Tag: OH-15

Nationally, many pundits and bloggers didn’t take Nevada’s 2nd district too seriously in 2006. It was too safe a Republican district to be even slightly competitive, so the argument went.

Well, we all know that Dean Heller in the end won his election against Democrat Jill Derby. Against expectations though, his result wasn’t very convincing. The man who was elected Secretary of State of Nevada three times, barely won more than 50% of the vote in a district that doesn’t include Democratic Las Vegas. So today, I ventured out in search of Republicans who won their districts in 2006 and did worse than him. Turns out that there weren’t that many.

Only 11 Republicans were elected with a worse result than Heller. Among them: Rep. Sali of Idaho, Rep. Cubin of Wyoming, Rep. Musgrave of Colorado and Rep. Doolittle of California. All these districts were presumed to be safely in Republican hands. There was no way they would become competitive and yet they were.

Again, there is talk of Heller being safe, of other Republican districts more important than Nevada’s 2nd. This is reminder for all of these folks that Heller is among the vulnerable dozen Republicans currently serving in Congress:

  * 50.37% Heller
  * 50.24% Pryce (OH-15)
  * 50.21% Wilson (NM-01)
  * 50.14% Hayes (NC-08)
  * 50.08% Buchanan (FL-13)
  * 50.05% Bachmann (MN-06)
  * 49.95% Sali (ID-01)
  * 49.53% Ferguson (NJ-07)
  * 49.26% Doolittle (CA-04)
  * 48.46% Porter (NV-03)
  * 48.33% Cubin (WY-01)
  * 45.91% Musgrave (CO-04)

Results were taken from NPR.

PS: Please note that I only looked at how many people were willing to vote for the Republican, not how well the opponent did. This is not a diary on close margins. Feel free to comment on that below.

Cross posted from Helluva Heller, where Nevada bloggers have united to take down Heller in 2008.

The plethora of opportunities for House Democratic challengers in Ohio next year is a topic that both CQ Politics and MyDD’s Jon Singer looked at recently. Between both sources, we can identify no fewer than seven potential offensive targets for Democrats this cycle. The following chart lists each possible targeted district by its PVI, the incumbent’s margin of victory in 2006, and the Kerry/Bush and Gore/Bush margins in 2004 and 2000, respectively:

CD	Incumbent	PVI	’06 Margin	Kerry ’04	Bush ’04	Gore ’00	Bush ’00
OH-01	Chabot	R+0.5	4	49	51	46	51
OH-02	Schmidt	R+13.1	1	36	64	34	63
OH-03	Turner	R+2.9	17	46	54	45	52
OH-12	Tiberi	R+0.7	15	49	51	46	52
OH-14	LaTourette	R+2.2	18	47	53	44	52
OH-15	Pryce	R+1.1	<1	50	50	44	52
OH-16	Regula	R+3.6	17	46	54	42	53

With the exception of the 3rd, these districts have been trending more Democratic on the Presidential level since 2000. Despite shrewd gerrymandering by Ohio Republicans, with the right challengers, each of these seats could come into play.

• OH-01: The DCCC thinks it has their man to finish what John Cranley started in his challenge to Republican Steve Chabot in 2006. State Rep. and Minority Whip Steve Driehaus, “a Democrat with a history of winning over Republican voters”, has thrown his hat in the ring. On the one hand, Driehaus has a suburban political base that can help wear down Chabot in his strongest territories. On the other hand, Driehaus may lack the broader name recognition of Cranley, who was an at-large councilor in Cincinnati. On balance, though, Driehaus’ resume looks good, and he should prove to be another credible challenger.
• OH-02: No doubt about it; Jean Schmidt is a political time bomb set to go off every six months or so with another bizarre comment about bringing nuclear waste into her district or deriding the outrage over the Walter Reed scandal as “overblown” criticism. Jean Schmidt could very well be the worst politician of the decade, which is the only reason why Team Blue has a shot at winning this R+13 district. 2006 candidate Vic Wulsin is game for a rematch, and while it doesn’t seem to take much to incite Schmidt into inflicting another wound on herself, the Democratic nominee in this district will have to deal with running against the Presidential headwind of a solidly Republican district. A tough challenge, to be sure, but Schmidt is destined to underperform, especially if she gets another primary challenge.
• OH-03: This Dayton-based district was represented by Democrat Tony P. Hall from 1978-2002, but has since been occupied by Republican Mike Turner. Whatever hope Democrats had in sparking an upset last year unfortunately went down in flames after the Democratic nominee, Stephanie Studebaker, was arrested in a domestic dispute just three months before election day. Prosecutor Dick Chema was the last-minute replacement, and perhaps unsurprisingly fell short by roughly 17 points. Given that this district’s Republican lean is less than heavy, a well-organized challenger with a good profile could perhaps do to Turner what Democrat Jason Altmire did to “rising star” Republican Melissa Hart in Pennsylvania last year, who held a similarly Republican-leaning seat with a long history of voting for Congressional Democrats.
• OH-12: Republican Pat Tiberi convincingly repelled Swing State Project hero and near-octogenarian Bob Shamansky by a 15-point margin last November, but he did have to empty his $3 million war chest to do it. Tiberi shouldn’t be able to escape 2008 with a free pass, especially in a trending Democratic district like this one.
• OH-14: Democrats have an eager challenger to Republican Steve LaTourette: William O’Neill, a judge on the 11th District Court of Appeals in Ohio. O’Neill’s recent claim to fame was winning 41% of the vote for the Ohio Supreme Court on a $1 budget in 2006, in principled opposition to the mixing of campaign contributions and judicial service. However, O’Neill claims he won’t be nearly as stingy in his campaign against LaTourette. He intends to raise $1 million for the race, and will resign from the bench on June 15th and has already been in contact with the DCCC, according to comments attributed to him on the Buckeye State Blog. LaTourette, despite some family values hypocrisy and a district trending more Democratic on the Presidential level, has yet to face a top-shelf challenge this decade (no, Capri Cafaro doesn’t count). If Judge O’Neill can bring the noize, this might be another unexpected defense for Republicans next year.
• OH-15: After watching the disappointments of Lois Murphy and Diane Farrell in their four-year campaigns last cycle, I’ve become rather skeptical of the viability of most House rematches, barring special circumstances like scandal (e.g. Pombo/McNerney), and major strategic reorientation (e.g. Hodes/Bass, Boyda/Ryun). But Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy ran a strong challenge against Deborah Pryce last year, which is why I’m somewhat ambivalent about the brewing primary battle between her and fellow Franklin County Commissioner Paula Brooks. Pryce could be on unstable ground in 2008, but we’ll need to sort out our side of the fence first.
• OH-16: At age 82, Republican Ralph Regula is ripe for retirement. But even if this seat doesn’t open up, Democrats plan on making an aggressive challenge after the no-profile, no-money Democrat Thomas Shaw scored a surprising 41.6% against the 34-year incumbent. According to the Buckeye State Blog, State Senator John Boccieri, an officer in the Air Force Reserve and a veteran of four tours in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, is strongly considering a bid for this seat. With a strong electoral track record and an excellent profile, Boccieri could prove to be a top-tier Democratic recruitment in the next cycle.

Seven districts, seven pressure points. Democrats probably won’t win all of them, or even many of them, but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be wise to push on all of these targets hard to keep Congressional Republicans focused on putting out as many brushfires as possible.

Race Tracker: Ohio

From CQ Politics:

Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy, who narrowly lost to Republican Rep. Deborah Pryce last November in Ohio’s Columbus-centered 15th District, will run again in 2008.

Kilroy – an elected commissioner in Franklin County, which includes Columbus – sent a letter to political supporters this week informing them of her decision, according to a statement her campaign office released Thursday afternoon.

“I want to finish this campaign,” Kilroy told CQPolitics.com in an interview. “I want to continue this campaign and bring this home so that the people of the 15th District get the kind of representation they deserve.”

As she did in her last effort, Kilroy’s 2008 rematch bid will focus heavily on her opposition to President Bush and his policies in Iraq – and will link Pryce to an administration that remains mostly unpopular.

Kilroy managed to lose a race in 2006 that many predicted (in the home stretch) she’d win, albeit by a razor-thin margin of 1062 votes.  For that reason, I’m a little hesitant to automatically support a rematch, as previous heavy-spending four-year campaigns run by candidates such as Lois Murphy in PA-06 and Diane Farrell in CT-04 fell just short of producing Democratic victories in a blue wave year.  This isn’t meant as a knee-jerk knock against second-rounders, as folks like Jerry McNerney, Paul Hodes, and Nancy Boyda took the hard lessons of their 2004 defeats and turned them around into 2006 victories.  But: A) they had the advantage of running for the second time in a wave year, and B) excluding Boyda, Hodes and McNerney ran underfunded, low-profile ’04 contests, practically allowing them to introduce themselves to district voters in 2006 for the first time all over again.  Kilroy will have the name recognition advantage, for sure, but she’ll also carry with her the baggage that millions of dollars of four years of brain-numbing media oppo brings.

Discuss.

As an aside: the bigger problem with the Ohio map is the Republican gerrymander that has split the Democratic-leaning Franklin County (which includes the Democratic city of Columbus) between Pryce’s 15th and Republican Pat Tiberi’s 12th.  Kilroy edged Pryce by a 52-48 margin in their share of the county last November, while Democrat Bob Shamansky (a sentimental favorite of SSP) only lost by a 49-51 margin to Tiberi in the rest of the county.  Swaths of Republican “heartland” tacked on to the cleaved Franklin county has denied Columbus fair represenatation for years.  Oh, the powers of the redistricting process.  Speaking of which, Ohio Democrats are only five seats short of majority status in the Ohio House, which is a far cry from their 2006 position of being 21 seats short of control.  With the Senate looking somewhat out of immediate reach, it would be nice if we could snatch control over one half of the state’s legislature to gain some leverage during the next round of redistricting.

Race Tracker: OH-15