagan also dropped throughout 1982, and the results were not a catastrophe for the Republicans. What was the difference? I think it was this: while Reagan was not popular in 1982, he was not as polarizing as Clinton was in 1994 (remember this was after the gays in the military mess, the haircut on Air Force One, the consistent advocacy of gun control and other culture war situations). In other words, where Democrats did not successfully make the election about Reagan in 1982, Republicans made it about Clinton in 1994 (just as Dems made it about Bush in 2006 and 2008). So, it’s not just Obama’s approval rating, but the intensity of opposition to him. Right now, it’s pretty intense, but with most of the big ticket items (HCR, the financial bill) out of the way, there is reason to hope it may drop down to Reagan 1982 levels. That could be a big factor.

Money, money, money Right now, we know the Dems will have a financial advantage headed into fall, but how much is the question. Pay attention to a couple of things: 1). What’s happening with the RNC, which could determine how far behind the Republicans will be this year 2). Whether Karl Rove’s new group or any of the other shadowy advocacy organizations will make a difference in the Republican’s cash deficit and 3). Any snippet of information you can get on some of the Republican candidates who were outraised by the their Democratic counterparts (like the ones in Pennsylvania), that indicate they might be catching up.

Races to watch

While we’re going to see lots of polls about the close Senate and Governor races (and even some House races), many of those polls aren’t going to break either way until the fall. Here are the races I’m watching the closest this summer:

Marshall vs. Burr Marshall just came out with an internal poll indicated she was two points ahead. Great, but here’s the thing: she needs some independent proof of this. The DSCC and DNC are not far enough ahead of their Republican counterparts they are going to be able to do for her what they did for Kay Hagen against Dole two years ago. She’s going to need some evidence she can actually win this thing, because she doesn’t have enough money right now to beat Burr without an influx of funds. This summer will tell all.

Vitter vs. Melancon Given it looks like Vitter will likely survive his primary, see Marshall above. Melancon needs more than an internal poll to show he can win this thing against Vitter. He won’t be as financially disadvantaged as Marshall, but Louisiana is not a Democrat-friendly state right now, and if by Labor Day Melancon is still down by seven points or more, prepare to write him off. (even five might be too much)

Grassley vs. Conlin This one isn’t really on anyones radar, but it could show whether the national mood is anti-Republican or anti-incumbent. Grassley is running a lackadasical campaign, and Conlin is a great fundraiser. But if Grassley is up by double digits as of Labor Day, it’s probably over.

I think these three races will be indicative of where were heading. If by the time Labor Day rolls around, we are writing all of them off, it’s not going to be a good year for the Dems. If even one of them is competitive, it may be better than anyone expects.

Things not to pay attention to

The stock market, the weekly first-time unemployment numbers (unless they drop below 400,000), or housing starts. All of these fluctuate way too much to have much impact on the way the election will go

Party preference numbers People pay too much attention to these. Not only do they bounce all around (this week see Gallup vs. Quinnipiac vs CNN) but it’s still too early for them to tell us anything about how the races will shape up in the fall. The national mood now won’t neccesarily be the national mood three months from now (when the party preference numbers WILL matter)

Commntators either on Red State or to Steve Singiser on Kos (not Singiser himself, who’s great) The former are constantly predicing 90 seat House gains and 11 seat Senate gains for the Republicans, the latter seem to think Dems will be at 64 or 65 seats because they will win all of the toss ups in the fall, and even some seats that are currently leaning Republican. For relief, go to Nate Silver and 538.com. He’s not always right, but he’s always realistic (and when he has that occasional slip-up, like with his commentary on WV-Senate, he corrects it pretty quickly).  

   

If nothing else, this post is simply a reminder that the end of the fundraising quarter is later this week (Wednesday, the 30th). I’ve had this vague sense that there’s a lot less fundraising intensity among the netroots than compared to this point two years ago (although that turns out to be wrong, if you delve into the stats at ActBlue — we’re ahead of the 2008 pace in terms of both total number of dollars and especially number of contributions). But after the 30th, there’s only one more full fundraising quarter left.

That vague lack of intensity, though, may have its roots in the fact that playing defense just isn’t as glamorous… in 2006 and 2008, it was genuinely fun anticipating where all we might make gains and trying to allocate our resources accordingly. It’s not so much fun to figure which incumbents most need our money in order to survive… especially when so many of the most endangered incumbents were simultaneously also the ones least likely to vote the way the netroots would have wanted them to. And the netroots still seems to be playing the old 06-08 ballgame instead, still playing offense: focusing on primaries, and on challenges to Republican incumbents or open seats. Some of that is seen in ActBlue’s top 10 May recipients, none of whom are incumbents (although at least some were the more progressive option in primaries where we’re trying to hold a seat, like Joe Sestak or Ann McLane Kuster). And Daily Kos’s Orange to Blue list currently has only one incumbent on it, Alan Grayson.

No knock on Grayson, of course; as you can see below, he is the most progressive of all the incumbent Dems in the “Tossup” realm — although Carol Shea-Porter and Mary Jo Kilroy are certainly within the same range. However, I’d like for the netroots not to just put all its eggs in the Grayson basket (particularly when he can, if need be, refill that basket with his own personal cash). So, I’m posing the question to all of you, to answer in the comments: what other incumbents should we be defending?

Once we get past the other fairly obvious choices (Shea-Porter and Kilroy, again), it becomes an interesting philosophical question, one where your input would be valuable: is it better to start looking for progressives in the lower-tier races, where our money might come in valuable later? Or do we hold our noses and focus on shoring up some of the members who didn’t fare so well on the litmus test issues, knowing that we need to accept some (in fact, many) imperfect members in order to cobble together a majority?

In fact, it may be most interesting to approach this like putting together an investment portfolio. Say you have $100 to spend on contributions. How much do you allocate to the most endangered progressives? How much to the more valuable (or less heinous) New Dems and Blue Dogs? How much to progressives who aren’t quite as endangered? For that matter, how much to Blue-to-Blue open seat races? And how much to races where we’re still on the offensive? Within each category, which particular names stand out for you?

To help with your decision-making process, I’ve put together a couple tables that look at all of the Democrats’ vulnerable incumbents. The first is organized by column by just how vulnerable we at SSP have decided they are, and organized by row according to Progressive Punch scores, from best to worst. (Ordinarily I prefer DW-Nominate scores for this type of analysis, but Progressive Punch scores are much more intuitive to interpret; the order of Reps. in each column should be pretty similar regardless of which method you use.) (Also, you’ll note I’ve thrown several more Dems on the list — Bobby Etheridge and Allen Boyd — whom we haven’t formally added to the board yet but undoubtedly soon will.) Feel free to mention Senate races too, of course; I’m table-izing just the House races because a) there are so few Senate races involving vulnerable Dem incumbents that we actually like that it’s pretty easy to keep track of them, and b) House races are smaller-dollar affairs, so netroots dollars, if everyone pushes in the same direction, can actually make a difference in select races, whereas in pretty much any Senate general election, netroots dollars are a drop in the bucket that would go largely unnoticed.

Alternatively, here’s a version based around six key litmus test votes (stimulus package, 2009 budget, cap and trade, the 2009 and 2010 health care votes, and the Stupak Amendment); Reps. are ordered according to how many “bad votes” they took out of the six. Many people have their own personal line-in-the-sand legislatively, for which an aggregated score like Progressive Punch is too broad, so this may be more helpful for those who want to make their choices a la carte.

There’s yet another way you might of approaching this question, one that’s a little more forgiving of Blue Dogs: that’s the PVI/Vote Index, which is a measure we’ve discussed the last few years. This posits that a Representative’s value is found in overperforming his or her district’s lean as much as possible, which tends to favor the Dems in the reddest-possible districts as well as diehard progressives in swing districts. In particular, that tends to favor Chet Edwards, who has an R+20 district but usually is a reliable vote as seen by his Progressive Punch score (granted, he voted “no” on three of the six litmus test items, but that’s still a substantial improvement over whatever else we might get in that district). The link here is to the 2008 numbers; I just crunched the 2009 numbers, which I’ll write up later in the week, but Edwards again is by far the greatest overperformer. Cold-blooded contributors who can be purely value-added and ignore litmus test votes might want to emphasize Edwards (and similar overperformers like Earl Pomeroy or John Spratt).

Somewhat surprisingly, to me, Tennessee’s 8th Congressional district features a highly competitive House race in 2010.  The reason for the surprise is that the 8th has never really been competitive: John Tanner, the retiring incumbent, never won with less than 62% of the vote (even in 1994, he won 64%.)  Part of this was, certainly, that Republicans never gave a serious challenge to Tanner.

This made sense back in the 1980s and 1990s.  Jimmy Carter carried the then-7th district in 1980 (Tennessee only had 8 districts in the 1970s), and Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis each won 43% of the vote in the 8th.  In the 1990s, Bill Clinton carried the district twice, and Al Gore narrowly carried it in 2000.  So, this was basically a Democratic district.  (Note to those concerned: the district lines haven’t changed much at all since 1980.  The 2000 redistricting subtracted some heavily Republican Memphis suburbs and added part of Clarksville, the net result of which was to change this from a district that Gore won by less than 1,000 votes to one that he won by around 7,000 votes.)

More after the jump…

(NOTE: I don’t have any nice, pretty maps to illustrate this, so follow along.  Somebody who’s better at working with this might be able to create one.)

In the 2000s, though, the district has behaved quite differently in Presidential races.  In 2004, George W. Bush carried the 8th by around 15,000 votes; in 2008, the Republican margin was even greater: John McCain carried the 8th by about 35,000 votes.  That, combined with Tanner’s decision to retire, certainly gives Republicans an opening.

However, despite the Republican surge (part of a general rejection of Barack Obama in a broad swath from West Virginia through Tennessee and into Arkansas), this district still retains a Democratic lean.  Let’s look at the numbers:

Race	Democrat	Republican
2008: Obama (D) vs. McCain (R)	115,209	150,348
2006: Ford (D) vs. Corker (R)	100,126	91,414
2004: Kerry (D) vs. Bush (R)	116,327	131,524

See that?  While this is a district that has voted Republican in the last two Presidential races, in a competitive Senate race in 2006, it voted for a Democrat.  And a Democrat, it must be pointed out, more liberal than our likely nominee in 2010.

The 8th district can be broken down into five rather distinct parts.  I’ll break these down further below.  The five parts of the district are:

1.  Memphis area

2.  Rural West Tennessee

3.  Jackson

4.  Tennessee River area

5.  Clarksville (portion)

(Another note: Tennessee’s Secretary of State has precinct-by-precinct breakdowns of the vote, but for 2004, absentee and early votes were lumped into “absentee” and “early” by county rather than assigning them to individual precincts.  This isn’t an issue in counties that are entirely within the district, but in Shelby County and Montgomery County, which are only partly in the district, we can’t get a completely accurate read of the 2004 vote.)

Memphis area

County	Obama (D)	McCain (R)	Ford (D)	Corker (R)
SHELBY	21,073	9,298	13,473	6,366
TIPTON	7,931	17,165	6,775	9,717
TOTAL	29,004	26,463	20,248	16,083

I was actually surprised to discover that Obama carried the Shelby County portion of the 8th district with nearly 70% of the vote.  That’s because, rather than being suburban, most of the 8th district’s Shelby County voters live in a heavily African-American area of north Memphis.  And the district’s suburban areas are mostly in Millington, north of the city.  Millington, compared to the east Shelby County suburbs (Bartlett, Germantown, Collierville) is more working-class and has a higher African-American population.  The result is that it’s generally less Republican than east Shelby County.  And the net result is a heavy Democratic vote.  In fact, almost all of Harold Ford Jr.’s district-wide margin was in Shelby County.

Tipton County could be classified as rural West Tennessee, but the rapidly-growing southern part of the county certainly is part of the Memphis area, so we’re putting it here.  Tipton County is certainly more working-class than east Shelby County (the median household income here is $47,850), but the African-American population is rather low (19 percent) compared to the surrounding counties, and as a result it’s generally Republican.

The Shelby County portion of the district should provide a solid Democratic margin, but the danger for Roy Herron is that, without an African-American candidate at the top of the ticket, A-A turnout in Memphis could be down (something tells me A-A voters aren’t going to turn out in big numbers just to vote for Roy Herron.)  So Shelby County should give a solid margin to Herron, but it probably won’t be as big as the margins that Obama and Ford racked up there.  But the Shelby County portion of the district casts only 11% of the district vote — not much more than the 9% that Tipton County casts — so it’s unlikely that simply racking up a big margin in Memphis will be enough to put the Democrat over the top.

Republican candidate George Flinn lives in Memphis, though he actually lives in the 9th district.

Rural West Tennessee

County	Obama (D)	McCain (R)	Ford (D)	Corker (R)
CARROLL	3,980	7,455	4,256	4,742
CROCKETT	1,967	3,994	2,246	2,212
DYER	4,411	9,859	4,848	6,115
GIBSON	7,406	13,516	7,471	8,003
HAYWOOD	4,893	3,165	3,763	2,130
LAKE	1,024	1,175	981	571
LAUDERDALE	4,322	4,933	3,954	2,953
OBION	4,308	8,873	4,734	4,936
WEAKLEY	4,596	8,855	4,542	5,412
TOTAL	36,907	61,825	36,795	37,074

Rural West Tennessee tends to be a swing area in state elections.  While Obama did poorly in this area, Harold Ford Jr., as seen above, came very close to carrying it in the 2006 Senate race, and Phil Bredesen carried it in the 2002 gubernatorial race — a key to his statewide win.  (Kerry lost this area by around 10,000 votes.)

This portion of the district includes Haywood County, which has an African-American plurality (49.7% of the population) and as such is heavily Democratic — it was the one county in Tennessee that Lamar Alexander failed to carry in his 2008 bid for reelection.  But generally speaking, this area doesn’t have that many African-Americans — Lake County and Lauderdale County, on the Mississippi River, have A-A populations around 35%, but the rest of the counties have A-A populations more like those seen in neighboring Kentucky.

Despite its recent performance, rural West Tennessee is still Blue Dog Democrat territory — almost all of this area is represented by Democrats in the state legislature.  Weakley County is the home of Roy Herron, who’s represented much of this area in the state Senate since 1996 — his district includes Lake, Obion, and Weakley counties, as well as Henry, Stewart, and Benton (which I’ve included in the Tennessee River portion of the district) and three other counties that aren’t in the 8th.  As such, Herron can be expected to do well in this area.  That’s a good thing, because doing well in the rural counties will be key to a Democratic win — in 2008, this area cast a little more than a third of the districtwide votes.  Republican candidate Stephen Fincher is from Crockett County, also in this part of the district.

Jackson

County	Obama (D)	McCain (R)	Ford (D)	Corker (R)
MADISON	20,209	23,290	14,549	15,367

Jackson (2008 pop.: 63,158) is the largest city wholly in the district.  Jackson, basically, is like a smaller version of Memphis, with similar social ills and racially polarized voting.  In both national and state elections, it tends to lean Republican; both Harold Ford Jr. and Phil Bredesen (in 2002) lost narrowly here.  Unlike the rest of the district (and Tennessee in general), Madison County actually moved toward the Democrats in 2008; Obama lost by 3,000 votes, while John Kerry lost by around 4,800 votes here.  Increased African-American turnout seems to be the answer; a precinct-by-precinct breakdown shows that Obama won a bunch of extra votes in mostly A-A precincts in Jackson and didn’t seem to do any better than Kerry did in the white areas of town.

Yet Jackson does seem to have a bit of a Democratic streak.  It rejected an incumbent Republican state Senator in 2002, and, after the new Senator switched parties, very narrowly voted for him in 2006 (he lost district-wide thanks to Gibson and Carroll counties.)  Herron should win here if George Flinn is the Republican nominee, though he’ll have a tougher time against Jackson-based Ron Kirkland.  Madison County casts around 16% of the vote district-wide, so Herron can weather a likely narrow loss in Jackson.

Tennessee River counties

County	Obama (D)	McCain (R)	Ford (D)	Corker (R)
BENTON	2,645	3,696	3,232	2,176
DICKSON	7,506	11,677	7,232	7,014
HENRY	5,153	8,182	4,947	4,689
HOUSTON	1,678	1,608	1,734	931
HUMPHREYS	3,600	3,818	3,915	2,236
STEWART	2,470	2,956	2,608	1,675
TOTAL	23,052	31,937	23,668	18,721

Obama’s performance in this area is a little mystifying to me, as this has always been one of the most Democratic parts of Tennessee.  The easy argument is that Obama is black and a liberal — but that doesn’t quite hold water, since this area voted for a black (Ford) and nearly voted for a liberal (Kerry, who lost these counties by 775 votes) in recent years.  In any case, though, this area still likes its Tennessee Democrats, as Harold Ford Jr. won here, and Phil Bredesen carried it easily in 2002 (winning over 70% of the vote in Houston County.)  Roy Herron likewise should win this area, though perhaps not with the big Democratic margins of old.  (Dickson County is actually coming within the exurban orbit of Nashville these days, which explains some of the increased Republican vote there.)  This area, as a whole, casts around 20% of the district-wide vote.

Clarksville

County	Obama (D)	McCain (R)	Ford (D)	Corker (R)
MONTGOMERY	6,037	6,833	4,866	4,169

The 8th district only includes a small part of Montgomery County.  This area does lean a bit Democratic, and Montgomery County moved toward Obama in 2008 — some of that may have had to do with unhappiness with Bush-era foreign policy (Montgomery County includes a large part of Fort Campbell, though it’s not in the district.)  In any case, Clarksville doesn’t carry a lot of weight in the 8th district, as it only casts 5% of the district votes.  The rest of the city is in the 7th district.

Outlook

While Democrats will have a tough time holding the 8th, it’s not nearly as uphill battle as it might seem from looking at the 2008 Presidential results.  In state elections, much of this district still prefers Blue Dog Democrats like Tanner and Herron, and even a relatively liberal Democrat (for Tennessee, anyway) like Harold Ford Jr. was strong enough to carry this district.

In the 2010 election, Republican-leaning Jackson and the Democratic-leaning Tennessee River counties will likely cancel each other out.  Herron should win the Shelby County portion of the district, though without Obama or Ford at the top of the ticket, he can’t count on high African-American turnout.  That leaves rural West Tennessee, which gave McCain a big margin but which often votes for Democrats below the Presidential level, and where Herron is well-known and well-liked.  I’m not guaranteeing a win by any stretch, but Herron is well-positioned to keep this district in Democratic hands.

In addition, the Republican candidates here have weaknesses.  Stephen Fincher and Ron Kirkland have never run for office before, while George Flinn doesn’t live in the district.  Against a seasoned, veteran state Senator, they could have trouble.