On Tuesday, we looked at the biggest non-party independent expenditures of 2006 in House races, and yesterday, we looked at expenditures of all kinds in 22 of the 23 races where Democratic challengers beat House Republican incumbents. Let’s pick up where we left off and take a look at the heartbreakers of 2006–34 competitive races where the Democratic candidate fell short of toppling an incumbent.
How do we define “competitive”? Well, in this study, I used a compromise of a number of metrics: races where either party committee made significant expenditures, races where the incumbent had a margin of victory under 15%, races with significant (usually $1M+) challenger expenditures, and races with significant independent expenditures. In most of these cases, there is significant overlap between those guidelines of “competitiveness”.
As usual, the “Spent” column indicates candidate expenditures, and “Other IEs” includes all independent expenditures made by PACs who filed with the FEC, but not 527 activity. I have also added a column on the far right indicating the incumbents’ margin of victory. In most cases I used Secretary of State numbers, but in a few races I relied upon CNN. All numbers were subject to rounding.
| District | Candidate | Spent | DCCC IEs | Other IEs | Incumbent | Spent | NRCC IEs | Other IEs | Victory Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AZ-01 | Simon | $1.5M | (none) | $128k | Renzi | $2.22M | $24k | $21k | R+8 |
| CA-04 | Brown | $1.65M | (none) | $53k | Doolittle | $2.35M | $356k | $10k | R+3 |
| CO-04 | Paccione | $1.93M | $348k | $237k | Musgrave | $3.18M | $1.81M | $16k | R+2 |
| CT-04 | Farrell | $2.94M | $1.64M | $183k | Shays | $3.72M | $1.66M | $2k | R+3 |
| FL-08 | Stuart | $992k | (none) | $5k | Keller | $1.66M | (none) | $102k | R+7 |
| IL-10 | Seals | $1.85M | $158k | $25k | Kirk | $3.48M | (none) | (none) | R+7 |
| IL-11 | Pavich | $526k | (none) | (none) | Weller | $1.84M | (none) | (none) | R+10 |
| IN-03 | Hayhurst | $691k | (none) | (none) | Souder | $634k | $225k | $1k | R+8 |
| KY-02 | Weaver | $878k | $331k | $104k | Lewis | $1.96M | $42k | $10k | R+11 |
| KY-04 | Lucas | $1.47M | $2.71M | $10k | Davis | $3.87M | $2.31M | $13k | R+8 |
| MI-08 | Marcinkowski | $551k | (none) | (none) | Rogers | $1.85M | (none) | $8k | R+12 |
| MI-09 | Skinner | $384k | (none) | (none) | Knollenberg | $2.78M | (none) | $3k | R+5 |
| NC-08 | Kissell | $683k | (none) | $200k | Hayes | $2.37M | (none) | $8k | R+0 |
| NE-01 | Moul | $979k | (none) | (none) | Fortenberry | $1.12M | (none) | $4k | R+17 |
| NE-02 | Esch | $411k | (none) | (none) | Terry | $962k | (none) | $1k | R+9 |
| NJ-07 | Stender | $1.89M | $103k | $3k | Ferguson | $2.92M | $48k | $16k | R+1 |
| NM-01 | Madrid | $3.32M | $2M | $1.17M | Wilson | $4.66M | $2.03M | $831k | R+1 |
| NV-03 | Hafen | $1.5M | $308k | $1.14M | Porter | $2.99M | $476k | $2k | R+2 |
| NY-03 | Mejias | $908k | (none) | (none) | King | $2.06M | (none) | $1k | R+12 |
| NY-25 | Maffei | $912k | $446k | $5k | Walsh | $1.77M | $375k | $51k | R+2 |
| NY-26 | Davis | $2.37M | $423k | $248k | Reynolds | $5.2M | $1.03M* | $32k | R+4 |
| NY-29 | Massa | $1.44M | (none) | $144k | Kuhl | $1.46M | $233k | $5k | R+4 |
| OH-01 | Cranley | $2M | $1.28M | $699k | Chabot | $2.95M | $1.46M | $21k | R+5 |
| OH-02 | Wulsin | $1.02M | (none) | $237k** | Schmidt | $750k | $333k | ? | R+1 |
| OH-12 | Shamansky | $1.64M | (none) | $3k | Tiberi | $2.97M | (none) | (none) | R+15 |
| OH-15 | Kilroy | $2.68M | $1.62M | $1.35M | Pryce | $4.63M | $1.81M | $82k | R+0 |
| PA-06 | Murphy | $4.04M | $3.01M | $222k | Gerlach | $3.46M | $3.89M | $52k | R+1 |
| PA-15 | Dertinger | $88k | (none) | (none) | Dent | $1.26M | (none) | (none) | R+10 |
| VA-02 | Kellam | $1.59M | $1.16M | $719k | Drake | $2.32M | $1.36M | $15k | R+3 |
| VA-10 | Feder | $1.54M | (none) | (none) | Wolf | $1.72M | (none) | $2k | R+16 |
| WA-05 | Goldmark | $1.15M | $321k | (none) | McMorris | $1.84M | (none) | $6k | R+12 |
| WA-08 | Burner | $2.98M | $2.02M | $727k | Reichert | $2.98M | $2.36M | $22k | R+3 |
| WV-02 | Callaghan | $614k | (none) | (none) | Capito | $3.07M | $25k | (none) | R+14 |
| WY-AL | Trauner | $927k | (none) | (none) | Cubin | $1.25M | $249k | $64k | R+0 |
| Total | $50.1M | $17.9M | $7.6M | $81.6M | $22.1M | $1.4M |
Notes: *This expenditure was made by the RNC, not the NRCC.
**Due to the labyrinthian backstory of Jean Schmidt’s travails in OH-02 from 2005-06, it’s difficult to sort out which expenditures apply to which period of her career: the special election of 2005, the primary battle last spring, and the 2006 general. I did my best to sort it out, but the picture isn’t entirely clear. For that reason, take these figures with a grain of salt.
Unsurprisingly, Republicans enjoyed more of a financial edge in these races; combining all expenditures, there was a nearly $30 million gap between Republican and Democratic expenditures in these 34 districts. The NRCC did not swamp out the DCCC in these districts by a large margin. NRCC/RNC buys amounted to 55% of the party committee expenditures, while the DCCC was responsible for the remainder. This is very close to the 56-44 NRCC ratio in the seats that the Democrats did pick up from incumbents.
Obviously, this list will bring up some woulda-coulda-shouldas: imagine what Larry Kissell or Eric Massa or Linda Stender could have accomplished with more DCCC IEs, for instance. But it should also highlight some badly underperforming incumbents for next time: Knollenberg in MI-09, Terry in NE-02, and Dent in PA-15, for instance, all posted very underwhelming returns given the financial uncompetitiveness of each of their races.
Oh, and speaking of Linda Stender, here’s one maddening note from last November’s results: if the 3176 votes that the “Withdraw Troops Now Party” candidate won in NJ-07 had been cast for Stender instead, she would have won by about 250 votes. Sigh.
On the weekend, I’ll conclude this series with expenditure round-ups for competitive open seats and the select districts where Democratic incumbents were on the defensive.