The NRCC made a splash earlier today by releasing a target list of 70 Dem-held House districts that they hope to put into play next year. Let’s take a closer look at all 70 — including their PVIs, the closeness of each race in 2008, and whether or not the GOP has recruited a “legitimate” challenger this time (this is a bit of a subjective assessment, but we’ll get to that later):
| District | Incumbent | PVI | 2008 Margin | Legit Challenger? | District | Incumbent | PVI | 2008 Margin | Legit Challenger? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AL-02 | Bright | R+16 | 1% | Y | NM-01 | Heinrich | D+5 | 12% | Y | |
| AL-05 | Griffith | R+12 | 4% | Y | NM-02 | Teague | R+6 | 12% | Y | |
| AR-01 | Berry | R+8 | 100% | N | NV-03 | Titus | D+2 | 5% | N | |
| AR-02 | Snyder | R+5 | 53% | N | NY-01 | Bishop | R+0 | 16% | N | |
| AR-04 | Ross | R+7 | 72% | N | NY-13 | McMahon | R+4 | 28% | N | |
| AZ-01 | Kirkpatrick | R+6 | 17% | N | NY-19 | Hall | R+3 | 18% | Y | |
| AZ-05 | Mitchell | R+5 | 9% | Y | NY-20 | Murphy | R+2 | 24% | N | |
| CA-11 | McNerney | R+1 | 10% | Y | NY-24 | Arcuri | R+2 | 4% | N | |
| CA-47 | Sanchez | D+4 | 44% | Y | NY-25 | Maffei | D+3 | 13% | N | |
| CO-04 | Markey | R+6 | 12% | Y | NY-29 | Massa | R+5 | 2% | Y | |
| CT-04 | Himes | D+5 | 4% | N | OH-01 | Driehaus | D+1 | 5% | Y | |
| FL-08 | Grayson | R+2 | 4% | N | OH-15 | Kilroy | D+1 | 1% | Y | |
| FL-22 | Klein | D+1 | 10% | Y | OH-16 | Boccieri | R+4 | 10% | N | |
| FL-24 | Kosmas | R+4 | 16% | Y | OH-18 | Space | R+7 | 20% | N | |
| GA-12 | Barrow | D+1 | 32% | Y | OK-02 | Boren | R+14 | 41% | N | |
| HI-01 | (Open) | D+11 | 58% | Y | OR-01 | Wu | D+8 | 54% | N | |
| IA-03 | Boswell | D+1 | 14% | N | OR-04 | DeFazio | D+2 | 69% | Y | |
| ID-01 | Minnick | R+18 | 1% | Y | OR-05 | Schrader | D+1 | 16% | N | |
| IL-11 | Halvorson | R+1 | 24% | Y | PA-03 | Dahlkemper | R+3 | 2% | N | |
| IL-14 | Foster | R+1 | 15% | Y | PA-04 | Altmire | R+6 | 12% | N | |
| IN-08 | Ellsworth | R+8 | 30% | N | PA-07 | (Open) | D+3 | 20% | N | |
| IN-09 | Hill | R+6 | 20% | N | PA-10 | Carney | R+8 | 12% | N | |
| KS-03 | Moore | R+3 | 16% | N | PA-11 | Kanjorski | D+4 | 3% | N | |
| KY-06 | Chandler | R+9 | 30% | N | PA-12 | Murtha | R+1 | 16% | N | |
| LA-03 | Melancon | R+12 | 100% | Y | SD-AL | Herseth | R+9 | 35% | N | |
| MD-01 | Kratovil | R+13 | 1% | Y | TX-17 | Edwards | R+20 | 7% | N | |
| MI-07 | Schauer | R+2 | 2% | Y | UT-02 | Matheson | R+15 | 28% | N | |
| MI-09 | Peters | D+2 | 9% | Y | VA-02 | Nye | R+5 | 5% | N | |
| MO-04 | Skelton | R+14 | 32% | N | VA-05 | Perriello | R+5 | <1% | N | |
| MS-01 | Childers | R+14 | 10% | Y | VA-09 | Boucher | R+11 | 100% | N | |
| NC-08 | Kissell | R+2 | 10% | N | VA-11 | Connolly | D+2 | 12% | Y | |
| ND-AL | Pomeroy | R+10 | 24% | N | WI-03 | Kind | D+4 | 29% | Y | |
| NH-01 | Shea-Porter | R+0 | 6% | Y | WI-07 | Obey | D+3 | 22% | N | |
| NH-02 | (Open) | D+3 | 15% | N | WI-08 | Kagen | R+2 | 8% | N | |
| NJ-03 | Adler | R+1 | 4% | N | WV-01 | Mollohan | R+9 | 100% | N |
That’s a big fat, honkin’ list of incumbents, including several that haven’t seen a competitive race in years — or ever (Boren, Skelton, the Arkansas delegation, Matheson, Pomeroy, Kind, and Boucher, to name just a few). Many of these races probably won’t produce competitive contests, but there’s absolutely no downside for the NRCC to be putting these incumbents on notice — not only will the targets being painted on these members’ backs have the potential to affect legislative votes, it helps to promote the idea that the NRCC is preparing for a big wave in their favor in 2010. (One thing’s for sure, if we have to worry about David Effin’ Wu next year, we’ll be preparing for life in the minority again.)
Now, what makes a challenger “legitimate”, you ask? That’s a good question. I define legitimacy as something that must be earned — whether it’s through an electoral track record or a demonstrated ability to fundraise (or self-fund), or some combination of both. In other words, just because the NRCC has met with some random businessman and asked him to challenge his local congressman, it doesn’t mean that the challenger has established himself as legitimate until he’s coughed up a quarterly filing with the FEC. Let me put it this way: for every Richard Hanna (the guy who nearly beat Mike Arcuri last year), there are a dozen or more Luke Pucketts or Carl Mumpowers. It’s just a lot harder at this point in the game to separate the wheat from the chaff, so our methodology is not to list a challenger without a record of electoral success as “legitimate” until they have demonstrated their ability to raise the dough. (And no, raising phat loads of cash through BMW Direct, like Bill Russell does in PA-12 does not count as a legitimate means of fundraising in our book.) The NRCC would no doubt disagree pretty strongly with my chart in some places, but I already feel that I’m being overly generous by granting OR-04 candidate Sid Leiken, who has had some pretty severe fundraising difficulties, “legit” status.
So, many of these districts marked with an “N” have challengers that have yet to prove the merit and mettle of their respective candidacies. There’s no doubt that many of these Ns will turn into Ys by the time the year’s over, but the GOP still has a lot of work to do. The GOP also has a stock of credible candidates considering bids in many of these “unchallenged” districts (FL-08, LA-03, and VA-05, in particular), so some of these holes will be easier to fill than others.
Also interesting is who is not listed on such an expansive list as this — guys whom the NRCC spent a lot of time targeting last cycle like Joe Donnelly (IN-02), Jim Marshall (GA-08) and Ciro Rodriguez (TX-23) stand out as conspicuous absences, especially considering the number of extreme longshots thrown into the mix.