Tag: demographics

The Census Bureau recently released all of its data from the 2008 American Community Survey estimates, which is like Christmas Day in the Crisitunity household. I’ll be looking at the data divvied up by congressional district in several different ways in the coming week; today, I’m starting with the most basic element: population change. This doesn’t tell us much about how the composition of each district is changing, but it tells us a lot about what direction different districts are heading as we approach 2010 redistricting.

Let’s start with the 25 districts that have experience the greatest population change over the period from the 2000 census to the 2008 estimate, in terms of raw numbers. These are the districts that will be shedding population in 2010, in some cases into newly-created districts:

District	Rep.	2000	2008	Change
AZ-02	Franks (R)	641,435	991,439	350,004
AZ-06	Flake (R)	641,360	957,920	316,560
TX-10	McCaul (R)	651,523	955,363	303,840
NV-03	Titus (D)	665,345	966,577	301,232
FL-05	Brown-Waite (R)	639,719	920,242	280,523
GA-07	Linder (R)	630,511	901,363	270,852
UT-03	Chaffetz (R)	744,545	974,639	230,094
NC-09	Myrick (R)	619,705	847,888	228,183
TX-26	Burgess (R)	651,858	875,556	223,698
TX-22	Olson (R)	651,657	873,878	222,221
CA-45	Bono Mack (R)	638,553	860,052	221,499
GA-06	T. Price (R)	630,613	834,530	203,917
AZ-07	Grijalva (D)	640,996	840,106	199,110
TX-03	S. Johnson (R)	651,782	845,481	193,699
CA-44	Calvert (R)	639,008	831,454	192,446
FL-14	Mack (R)	639,298	830,717	191,419
TX-31	Carter (R)	651,868	841,984	190,116
CA-25	McKeon (R)	638,768	819,973	181,205
CO-06	Coffman (R)	614,491	794,480	179,989
TX-21	L. Smith (R)	651,930	828,925	176,995
NC-04	D. Price (D)	619,432	794,794	175,362
FL-25	M. Diaz-Balart (R)	638,315	812,082	173,767
GA-09	Deal (R)	629,678	803,245	173,567
IL-14	Foster (D)	654,031	823,661	169,630
FL-06	Stearns (R)	638,952	807,026	168,074

You may recall that we looked at this same project a year ago, using 2007 data. Compared with last year’s list of the top 20 gainers, there’s a lot of stability. AZ-02 moves up from #3 to the top spot, with AZ-06 falling to second place. Entrants to the list are TX-31, CA-25, TX-21, NC-04, and FL-06, while GA-03, ID-01, FL-08, VA-10, and WA-08 fall off.

Much more over the flip…

And here are the districts that have lost the most population in the period from 2000 to 2008. These ones will need to absorb the most surrounding territory (or simply be eliminated and dispersed into their neighboring districts):

District	Rep.	2000	2008	Change
LA-02	Cao (R)	639,048	469,262	– 169,786
MI-13	Kilpatrick (D)	662,844	558,280	– 104,564
OH-11	Fudge (D)	630,668	548,080	-82,588
PA-14	Doyle (D)	645,809	574,861	– 70,948
MI-14	Conyers (D)	662,468	591,652	– 70,816
PA-02	Fattah (D)	647,350	586,216	– 61,134
NY-28	Slaughter (D)	654,464	598,124	– 56,340
TN-09	Cohen (D)	631,740	586,190	– 45,550
AL-07	A. Davis (D)	635,631	591,670	– 43,961
MI-12	Levin (D)	662,559	621,619	– 40,940
MS-02	B. Thompson (D)	710,996	670,638	– 40,358
PA-01	Brady (D)	645,422	606,632	– 38,790
OH-10	Kucinich (D)	631,003	593,065	– 37,938
IL-04	Gutierrez (D)	653,654	618,313	– 35,341
IL-01	Rush (D)	654,203	620,843	– 33,360
PA-12	Murtha (D)	646,419	617,797	– 28,622
NY-27	Higgins (D)	654,200	627,105	– 27,095
MO-01	Clay (D)	621,497	594,535	– 26,962
MI-05	Kildee (D)	662,584	636,803	– 25,781
OH-17	Ryan (D)	630,316	604,607	– 25,709
IN-07	Carson (D)	675,804	650,746	– 25,058
IL-07	D. Davis (D)	653,521	629,923	– 23,598
MN-05	Ellison (D)	614,874	591,467	– 23,407
IL-02	J. Jackson (D)	654,078	630,933	– 23,145
IL-17	Hare (D)	653,531	630,745	– 22,786

No surprise here in terms of change: the Katrina-ravaged LA-02 is still the biggest loser of population (although it’s currently a very fast growing district, as it gradually repopulates). Detroit and Cleveland, though, are depopulating as a result of their own disasters (economic in this case), and MI-13 and OH-11 both nose ahead of the former #2, Pittsburgh’s PA-14. Near the bottom of the list, the dwindling IL-01, PA-12, MI-05, IN-07, and IL-02 move on, while CA-09, KS-01, PA-05, CA-53, and MA-08 arrest their decline a bit and move off the list.

My observations remain much the same as last year: the David Brookses of the world would look at the sheer number of exurban red districts in the fast-growing column and the number of urban blue districts in the shrinking column, and point to hundreds of years of Republican dominance as urbanites are pulling away from the teat of the welfare state and moving out to the exurbs to make a fresh start as Patio Man and Realtor Mom.

Not exactly: as the suburbs start to spread outward into these districts, bringing their annoying diversity, density, and workaday problems with them, these red districts are, for the most part, becoming Democratic. Just for a few examples, consider CA-25, which went from 59-40 for Bush to 49-48 for Obama, or NC-09, which went from 63-36 for Bush to 55-45 for McCain. In addition — as we’ll see in the next installment, where we’ll focus on changes in race — immigrants are often making the suburbs their first destination, quickly changing the complexion of the outer rings around many cities.

Some of you may be wondering, “Well, wouldn’t change by percentage instead of by raw numbers be more interesting?” In this case, it barely makes a difference in terms of ranking, because we’re starting from essentially the same baseline everywhere in 2000 (generally around 660,000). The most noteworthy exception is UT-03, which is lower down the list of gainers (13th) when ordered by percentage because Utah districts started out large.

Another way of looking at this question that isn’t quite so interesting is: what are the most (and least populous) districts? Most of the lists are completely the same, but there are some oddball picks in there, districts that simply started out very big (MT-AL) or very small (WY-AL). The top 10 most populous, by 2008 numbers, are: AZ-02, UT-03, MT-AL, NV-03, AZ-06, TX-10, FL-05, GA-07, UT-01, and UT-02. The 10 least populous are: LA-02, RI-01, RI-02, WY-AL, OH-11, NE-03, MI-13, IA-05, PA-14, and WV-03. (These suggest that, come 2020, we may be looking at Rhode Island dropping to a single district and Nebraska and West Virginia dropping to two each.)

Finally, here’s one other way of slicing and dicing the numbers that’s worth a look: the population change between 2007 and 2008. I was expecting to see a lot of people fleeing the worst epicenters of economic collapse (the manufacturing problems of Detroit and Cleveland, the housing bubble-related problems of Phoenix, southern Florida, and California’s Central Valley), but I simply don’t see much of a pattern. More likely what happened is that the economic crisis really put a damper on overall mobility in the last year, as many demographers have suggested… and what we’re seeing is a lot of float within the margin of error (as, remember, the ACS is an estimate, and there’s a plus-or-minus of more than 10,000 on their population estimates).

Here are the biggest gainers over one year. As I hinted at, the fastest growing district is LA-02, although it’s still way off from its peak:

District	Rep.	2007	2008	Change
LA-02	Cao (R)	395,592	469,262	73,670
UT-03	Chaffetz (R)	907,472	974,639	67,167
TX-10	McCaul (R)	898,647	955,363	56,716
AZ-02	Franks (R)	939,215	991,439	52,224
NY-01	T. Bishop (D)	667,336	713,084	45,748
CA-08	Pelosi (D)	621,146	664,963	43,817
TX-12	Granger (R)	770,083	813,561	43,478
CA-47	Lo. Sanchez (D)	617,224	657,705	40,481
CA-50	Bilbray (R)	708,288	747,880	39,592
CA-25	McKeon (R)	782,014	819,973	37,959

And here are the biggest losers. There are a lot of southern California districts here, but they tend to be either Hispanic-majority districts or comfortable, established areas (CA-46), rather than the stereotypical instant exurbs of CA-44 and CA-45 where option ARMs got a new generation of homeowners into the balsa-wood-and-drywall duplexes of their dreams. Also, interestingly, rather than the canyons of empty condo towers along Florida’s Gold Coast, instead the leader is FL-21, a neighborhood of established middle-class Cubano suburbs west of Miami.

District	Rep.	2007	2008	Change
FL-21	L. Diaz-Balart (R)	707,168	670,760	– 36,408
CA-39	Li. Sanchez (D)	669,981	635,955	– 34,026
TX-07	Culberson (R)	782,163	751,034	– 31,129
MA-09	Lynch (D)	668,799	639,053	– 29,746
CA-18	Cardoza (D)	714,167	686,109	– 28,058
FL-03	C. Brown (D)	668,709	642,194	– 26,515
CA-13	Stark (D)	672,300	647,397	– 24,903
CA-38	Napolitano (D)	653,733	629,942	– 23,791
CA-46	Rohrabacher (R)	655,857	632,809	– 23,048
NJ-06	Pallone (D)	673,587	650,895	– 22,692

The Census Bureau on Tuesday released a treasure trove of voting statistics, but perhaps most interesting were statistics comparing the Hispanic vote between 2004 and 2008. Here’s Governing magazine’s Josh Goodman on what happened:

The Census estimates that there were 9.745 million Hispanic voters in 2008, compared to 7.587 million in 2004 — an increase of 28.4%. Overall, an estimated 131.114 million Americans voted in 2008, compared to 125.736 million in 2004, an increase of just 4.3%. Another way of looking at it: there were 5.4 million additional votes cast in 2008 compared to 2004 and about 2.2 million of them were cast by Hispanics.

The gain was particularly dramatic in California, where there were 2.08 million Hispanic votes in 2004, and 2.96 million in 2008 (which is 21% of all votes in California). (This rapid gain dovetails with the sudden pro-Obama shift in many of California’s red districts.)

Percentage-wise, this gain is nothing compared with the gain in Georgia, though; although Hispanic votes are only 3% of the vote there, they shot up from 26,000 to 128,000 votes from 2004 to 2008. Overall, this has to be seen as good news for Democrats — when a group that makes up half of all new voters polls in your favor by a 2-to-1 margin (Obama polled at 67% in exit polls among Latinos).

It’s also worth noting that the 5 million increase also included 2 million more black voters and 600,000 more Asian voters — meaning, if you do the math, hardly any gains at all came from white voters. In terms of age groups, young voters (18-24) were the only group to show a statistically significant increase in voting rates (but they still remained the group with the lowest turnout: 49%).

Conventional wisdom is that the African-American and youth voter numbers seem largely driven by a spike in participation associated with the historic nature of the Obama candidacy, and may be poised to fall off a little in future elections. However, the increasing Latino numbers were also driven partly by increased participation: the voting rate (the percent of persons of that race who voted) among Latinos went up 4%, the same percentage that it went up among African-Americans. It remains to be seen whether Latinos continue to increase their participation rate (their voting rate was still only 49%, compared with 66% for non-Hispanic whites and 65% for blacks). But even if their voting rate falls off, growth among the Hispanic population will still make them a larger and larger proportion of the pool of voters.

• FL-Sen: Although Rep. Corrine Brown, who’s expressed interest in running in the Democratic Senate primary, has been pretty inactive on the fundraising front, she did get at least one prominent donor to her Senate exploratory account: Rep. Donna Edwards, who gave her $1,000. (Edwards also gave to Rep. Kendrick Meek’s account on the same day — but only $250 to him.)

• KY-Sen: Jim Bunning finally released his fundraising numbers, and they’re still “lousy.” He raised $285K for the quarter, with $595K CoH, which is less than half of the amount raised by the guy who says he won’t run against Bunning in the primary, SoS Trey Grayson (who raised $603K). Both, of course, are dwarfed by Democratic AG Jack Conway, who raised $1.32 million for the quarter and is increasingly looking like the man to beat. (Conway’s primary rival, Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, pulled in a lukewarm $303K.) Meanwhile, in another indication of Bunning’s dwindling power, lots of elected GOP officials seem willing to out themselves as Grayson supporters: Grayson got contributions from three state Reps., city councilors from Louisville and Lexington, and executives from three large counties.

• NH-Sen: One more indicator that there’s still going to be a contested GOP primary in New Hampshire: local political insider and long-time friend of AG Kelly Ayotte Mike Dennehy isn’t going to be working for Ayotte. He’s been working with businessman Fred Tausch on his anti-tax STEWARD organization since last fall, and will continue to do so.

• NC-Sen: Kenneth Lewis, a Durham corporate attorney who’s planning to run for the Democratic Senate nomination in 2010, made a big hire: Joe Trippi. It suggests, if nothing else, Lewis plans to spend a lot of money on the race, and maybe also that he’s interested in reaching out the netroots (although he may have some competition on that front, if he runs, from former state Sen. Cal Cunningham).

• NM-Gov: If ex-Rep. Heather Wilson doesn’t get in, the New Mexico GOP is left with a bunch of third-stringers for the governor’s race. Here’s a newly interested potential candidate, though, who’s at least interesting from a demographic perspective: Susana Martinez. She’s the DA of Dona Ana County, location of Las Cruces and New Mexico St. Univ., the state’s second-most populous county and one of its Democratic anchors. Running a Latina against an Anglo (likely Dem nominee Lt. Gov. Diane Denish) might also help the GOP peel off some ordinarily-Dem votes.

• NY-14: Roll Call previews the many possible Democratic replacements for Carolyn Maloney, if she follows through on her planned Senate race. On the Manhattan side of the East River, state Sen. Liz Krueger is at the top of the list. Younger up-and-comers, though, include city councilor Dan Garodnick, state Assemblyman Jonathan Bing (both of whom are Maloney allies and unlikely to run against each other), and city councilor Jessica Lappin. On the Queens side, there’s also city councilors Eric Gioia and Peter Vallone Jr. (son of the former council speaker), and Assemblyman Michael Gianaris. Karenna Gore Schiff (Al Gore’s daughter) has also been rumored, although she told TPM today she won’t run.

• PA-06: With Rep. Jim Gerlach gone, the primary opponents are descending on this open seat… but contrary to what I would have expected a few months ago, it’s happening on the GOP side. While state Rep. Curt Schroder got in, as expected, he didn’t clear the field: Chester County Recorder of Deeds Ryan Costello also said he’s likely to get in. Also, Guy Ciarrocchi, Gerlach’s former chief of staff, is interested, and Chester County Commissioner Carol Aichele’s name has been floated, although she’s already exploring a Lt. Gov. race. On the Dem side, Doug Pike’s early fundraising dominance may have locked things down for him, although the Hill says potential heavyweight state Sen. Andy Dinniman is still “eyeing” the race, as well as Manan Trivedi (a former health care policy advisor to the Obama campaign).

• VA-05: One last fundraising tidbit, that apparently couldn’t fit in James’s fundraising wrap-up because it rounds off to $0. Ex-Rep. Virgil Goode raised sub-Roland Burris totals last quarter: $154. Not the kind of money that suggests a rematch against Rep. Tom Perriello.

• Demographics: Two interesting reads you’ll want to check out: one from Ruy Teixeira, on how the rise of the millennial generation, more “seculars,” and more Latinos all point to an imminent end to the “culture wars.” And also an important 538 piece from Nate Silver, where he somehow got his hands on polling data on uninsured voters broken down by CD, finding that — unlike voting against cap-and-trade, where their districts tend to be more carbon-reliant and voting against the measure might seem short-term rational — Blue Dogs are disproportionately from districts that are heavy on uninsured voters and voting for the bill would, if framed correctly, be a big boon for their districts’ voters. With the public option still hanging in the balance, if you’re represented by a Blue Dog (although, if you’re reading SSP, chances are that you aren’t), this would be a great piece to forward to them.

• CO-Sen: Mark Udall endorsed his fellow Senator Michael Bennet yesterday. Superficially, that’s completely unsurprising, but it’s an indicator that we’ve gotten to the point where it seems unlikely anyone else from the Democratic political establishment (former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff, for instance) might challenge the appointed Bennet in the primary.

• FL-Sen: I predicted yesterday that billionaire Tom Golisano’s interest in the Florida senate race wouldn’t last long, and now it doesn’t even seem to have ever existed. He let the Buffalo News know today that he’d never publicly expressed any interest, and that nobody (starting with Politics1, where the rumor started) ever called to ask him about it before launching the story.

• ME-Gov: After months of nothing happening in the Maine governor’s race, now we have two candidates. Democratic State Rep. Dawn Hill, who represents part of York County and owns a dog day care in her spare time, announced she’s in the race. She may be a long shot in the primary against former AG and former state House speaker Steve Rowe, who quietly filed his candidacy papers last week.

• FL-09: Our condolences to the family and friends of Phyllis Busansky, who died unexpectedly last night. She ran a solid race in FL-09 in 2006, and was elected Hillsborough County’s Supervisor of Elections in 2008.

• NC-08: With the NC GOP trying to recover the fumble on their attempts to recruit Carolina Panthers star Mike Minter to go up against freshman Rep. Larry Kissell, a new possibility has emerged: former state Rep. Mia White (who was Mia Morris while in the legislature). She’s been pretty far out of the loop lately, though… she has been living in Singapore, where she’s been American politics commentator for what she called their equivalent of CNN.

• NY-23: One more Republican has declared his interest in the open seat in the 23rd, who wasn’t on anybody’s watch list: veterinarian Gary Cooke. In a dairy-heavy district, Cooke seems primarily focused on farm issues.

• OR-04: Springfield mayor Diamond Joe Quimby Sid Leiken has already run into some trouble in his nascent campaign against Rep. Peter DeFazio: he’s the subject of a campaign finance complaint from Democrats. Leiken paid $2,000 to a company called P&G Marketing and Research for “surveys and polls,” but no such firm exists and the address is the same as his mother’s real estate business. While Leiken didn’t return calls on the matter, Leiken’s campaign manager said that he has receipts for all of the campaign’s expenditures… except for this one.

• PA-03: You know your campaign wasn’t meant to be, when the first mention your campaign gets in the press is your Facebook announcement that you’re dropping out of the campaign. The GOP’s lone challenger against freshman Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, social studies teacher Brian Lasher, dropped out, leaving the GOP without a candidate, although businessman Steve Fisher is still thinking about it. Hard to fathom the GOP giving up without a fight in such a traditionally swingy district.

• Cal-St. Ass.: Fresno-area Assemblyman Juan Arambula left the Democratic caucus yesterday to become an independent, supposedly over budget issues (although water issues may be a major subtext). This tips the balance to a still comfortable 49-29-1 for the Democrats, but with Arambula gone they’re now five votes short of the 2/3s necessary to do anything useful with the budget. Arambula is term-limited out in 2010, so the fallout is contained.

• Demographics: Nate Silver has, as always, a fascinating graph as part of a piece on changing migration rates in the last few years. Migration from blue states to red states has slowed significantly in recent years, probably because of the economic slowdown. The plus side is that this may salvage a few Democratic House seats in 2010.

• PA-Sen: Gov. Ed Rendell confirmed in his usual inimitable style that he’s backing new-found Dem Arlen Specter in 2010. He did go out of his way to praise Rep. Joe Sestak but to encourage him to remain in the House, warning Sestak that he would “get killed” (metaphorically, I’d assume) and that “we will lose a terrific Congressman and when he loses to Arlen, he fades into political obscurity.” Sestak did pick up his first big-name endorsement, though: MontCo Commissioner and former Rep. Joe Hoeffel, who lost to Specter in the 2004 general election.

• CT-Sen: Here’s an inauspicious start to Merrick Alpert’s primary challenge to Chris Dodd: the Democratic party committee in his home town, Groton, voted a resolution of support for Dodd. It also issued a pretty transparent slap at Alpert, deploring any hypothetical primary challenger’s use of “echoing right wing talking points or by utilizing the conservative media echo chamber to slander Dodd.” (Alpert’s already done that.)

• FL-Sen: State Sen. Dan Gelber made it official (via Facebook) that he’s dropping out of the Senate race, giving Rep. Kendrick Meek a clearer path. He’s now considering the AG race against a crowded field including fellow state Sen. Dave Aronberg, or, more interestingly, joining the ticket as Alex Sink’s Lt. Gov. candidate.

• MN-Sen: It was Minnesota Supreme Court hearing day in The Senate Race That Won’t Die. Five of the court’s justices heard an hour of oral arguments. Rick Hasen‘s interpretation of how the individual justices responded to the lawyers’ arguments suggests a quick and possibly unanimous decision in favor of Franken.

• NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo did it again — he publicly denied that he’ll be running for Governor and maintained that he “plans” to run again for AG. (He did concede that primaries can be productive for the party.) While the idea of Cuomo giving up an almost-free shot at the governor’s mansion seems ludicrous, maybe there’s a kernel of truth to Kirsten Gillibrand‘s cryptic comments from last week that there would be no primary; at some point, if Cuomo says it enough times, we have to start taking him seriously.

• AL-Gov: Hangin’ judge Roy Moore made it official this morning; he’s running for Alabama governor. He joins four others in the hunt for the GOP nod.

• TN-Gov: Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey officially launched his gubernatorial campaign at midnight this morning (to kick off the third quarter of fundraising). He seems a bit overshadowed by Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam, Rep. Zach Wamp, and Shelby Co. DA Bill Gibbons, but has a solid base of support of northeast Tennessee.

• LA-03: Republicans seem to be making a full-court press on newly R+12 LA-03, even though Rep. Charlie Melancon (who didn’t even have an opponent in 2008) seems likelier to remain in the seat than run for Senate. The NRCC has been courting state Rep. Nickie Monica, who has obliged by offering some public criticisms of Melancon. Ascension Parish sheriff Jeff Wiley was also on the wish list, but has taken himself out of contention.

• PA-11: Nobody’s taking the heat off Rep. Paul Kanjorski in the 12th. First came news that Lackawanna Co. Commissioner Corey O’Brien and Scranton mayor Chris Doherty were interested in primary challenges; now it sounds like Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta, who came within 3% of Kanjorski in 2008, may be back for a third try. Barletta was seemingly considering the Lt. Gov. slot in 2010, but assuming AG Tom Corbett wins the gubernatorial nomination that job may go to someone from the Philly suburbs for purposes of ticket-balancing.

• DCCC: The DCCC launched an ad blitz against six vulnerable House Republicans today, hitting them with radio ads and robocalls for voting against the stimulus package by focusing on specific shovel-ready projects in each district. Targets are Don Young (AK-AL), Brian Bilbray (CA-50), Tom Rooney (FL-16), Thad McCotter (MI-11), Peter King (NY-03), and Charlie Dent (PA-15).

• Demographics: A new Gallup poll finds that only 11% of Republicans are Hispanics, African-Americans, or other non-whites. Considering that we’re a few decades away from a country where whites no longer hold the majority, The Math seems to indicate a Republican Party that doesn’t dramatically change its message is on the brink of permanent irrelevance.

• PA-Sen: It looks like the threat of a primary from the left may be having some of the desired effect on Arlen Specter. He’s engaged in negotiations on a compromise version of EFCA, and said yesterday that “prospects are pretty good” for such a bill (although it remains unclear what exactly would get cut from the bill).

• NY-Sen-B: Kirsten Gillibrand will receive an important endorsement tomorrow: from NARAL. This may help solidify Gillibrand’s pro-choice credentials in the face of possible Senate primary challenges from Reps. Steve Israel or Carolyn Maloney.

• DE-Sen: Rep. Mike Castle, the one guy who can make the open Delaware Senate race interesting, isn’t promising anything right now. Castle set a decision-making deadline of “the next two months,” though. (Unclear whether that’s two real months or two Mark Kirk months.)

• AR-Sen: In the wake of state Senator Kim Hendren’s comments about Chuck Schumer yesterday, a more competent sounding Republican has surfaced to take on Sen. Blanche Lincoln. Curtis Coleman, the CEO of SafeFoods (a “food-safety services company,” whatever that is) and a close friend of Mike Huckabee, announced formation of his exploratory committee this week. Former US Attorney and Rove protege Tim Griffin may also get in; he’s announced a June 1 deadline for deciding.

• KY-Sen: Rand Paul, the son of Rep. Ron Paul, moved one step closer to running in the Republican Senate primary (theoretically against Jim Bunning), launching his exploratory committee.

• NY-Gov: Observers are noting that Rudy Giuliani is definitely not looking like a candidate for next year’s gubernatorial race. The tipoff is the recent departure of at least three key staff members, including former chief of staff Tony Carbonetti.

• MN-Gov: This should be something of a red flag to Tim Pawlenty: 57% of Minnesotans, according to SurveyUSA, don’t want him to run for a third term as Governor. A lost gubernatorial race would basically doom his 2012 presidential aspirations, so this may up the chances of an open seat instead.

• KS-Gov: New Democratic Governor Mark Parkinson appointed a new Lt. Gov., Troy Findley. Unfortunately, Findley promptly announced that, like Parkinson, he won’t be running for Governor in 2010, leaving Kansas Democrats with bare shelves in both the open senate and governor’s races.

• CA-36: Earlier this week, Marcy Winograd (who got 38% of the vote against Jane Harman in the 2006 Democratic primary) officially kicked off her campaign for a rematch.

• Gay marriage: We’re on the precipice of gay marriage in one more state, as New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch confirmed that he was willing to sign it into law. One catch: Lynch wants a slightly different bill, that includes additional language stating that churches aren’t compelled to marry anyone they don’t want. The legislature is expected to move quickly to add the new language.

• Demographics: Hispanics and Asians are still the fastest-growing groups in America, but their growth rates have slowed down in recent years as the economic downturn has cut into immigration. In particular, Hispanic growth in the Southeast slowed down. This pushes back projections of when the U.S. becomes a minority-majority country, to the 2040s. In other census news, Orange County, Florida (Orlando) became a minority-majority county in the last year (good news for Alan Grayson as he attempts to hold FL-08).

• Redistricting: Utah has an initiative on the table for the 2010 election, proposing an independent redistricting commission (instead of letting the overwhelmingly GOP legislature draw the boundaries). Interestingly, the idea just got a prominent Republican backer: former 11-term Rep. Jim Hansen.

• NY-20 (pdf): The BoE’s official tally bumps Scott Murphy’s lead up to 365, as 250 more ballots, mostly from Murphy stronghold Warren County, were added. Counting will continue for the forseeable future, unfortunately, and on Monday a judge will set a counting schedule for the ballots contested on the basis of second home residency.

The drip-drip of GOPers publicly throwing in the towel on NY-20 continues: today star strategist Mike Murphy cried uncle, as did former NRCC chair Tom Reynolds yesterday. Campaign Diaries has a thought-provoking piece on why the GOP continues to drag this out in the courts, even though they’re in too deep a hole for “case by case” examination of the ballots to salvage the count for them: it may be to set precedent for future recounts, where picking off individual ballots may be targeted to their advantage.

• NY-Sen, NY-14: Rep. Carolyn Maloney has hired a statewide finance director, Lewis Cohen. Cohen denied that Maloney (who has been rumored to be interested in a primary challenge to Kirsten Gillibrand) will be running for Senate, but his title of “statewide” is pretty telling, considering that Maloney currently represents a few square miles in Manhattan and Queens.

• PA-Sen: Only eight weeks before jumping into the Senate primary, Pat Toomey told Pennsylvania GOP chair Rob Gleason that he “didn’t want to be a Senator” and “be number 100 and vote no on everything.” Now this wouldn’t exactly be the first time a politician has promised one thing and done another, but the Specter camp has begun beating Toomey over the head with his flip-flop.

• MO-Sen: Ex-treasurer Sarah Steelman is “moving in [the] direction” of entering the GOP senate primary, but is in no hurry to make a formal announcement as she gets her campaign’s financial house in order first. (She’s still paying off debts from her unsuccessful gubernatorial run last year.) This comes against a backdrop of increasing public discomfort by the party concerning Roy Blunt’s candidacy, caused not only by his humdrum $542K fundraising quarter and his high burn rate, but also his lobbyist ties and long ‘establishment’ track record.

• GA-Gov, GA-03: With top candidates like Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Cobb Co. Commissioner Sam Olens bailing on the race, there’s an opening for a top-tier candidate to leap into the GOP field for the Georgia governor’s race. (SoS Karen Handel and Insurance Comm. John Oxendine are still in.) Could Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, who has occasionally expressed interest in this race, be the man? Westmoreland (perhaps best known for not being able to name the 10 commandments on the Colbert Report) is “seriously considering” it. Don’t look for a pickup of his R+19 seat if it’s open, though.

• AL-Gov: Republican treasurer Kay Ivey will be running for governor after all, according to party insiders. The perception was that her role in Alabama’s floundering prepaid tuition plan may have wounded her too much to run for governor, but she’s still going for it.

• CA-32: More endorsements as we approach the May 19 special election. Board of Equalization chair Judy Chu got the endorsement of Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. (The district doesn’t include any of LA, but obviously he’s a big figure in the media market.) The United Farm Workers and the locals of the Southern California District Council of Laborers went for state senator Gil Cedillo.

• FL-08: Republican Orlando mayor Rich Crotty was looking like a major threat to just-elected Rep. Alan Grayson, but he’s getting tarnished with some legal troubles that may preclude him from running. A grand jury accused him of pressuring vendors to contribute to his re-election campaign. There’s still a deep Republican bench eyeing the race in this R+2 district, including state senate majority whip Andy Gardiner, ex-state senator Daniel Webster, and state rep. Steve Precourt. Grayson raised only $144K in the first quarter, but he may plan to self-finance, as he partially did in 2008.

• Demographics: Here’s some interesting data from the Census Bureau: fewer people moved in 2007 (35.2 million) than any year since 1962 (when the nation had 120 million fewer people). This has its roots in the housing bubble pop, as people underwater in their houses are unlikelier to relocate for work. This may show up in a big way in 2012 reapportionment, though, as more people staying in place may save a few seats in the northeast or midwest and limit growth in the south or west.

There’s suddenly been a lot of discussion of the Republican-held districts in California being the next big treasure trove of Democratic pickups in the House, surprising considering that California has a very bifurcated political geography and, on top of that, one of the most aggressively pro-incumbent gerrymanders. This started with a study published by the California Target Book showing precipitously declining GOP registrations, and continued with the DCCC‘s announcement that it would go big in 2010 in the eight districts where Obama won that are still occupied by House Republicans.

For instance, CA-26 has shown a drop in the GOP’s registration edge from 2002 to 2008 from 11% to 6%, CA-45 has seen a similar drop from 11% to 4%, and perhaps most out of left field, Buck McKeon’s CA-25 has dropped from 9% to 1%. In CA-03 (where Dan Lungren barely escaped in 2008), it dropped from 11% to 2%, and in CA-44 (where Ken Calvert escaped even more narrowly), it dropped from 16% to 7%.

What’s driving these changing registrations? Is it just ticked-off moderates realizing that something’s amiss with today’s GOP and changing teams? I’m sure there’s some of that happening, but that can’t by itself explain the size of those numbers. What’s driving this seems to be the changing demographics of who’s moving into and out of these districts. With the GOP’s declining fortunes among Latino and Asian voters (fueled by the GOP’s own self-defeating hardline extremism on the immigration issue), it can’t help that those are where most of the growth is happening in most of these districts.

While the magnitude of the demographic sea change in California isn’t as great as the non-white growth in Texas (which I wrote about prior to the 2008 election), it’s still impressive to see. This chart details the changes in each group from the 2000 census to the 2007 estimate, for each House district that’s held by the Republicans. (‘White’ means non-Hispanic white.)

District	Rep.	Kerry %	Obama %	Total gain	White gain	Af.-Am. gain	Asian gain	Hispanic gain
CA-02	Herger	37	43	67,021	27,716	1,337	5,805	29,851
CA-03	Lungren	41	49	146,160	45,010	20,391	38,477	44,250
CA-04	McClintock	37	44	112,419	62,724	3,839	18,398	25,547
CA-19	Radanovich	38	46	101,949	20,874	9,436	8,596	66,772
CA-21	Nunes	34	42	108,725	6,981	1,405	11,334	88,698
CA-22	McCarthy	31	38	128,449	7,546	16,822	6,942	96,609
CA-24	Gallegly	43	51	44,034	– 9,600	– 1,413	7,750	49,124
CA-25	McKeon	40	50	143,246	– 26,236	25,300	15,935	119,934
CA-26	Dreier	44	51	51,417	– 14,604	– 1,491	26,625	47,452
CA-40	Royce	39	47	29,403	– 43,083	5,837	23,992	48,880
CA-41	Lewis	37	44	136,950	– 734	16,196	16,845	107,741
CA-42	G. Miller	37	45	47,896	– 4,641	– 1,397	15,719	46,613
CA-44	Calvert	40	50	198,959	35,183	12,632	19,101	126,396
CA-45	Bono Mack	43	52	225,020	50,882	13,581	18,181	135,086
CA-46	Rohrabacher	42	48	16,612	– 18,782	2,464	23,496	12,397
CA-48	Campbell	40	49	78,712	2,273	4,327	45,264	31,105
CA-49	Issa	36	45	132,037	32,752	2,981	20,122	76,245
CA-50	Bilbray	44	51	68,851	10,987	992	22,038	35,297
CA-52	Hunter	38	45	21,746	– 16,440	1,424	12,635	20,083

Bear in mind that not all of the Latino persons listed here are able to vote, either because they aren’t citizens or are too young, so this is more of a time-bomb in some districts, like the ones in the mostly-agricultural Central Valley. Case in point is CA-21, which (along with CA-45) is the only of these districts to have moved into an outright Latino plurality this decade, but is still one of the most Republican districts in the state.

On the other hand, some of the more suburban districts, like CA-44 and CA-45 in Riverside County, are poised to flip pretty soon (although these are two of the most hard-hit districts anywhere by the foreclosure crisis and the collapse of the construction industry, so it’ll require a lot of watching in these districts to see who stays and who goes). And even more surprisingly, CA-25 is zooming in our direction, at least demographically, making the drop to a 1% GOP registration edge maybe not that unexpected. (There’s only one district that seems to be bucking this overall trend, where most of the growth is white, and that’s CA-04… oddly enough, the district of all these where we came closest in 2008 to picking up the House seat, although the circumstances there were unusual.)

As in Texas, these changes aren’t going to happen overnight. But in the red parts of California, as with Texas, in the next decade, we’re either going to see a GOP that changes its message (and, well, everything else) to appeal to a more diverse America, or that starts hemmorhaging seats in its once-red strongholds.

• NH-Sen, NH-01: Carol Shea-Porter has announced she won’t seek the Senate nomination, giving Paul Hodes a clear path and also preventing us the trouble of holding an open seat.

• PA-Sen: Ed Rendell told a local news affiliate that he, Bob Casey Jr., and Joe Biden have all tried to talk Arlen Specter into switching over to the Democratic Party, but he remains “bound and determined to stay a Republican.”

• NH-02: Stonyfield Farms CEO Gary Hirshberg, a possible candidate to replace Paul Hodes, just wrote his first diary at Daily Kos (on coal power). Is he gearing up to take on a higher political profile? (D)

• TN-Gov: Chris Cillizza fingers Mike McWherter, the son of former Gov. Ned McWherter, as the likely Democratic nominee for Tennessee’s gubernatorial election in 2010 according to “informed insiders”. McWherter, a businessman who has never held elected office, considered running for Senate last year, but ultimately decided to keep his powder dry. (J)

• AL-Gov: Alabama’s AG Troy King plans to run for re-election, rather than pursue the governor’s seat as had been rumored. King may not even survive his re-election, though, what with a gambling-related federal investigation.

• CA-Gov: Got a spare $50 million sitting around? Meg Whitman does, and apparently that’s how much she’s willing to spend out-of-pocket on her quest to become the Golden State’s next governor.

• Demography (warning: big pdf): Ruy Teixeira comes through with yet more demographics-as-destiny wizardry. His new report on the state of the nation sees an America that’s no longer a majority white Christian nation within the next ten years (where four-fifths of growth is non-white), where culture war appeals have diminished force, and where the white working class becomes small enough to lose its iconic swing vote status.

(Bumped – promoted by James L.)

In the wake of the Census Bureau releasing 2007 American Community Survey data by Congressional district, it’s time for another demographic data dump. (I previously wrote about population change here.) Today, let’s take a look at income and poverty numbers.

As with the population numbers, it’s more interesting to look at the change from 2000 to 2007, rather than simply asking who’s on top and who’s on bottom. VA-11 is always going to be wealthy; NY-16 is always going to be obscenely poor. Looking at change, however, provides some interesting insight into what districts are hurting more or less than before, and thus where economic-themed messaging might play best.

As you can see by many of the same districts showing up in each category, income and poverty correlate pretty closely. I’m including both median household income and per capita income since those can give very different results. They tend to vary depending on household size; PCI tends to be highest in affluent downtown districts with a lot of single-family households, while MHI is highest in suburban/exurban areas where people earn a lot but households full of kids drag down the PCI numbers.

Let’s start with biggest gains in median household income:

District	Rep.	2000	2007	Change
VA-08	Moran (D)	$63,430	$90,662	$27,232
VA-11	Davis (R)	$80,397	$103,664	$23,267
VA-10	Wolf (R)	$71,560	$93,701	$22,141
NY-14	Maloney (D)	$57,152	$78,843	$21,691
CA-44	Calvert (R)	$51,578	$71,923	$20,345
CA-48	Campbell (R)	$69,663	$89,758	$20,095
NY-01	Bishop (D)	$61,884	$81,221	$19,337
MD-08	Van Hollen (D)	$68,306	$86,971	$18,665
MD-05	Hoyer (D)	$62,661	$81,179	$18,518
CA-30	Waxman (D)	$60,713	$79,149	$18,436

More over the flip…

Now for the smallest gains (or drops) in median household income:

District	Rep.	2000	2007	Change
MI-14	Conyers (D)	$36,099	$35,228	– $871
MI-13	Kilpatrick (D)	$31,165	$30,842	– $323
TX-09	Green (D)	$34,870	$34,934	$64
GA-04	Johnson (D)	$47,943	$48,327	$384
TX-24	Marchand (R)	$56,098	$57,552	$1,454
MI-12	Levin (D)	$46,784	$48,417	$1,633
NC-12	Watt (D)	$35,775	$37,574	$1,799
MI-05	Kildee (D)	$39,675	$41,535	$1,860
NC-01	Butterfield (D)	$28,410	$30,441	$2,031
IL-02	Jackson (D)	$41,330	$43,380	$2,050

We’re getting into Dickensian tale-of-two-districts territory here, as you can see the rich districts getting richer (basically confined to the New York, Washington, and Los Angeles areas). The only surprise, to me, is CA-44, which is out in the Inland Empire and is seeing a lot of Latino growth. Apparently it’s also seeing a lot of growth of upscale subdivisions on its remaining patches of empty buildable ground.

Likewise, we’re seeing the poor getting poorer, as working-class blue-collar districts that have escaped the worst of urban poverty (like MI-14 and IL-02) slowly slide into poverty with the loss of manufacturing jobs. The main surprise (and only Republican held district) is TX-24, the suburban area around DFW airport, which is seeing a lot of Latino growth and white flight to the exurbs.

VA-11 has the highest MHI in both 2000 and 2007, followed by NJ-11. VA-10 (which was #12 in 2000), CA-14, and VA-08 (which was #28 in 2000) round out 2007’s Top 5, while CA-14, CA-15 (which fell to #16 in 2007), and NJ-07 round out 2000’s Top 5.

The lowest MHI for both 2000 and 2007 was in NY-16, followed by KY-05. In 2000, the bottom 5 also included WV-03, CA-31, and AL-07, while in 2007, several of the biggest plungers joined the bottom 5 (NC-01 and MI-13), along with MS-02.

Now let’s turn to per capita income, starting with the biggest gains:

District	Rep.	2000	2007	Change
NY-14	Maloney (D)	$53,752	$71,409	$17,657
NY-08	Nadler (D)	$39,901	$57,462	$17,561
VA-08	Moran (D)	$35,613	$50,413	$14,800
CA-30	Waxman (D)	$34,552	$45,435	$10,883
MD-08	Van Hollen (D)	$36,245	$47,163	$10,918
CA-08	Pelosi (D)	$34,552	$45,435	$10,883
CT-04	Shays (R)	$41,147	$51,868	$10,721
CA-48	Campbell (R)	$37,242	$47,737	$10,495
IL-07	Davis (D)	$25,329	$35,697	$10,368
GA-05	Lewis (D)	$25,963	$35,979	$10,016

And here are the smallest gains:

District	Rep.	2000	2007	Change
MI-14	Conyers (D)	$17,546	$18,047	$501
MI-13	Kilpatrick (D)	$17,078	$18,238	$1,160
MI-05	Kildee (D)	$19,823	$21,299	$1,476
MI-12	Levin (D)	$23,560	$25,263	$1,703
IL-02	Jackson (D)	$18,280	$20,004	$1,724
TX-09	Green (D)	$15,998	$17,825	$1,827
GA-07	Linder (R)	$25,214	$27,079	$1,865
WI-04	Moore (D)	$16,607	$18,591	$1,865
MI-15	Dingell (D)	$23,628	$25,651	$2,023
IN-07	Carson (D)	$19,559	$21,593	$2,034

These results show even more clearly the hit taken by Rust Belt inner cities, and in fact almost the entire Detroit area. The one surprise is another suburban GOP stronghold (for now): GA-07 in Gwinnett County, which is another area that’s increasingly becoming a first stop for immigrants of all nationalities, and a prime source of white flight to other burbs. (TX-09 seems to appear on these lists because it absorbed a large portion of New Orleans’ most impoverished residents.)

NY-14, followed by CA-30, had the highest PCI in both 2000 and 2007. The top 5 in 2000 also included CA-14, CT-04, and NY-08, while the top 5 in 2007 was rounded out with NY-08, CT-04, and VA-08.

The lowest PCI in both 2000 and 2007 was in NY-16, followed by CA-20 and TX-15. The bottom 5 in 2000 also included CA-31 and CA-34, while the bottom 5 in 2007 also included TX-29 and CA-34. Note that these lists are quite different from the bottom 5 in MHI; again, that tends to be a factor of household size. Here, the bottom 5 are all heavily Latino districts, where household size tends to be larger than the rural white or black districts that have the lowest MHIs.

Now let’s look at the highest poverty percentage changes:

District	Rep.	2000	2007	Change
MI-13	Kilpatrick (D)	24.4%	32.5%	8.1%
CO-07	Perlmutter (D)	8.9%	15.0%	6.1%
TN-09	Cohen (D)	19.4%	25.0%	5.6%
MI-14	Conyers (D)	19.7%	25.0%	5.3%
IN-07	Carson (D)	13.5%	18.7%	5.2%
OH-15	Pryce (R)	10.8%	16.0%	5.2%
SC-06	Clyburn (D)	18.4%	23.4%	5.0%
NC-12	Watt (D)	15.9%	20.9%	5.0%
TX-16	Reyes (D)	23.6%	28.6%	5.0%
MI-04	Camp (R)	10.5%	15.2%	4.7%

Finally, let’s look at lowest poverty percentage changes:

District	Rep.	2000	2007	Change
CA-43	Baca (D)	20.7%	12.5%	– 8.2%
CA-20	Costa (D)	32.2%	26.4%	– 5.8%
LA-02	Jefferson (D)	26.8%	21.1%	– 5.7%
NY-15	Rangel (D)	30.5%	25.6%	– 4.9%
CA-34	Roybal-Allard (D)	26.0%	21.1%	– 4.9%
CA-28	Berman (D)	19.1%	14.4%	– 4.7%
CA-38	Napolitano (D)	16.3%	11.6%	– 4.7%
CA-31	Becerra (D)	30.1	25.5	– 4.6%
CA-35	Waters (D)	26.4%	21.9%	– 4.5%
NY-16	Serrano (D)	42.2%	37.7%	– 4.5%

Again, these numbers show Michigan taking a pounding, as well as other Rust Belt cities. Maybe most noteworthy, we’ve come across our first competitive race in an economically distressed area: OH-15, in downtown Columbus. (One other district catching my eye was CO-07 in the Denver suburbs, where I would guess there’s a lot of Latino growth.) The last set of numbers actually shows something good: a large reduction in poverty rates in mostly-Latino districts, especially in the Los Angeles area but in New York as well.

The most impoverished district in both 2000 and 2007 is NY-16 (despite its improvement over the years). In 2000, it was followed by CA-20 (which fell to #10 in 2007), NY-15 (which fell to #15 in 2007), TX-15, and CA-31. In 2007, it was followed by MI-13 (up from #20 in 2000), TX-15, PA-01, and TX-16 (up from #24 in 2000).

The least impoverished districts in 2000 were CO-06, IL-13, WI-05, NJ-07, and NJ-11. In 2007, that list changed to NJ-07, NJ-11, NJ-05, NY-03, and CA-42.